Stand mixer or hand mixer?
If you’ve just moved into your own place, you’ll be thinking about the best kitchen gadgets for it. When it comes to food mixers, you have a choice to make between a stand mixer and a hand mixer. But which is better?
That question can only be answered by you. It depends on how much cooking and baking you’re planning to do, and how much effort you’re prepared to put into it. We’ve put together a handy blog that compares the Sensio Home 2-in-1 1300W Food Processor Blender & Stand Mixer Machine and the Sensio Home Hand Blender Super Powerful 1000W 4-in-1 Multi Use. We hope it helps you decide whether you want a stand mixer or a hand mixer.
Does size matter?
Depending on the size of your kitchen, the size of your gadget could matter very much! The stand mixer is large - the mixing bowl alone has the capacity to hold 4.5L of mix. This is great if you’re batch cooking, but if you haven’t got the room to store the stand mixer, maybe the smaller hand mixer is a better option. The hand mixer is small enough to fit into any kitchen cupboard, and the component parts don’t have to be stored together. This makes it much more convenient for cooks with smaller kitchens.
How fit are you feeling?
There’s no doubt that using a hand mixer is a lot easier than whisking or mixing using just a wooden spoon. However, if what you’re making needs to be whisked for a long time, e.g. meringues, your arm may still get tired with the effort. Even though the hand mixer is doing a lot of the hard work for you, you’ll still have to make sure you get all the ingredients mixed in equally. This could result in you ‘giving up’ before you should, adversely affecting the quality of your bake.
With a stand mixer, you can sit back and let it do all the work. It offers what we call a planetary mixing action, designed to continuously push all the ingredients into the middle of the bowl so you don’t need to worry about freeing up that last bit of unused flour from the side. So while your bread dough is being kneaded or your egg whites are being worked into peaks, you could be making yourself a cuppa or flicking through a magazine. And even though your stand mixer will have done all the hard work, you’ll get all the praise for the finished result!
What do you want to cook?
The choice of stand mixer or hand mixer also depends on what kind of cooking you're planning to do. Both gadgets will help you prepare cakes, meringues, soups, smoothies and purees. Additionally, each one will help with other tasks:
Stand mixer - with its dough hook attachment, the stand mixer will also help you make bread. It also has separate attachments for mixing and whisking ingredients (the hand mixer has just a whisk attachment).
Hand mixer - the hand mixer comes with a beaker to use for chopping vegetables and fruit.
How much food do you want to cook?
As you’d expect, the hand mixer is smaller and will therefore only deal with smaller quantities. It has a beaker for smoothies and soups that holds 700ml and a beaker for chopping that holds 500ml of ingredients. For baking, you would have to use a separate mixing bowl.
The stand mixer is built for larger quantities. Its blending jar holds 1.5L, more than twice the capacity of the hand mixer, and it has a 4.5L mixing bowl.
Can’t afford a stand mixer at the moment?
Don’t worry, we have a special offer on our black stand mixer which is currently less than half price at £64.99. This is exceptional value for money anyway, but you can also spread the payments with our Klarna option. For three payments of just £21.66, it is an affordable option and will help you create amazing dishes for years to come.