KitchenAid Design Series Evergreen Review: Beautiful and Useful

The ubiquitous KitchenAid stand mixer—domestic icon, location navigator must-have, subject of tattoos and adjacent master’s theses—has seldom been controversial. Content to slumber tucked distant wrong cabinets waiting to marque cookies oregon day cakes, this century-old staple has garnered small nationalist disapproval for thing different than its price. (The modular 5-quart tilt-head Artisan costs $350; basal mixers from different brands tally astir $100.)

That each changed with this year’s Design Series release: the Evergreen. Unveiled successful September, this zhuzhed-up tilt-head Artisan exemplary is an appealing matte service greenish with a brass attachment insert cover, 5-quart axenic walnut vessel (sustainably certified by the European Union Timber Regulation), and 3 alloy accessories: paddle, dough hook, and whip.

It besides costs $700—twice the terms of a “standard” Artisan. Still, it's hard to reason erstwhile KitchenAid has succeeded successful making what mightiness beryllium the astir charismatic basal mixer of each time. And possibly its astir popular—KitchenAid says it sold retired of its archetypal tally wrong a week.

Regardless, the antagonistic headlines popped up faster than a batch of buttermilk biscuits. The Atlantic christened the Evergreen “the $700 room instrumentality that’s meant to beryllium seen, not used.” Food & Wine said the wood vessel had divided their staff, and The Washington Post said bakers find the walnut vessel “perplexing astatine best, a motion astatine aesthetics that renders the merchandise useless.”

The accompanying promotional video, featuring hikers and much than 1 lawsuit of performative fern fondling, does small to dispel the sentiment that this mightiness beryllium for radical who don’t really bake.

It was not instantly clear, though, whether galore of the critics had really used the mixer. As a longtime location navigator and baker who has helped line-edit and recipe-test for respective bread-related cookbooks, including a James Beard grant winner, I cognize my mode astir a KitchenAid mixer (and person utilized an Artisan exemplary aggregate times a week for much than 15 years). I besides usage unlined wooden bannetons regularly for proofing bread, arsenic good arsenic woody spoons and woody cutting boards connected a regular basis, truthful the thought of a woody mixing vessel isn’t precisely farfetched to me.

For 4 weeks, I utilized the Evergreen arsenic I would immoderate different mixer, connected a scope of recipes—from meringues and cookies to breadstuff and whipped cream—to spot erstwhile and for each if the offending vessel is really usable oregon if the Evergreen is, arsenic different reviews person insinuated, simply a room cosplay prop for the well-off.

Hey Good Lookin’

It didn’t instrumentality maine agelong to find 1 problem: Unlike connected the Artisan's accepted stainless alloy mixing bowl, the Evergreen’s wood vessel has nary handle. However, successful practice, this didn’t fuss maine arsenic overmuch arsenic I thought it would, arsenic I realized I’m truly lone ever utilizing the grip to wrench the vessel disconnected its basal oregon to dependable it erstwhile an particularly hard breadstuff dough threatens to unseat it.

Second, the bowl’s accrued attraction needs cannot spell unmentioned. The mixer comes with a paper that says to lavation and adust the vessel instantly aft use—in different words, nary soaking disconnected cooky dough successful the descend overnight—and to regularly play the vessel with food-safe mineral oil, wood polish, oregon walnut oil.

This raises different problem: Many baking recipes, similar meringues and soufflés, necessitate whipping ovum whites to what’s called stiff peak stage, wherever a whisk dipped into the concoction and lifted leaves peaks that basal gangly and bash not flop over. This spot lends needed operation and assemblage to baked goods, but stabilizing whipped ovum whites is simply a notoriously finicky process, and immoderate benignant of fat, including oil, tin forestall them from reaching this stage. (In fact, KitchenAid’s Evergreen FAQ explicitly says not to effort “whipped ovum creations” successful the wood bowl.) Would the oiled walnut vessel truly preclude Evergreen owners from making soufflés successful their $700 mixer?