Someone asked why I am anti-Kitchen Aid… I have always loved to cook. It is just sort of in me. Just ask my aunt or my cousin about that. We were known to make some wild concoctions growing up! Anyway, when we got married I told Tony that I HAD to have a Kitchen Aid mixer. I had heard so many good things about them and how they were a must have for a working kitchen. So I got one, and a few accessories as well. One of those accessories was a meat grinder. I liked purchasing whole chuck roasts and then grinding our own hamburger. We were living in an 800 square foot apartment at the time and this seemed to be the best way of getting good quality hamburger. Well the machine never liked grinding the hamburger. I called KA and they told me that I needed a new machine and they would send one out and I would send back my machine. The next one wasn’t better and this happened again. They told me this is the last time they would do this and I just decided that I would grind meat anymore. It really isn’t working and the machine really struggled with it. I thought I was just cursed with my Kitchen Aid.
Pregnancies happened and food and eating well got put on the back burner. I would make bread on occasion with the KA but not that often. Well as you all know, last year I started really looking at how we were eating. I started making all of our bread (with a few minor exceptions) and I noticed that my KA was really struggling. I don’t make more then 1 loaf at a time but it really hated it. It would either do the slow, fast, slow, fast thing with the motor, or it would all but walk off the table. So I looked online and I found I wasn’t alone. Other people that do serious cooking also had similar issues with their KA. Finally someone posted the reason why. I guess years ago KA was all metal gears inside. That is why they got the reputation as being a GREAT machine. Then Kitchen Aid was sold to Whirlpool and the quality ever since then has went down hill. There are still the die hard KA fans out there. Most of them got their machines before Whirlpool switched over everything. The other people that have purchased since then got a industrial machine by KA or don’t use it that often. Whirlpool has been capitalizing on this reputation with obviously mixed results. Sooner or later word will get around but obviously it is too late for me.
The other day I was at playgroup and I told a woman there that I was planning on getting a dishwasher soon. I told her what Tony had said in that he asked the salesman when we looked at them a few months ago, if he had “Any dishwashers there that actually clean dishes?” The woman whom I was talking to laughed and said “Yeah I know what you mean, I read in my owners manual that my dishwasher only cleans ‘clean’ dishes.” I talked to her some more and I found out that she got a high mid grade Kitchen Aid dishwasher only a few years ago. She is obviously frustrated by this as the dishwasher wasn’t cheap.
All of this has made me really hate Kitchen Aid (or Whirlpool).