March 12, 2015 - 5:37pm
Excited new Ankarsrum owner
Woot woot! I just got a new Ankarsrum and I'm so excited! I'm not posting for help or anything, just that none of my friends understand my excitement over this new toy and I figured a few of you out there may appreciate it a little. So, I'm sharing! Thanks!
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Great Machine! I got mine when is was called the Electrolux DLX, which seems like ages ago. lol
Very nice. I just used mine today and was reminded how awesome it is.
Everytime I use it, I appreciate its sturdy construction and good looks. And yes, it is hard to find people who will understand how you can be excited about a mixer. Congrats on landing yours.
Yay! Have fun with it. :)
I know you have lots of experience with the Bosch, so it will be interesting to hear any observations/comparisons you make between the two of them. Might be helpful for those trying to decide between the two.
Yes, I feel like I'm cheating on my Universal. When I researched mixers originally, the price was a major factor in deciding on the Universal. Still playing around with the Assistant, but the major thing so far is how much QUIETER it is than the Universal. With four boys in my house, I never really noticed the noise level of the Universal, but now that I have something to compare it to, it is kind of surprising to hear the difference.
NOW I HAVE A WHOLE NEW WISH LIST!!! I had never even heard of this thing, before. Now your post and a 20-min. video later, and I hate everything in my kitchen. But congratulations! I really am excited for you, truly! Because I can only imagine how excited I would be, if I were just settling in to use mine for the first time, and I will never begrudge anyone that giddy moment. Enjoy!
LOL!
I definitely understand the excitement. Has that continued for you? We've had ours for some time now and I still love the thing. It's built right and that turns me on every time I pull it forward on the countertop. The wife has never used it; it's all mine. :-) I do 99.99% of our baking and cooking; seriously.
You know that it's much more than a mixer, right? Or it can be. I haven't used our Cuisinart FP since getting the attachments for the AA. Unlike attachments for another brand, these aren't toys. I use the attachments at least as often or more often than I use the Assistent for mixing. It stays out on the countertop and instantly available for that reason. Our Assistant gets serious use and that's exactly what it was designed for.
Congrats!
Still loving it. It's so much quieter than the Bosch. I do 100% whole grain breads and often big batches of sandwich bread for the kiddos. It is working so well.
I have all of the attachments for my Bosch Universal, so it seems kind of silly to buy them for the Assistant also, but I am considering it. I'm glad to hear you like the attachments so much. The graters especially seem like a different design than I'm used to using. I teach bread baking classes out of my kitchen and it would be nice to have a little more personal knowledge about the attachments for the Assistant. I am now able to show two great machines to people. It's pretty awesome!
Do you have the graters? I have most of the other attachments since I bought the meat grinder complete set a year ago. I'd like to get the grater set but I'm having a hard time justifying it since I have a Cuisinart FP.
Does anyone know how the potato drum works? Are you supposed to use it for cooked potatoes? I've never seen anything like it before.
You've convinced me BBQinMain. I ordered the vegetable cutter and the meat grinder complete package. Ready to give the cutter a try making some graham cracker crumbs for a cheesecake now.
How did they work on the graham crackers? I usually do those in the food processor.
I have the full set of drums for the Ank' food processor. The hardest part of having them is choosing the drum to use.
The drum you're thinking of... have you ever seen the graters that have a side that looks like it was made by nails being pushed through the back side? That's the job that drum does. It's used to grate raw potatoes for potato pancakes. I don't think it would work at all well for cooked potatoes- it would plug the tiny shredding surfaces. But no, I haven't used that for potatoes yet. Believe it or not I've used it for soap. Instead of buying laundry detergent I make or own laundry soap. It's slow for soap, but it makes an extremely fine soap particle that dissolves in hot water almost instantly. Again, I haven't used it for potatoes, but as nicely as it works for the hard bars of soap, I would imagine potatoes would be a cinch for it.
If you have what you need for the Cuisinart I'm not going to try to convince you to fully outfit your Ank'. I find the largest appeal to the Ank' is the cleanup or lack of it. The bowl of the Cuis' FP is a PITA to clean. Not so the Ank'. Too, the Ank' FP is continuous by just changing bowl that catches the product. The Cuis' FP fills the bowl which is removed, opened up and dumped out then the process is reversed. When making really large quantities the Ank' is faster, especially when figuring the cleanup. My wife absolutely hates cleaning the parts of the Cuis' bowl (feeder and such) that she can't get into. But you know what you make for food and are solely in the position of judging your needs.
Maybe I'll make potato pancakes this week to try out the potato drum and get back to you.
Cooked potatoes were mentioned. I think the, oh, I can't remember the name... it's a tiny drum that goes on the end of the food grinder instead of a plate. I think that would work great for cooked potatoes. Kind of like a ricer, but it would be so much faster. Be sure to use the shield supplied with the food grinder or you'll be picking riced potato off the ceiling, and be sure to use slow speed to test it before ramping the speed up. If you have ever used that attachment you'll know what I mean. It's that fast and whatever is put into the hopper WILL go out the end very rapidly. If you had 10# of mashed potato to make it would make very short work of ricing them; or so I would think from the other uses I've put that attachment to. It might also work for shredding raw potato for roesti. So far I've used it that tiny drum attachment for making muesli and shredding cheese that I can remember. When making muesli, the nuts, oats, dry apple, everything goes in. At least that quantity that I want dry. It turns a "now how do I do this?" job into one that takes mere seconds and works fantastically. Again, use the shield that comes with the food grinder and use slow speed. I like muesli, but I don't like to eat rocks and twigs.
Gotta run!
That's exactly why I want to grater attachment, it seems like easier clean up than using the FP plus I like that you can continuously work vs just grating into the FP bowl. Plus I always have my mixer on the counter anyway. Back when I had a KA mixer I liked the grater/slicer attachment.
As for the potato drum, I guess the huge round holes confused me. I couldn't figure out what the potato would look like after going through that.
There's only one "problem" we have with the FP attachment. For some things it works so rapidly that the drum doesn't have time enough to clear itself. That's operator error and some day I'll learn to give it some time.
BTW, I bought some lower starch potatoes today (that is, not russets) for potato pancakes. We have short ribs and 'burgers coming up this week and they'd go great with either one. I'll let you know how the potato drum works. In the past I would always make shredded potato but that doesn't make a real potato pancake. I just won't stand there and grate potatoes by hand. I didn't want to use the blender because I didn't think it result in the right texture. :-) But I suspect those days are gone.
Frankly, there is nothing that is associated with Ankarsrum that I can fault from a design standpoint. It's all nicely designed to be used, and they haven't done anything to maximize production/profit at the sake of quality that I can see, and I'm very picky. I don't know if I've written this before, but it's one of the few things in my kitchen that I'd replace in a heartbeat should a tsunami claim my cook area. As I get older I gain wisdom. I wish I had possessed it (wisdom) 30 years ago. I would have saved a great deal of money.
As promised, I used the potato grating drum to make potato pancakes. I used the Americas Test Kitchen recipe that calls for shredded potato, but I grated it instead.
The recipe made the best potato pancakes (latkes) that I have ever made. The potato product that came out of the Ank'FP drum was definitely grated and not shredded. Think almost a fluffy dough, but that doesn't do it justice. The only "strings" in the mix were the onions that I used and that went through the grater. The potatoes were turned into an extremely finely grated mass. After wringing the water out to call it a dough wouldn't be far fetched. It was easy to grate them with the drum in question; use high speed and don't spare pressure on the "pusher". I'd use fingers on the edges of the hopper and thumbs on the pusher to exert pressure. At times I'd put a rubber spatula in the drum to remove the potato pulp. No big deal. I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't done all of that. Bad me. I should have tested that but I didn't want to make a double recipe, and typical me, I was in a hurry... modern life.
I don't know the suggested yield of the recipe, but we got 11 pancakes. The wife said they smelled delicious and backed that up after a taste test.
I also didn't follow the 1/4" depth of frying oil that the ATK recipe suggested. I just used a thick film and added to it as required. Very little oil was absorbed by the paper towels. Be sure your oil is hot enough. I used grapeseed oil and it was smoking at times.
I'll definitely make this again; next time finely shredding the potato. Shredding is an extremely rapid way to process potato in the Ank'.
Thanks for reporting back. I've always grated my potatoes for latkes usually by hand on a box grater. The texture you describe sounds very different but intriguing. And now you're making me want to buy the attachment even more LOL. They look great by the way.
What is the difference between grated and shredded?
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Grating results in a much finer product. Next time you're at the market check out the bagged shredded cheese. It will be composed of discreet small strings. If there is grated cheese in a jar (more than likely pasta cheese), you'll see the difference in texture and size of the product immediately. Pizza cheese would be an example of shredded cheese. Harder substances can be grated (or shredded), but soft substances can only be shredded, generally. There may be exceptions, but I can't think of any at the moment.
BTW, never buy the pre shredded cheese. Most of it doesn't even taste like cheese because of the starch and whatever else they coat the shreds with to prevent them from sticking together. Even when doing the shredding by hand it only takes a minute to shred a pound of cheese. Grating on the other hand is more time consuming if one grates very much of it.
The small shreds I refer to in the above post would be much smaller than the shredded cheese seen in the grocery store. They'd be about the size of vermicelli in diameter.
But I'm getting off subject. Sorry.
I let this slip by without acknowledging your answer or thanking you. Sorry about the delay. I do appreciated your explanation.
cheers,
gary
I want to know whether you guys check the temperature. My mixer is getting really hot after running 12 mins at speed 5. The running motor is also louder than my expectation.
Nope, I don't have that problem. I regularly run 13 lbs of 100% whole wheat dough for 12 min with the kneading arm (is that what it's called? -not the dough hook). I run it at 4:00 setting. a regular loaf would be more like only 6-8 minutes. What are you making? And how old is your machine?
Mine gets warm, not hot, and it's far less noisy than a KA, sorry, but without a dB meter we are really just dealing with relative words and a comparison is better I think.
When kneading bread you should be drawing about 200 watts (check it with a WattMiser, you'll find them in a big box store) . 200 watts of heat delivered for 8 minutes will definitely heat up the casing to warm but not hot. FWIW, the Ankarsrum is capable of drawing 600 watts with even more heat being produced. But you shouldn't be drawing that unless you're blending something at high rpms. At that time the internal breaker will easily trip. It's an extremely sensitive breaker.
I have called Ankarsrum usa and they suggested me to use low rpm. I guess that I used too high rpm when kneading bread. Too much heat has been produced. I will try put the speed between 3 and 4 next time. Many thanks to you guys. I really appreciate your information.
The Ankarsrum mixes best at dead slow and kneads best with pointer at about 2:30. Be sure to set the roller distance sufficient to avoid slapping against the stops. The DLX mixes gently; gentle on the dough, and gentle on the baker.
cheers,
gary
Frank, my understanding was that you should not go above 3 when kneading when using the new machines, I have the older 450 watt machine, and it only has 3 speeds. I heard somewhere that the higher speeds were added for things other than kneading.
When using the roller, mix and knead at about 3/4 speed with the new 600w Assistent when making most bread. Ankarsrum doesn't know what they're talking about. Seriously. Watch Ashley McCords youtube video. She has it right.