6 Stand Mixer Attachments to Up Your Kitchen Game
Add these spiralizers, grinders, pasta rollers, and more to your cooking arsenal
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If you’ve grown tired of making bread and cookies, and you have a stand mixer with attachments, there are some nifty add-ons you can try to create more interesting fare. Think savory and sweet.
- Best Attachments for: KitchenAid Cuisinart
Consumer Reports bought and tested several attachments for two of the popular brands in our stand mixer ratings—KitchenAid and Cuisinart—and made chicken and pork sausages, fresh pasta, and spiralized and sliced veggies.
KitchenAid
Eight of the almost 40 stand mixers in our ratings are from KitchenAid, including some of our top-rated models. We tested the attachments using the KitchenAid Artisan Mini KSM3316XWH, which aces our tests for mixing and earns near-top-level marks for kneading and whipping time. But you can use them with any KitchenAid stand mixer, even those that are decades old. KitchenAid makes dozens of attachments, more than any other brand of stand mixer.
To make sausages: KitchenAid’s food grinder attachment, the KitchenAid KSMMGA, comes with several add-on components so that you can make sausages in two different thicknesses. It’s a two-step process. First, you put solid chunks of chicken or pork into the feeder tube and push them through the grinder attachment, adding the seasonings you want. Next, you screw on the stuffer nozzle, pull the sausage casing over it, and put the meat through the grinder again, pushing it through the nozzle into the casing. You want a smooth sausage with no air pockets so that it cooks evenly, and in our tests, this KitchenAid attachment accomplished that.
Where to buy the KitchenAid KSMMGA Metal Food Grinder: Amazon, Best Buy, and Williams Sonoma
To make pasta: As with sausages, making fresh pasta in the KitchenAid mixer is a two-step process. Using the KitchenAid KSMPRA, which has pasta cutters in three sizes, we made pasta dough following KitchenAid’s directions. The first step is to pass the pasta dough through the roller several times to flatten it out until you get it as thin as you want. (You can adjust the roller to select the thickness.) Hungry for spaghetti? Opt for a thicker setting on the roller. Prefer angel hair? Make it thinner. When you’re satisfied with the pasta sheets, switch over to the pasta cutter section of the attachment and feed them through to get beautiful strands of fresh pasta. Quick tip: This is a great activity to do with kids.
Where to buy the KSMPRA 3-Piece Pasta Roller & Cutter Set: Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, KitchenAid, Sur La Table, Target, and Walmart
Photo: Consumer Reports Photo: Consumer Reports
To make spiralized veggies: Once you see how easy it is to make spiralized vegetables, you’ll never buy them in the supermarket again. With the KitchenAid Spiralizer with Peel, Core and Slice KSM1APC, you don’t have to cut the veggies into smaller pieces as you do with some spiralizers, so you save a little prep time. In our evaluations, we used a whole zucchini. It’s fun to spiralize an entire squash into long strands like spaghetti, but you can also cut the strands into any length you want using a knife or kitchen shears. Like most spiralizers, including manual ones, there’s some waste involved, and you end up with the core of the vegetable.
Where to buy the KitchenAid 5 Blade Spiralizer With Peel, Core and Slice KSM1APC: Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, KitchenAid, Sur La Table, Target, and Walmart
Cuisinart
Cuisinart attachments work with any Cuisinart stand mixer. We tested them using the Cuisinart Precision Master SM-50, which earns excellent scores for mixing and whipping time in our tests. As with all the attachments we tried, these were pretty easy to install. You just remove the decorative plate that covers the port and lock the attachment on.
To make sausages: The Cuisinart MG-50 meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment work in a similar way to the KitchenAid’s. Again, it’s a two-step process of first grinding and seasoning the meat, then pushing it through the meat grinder into the nozzle to fill the casings. The process worked just as smoothly as it did with the KitchenAid; we got zero air bubbles in the sausages.
Where to buy the Cuisinart MG-50 Meat Grinder: Amazon
To make pasta: Although the Cuisinart line has pasta roller and cutter attachments, we decided to test the Cuisinart PE-50 pasta extruder’s ability to make less traditional pasta shapes. Instead of just making long, flat pasta like spaghetti, the extruder can make six shapes, including macaroni and bucatini. You start by feeding small chunks of pasta dough into the extruder, which kneads it for a minute and then pushes it through for the pasta shape you want. You then cut the pasta to whatever length you prefer with the attached cutter.
Our testers found that the extruder was easy to use and made great pasta. But cleaning it was a challenge because you have to first allow the pasta dough to dry in it, and then tap it to loosen the dough. That didn’t always work, so we ended up having to use a skewer to push out the dried bits.
Where to buy the Cuisinart Pasta Extruder: Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Macy’s, Overstock, Walmart, and Wayfair
To make spiralized or sliced veggies: The Cuisinart SPI-50 PrepExpress Spiralizer/Slicer requires a little more prep time than the spiralizer for the KitchenAid because you have to cut the vegetables into pieces small enough to fit into the feeder tube. That means you won’t be able to make long pieces of zucchini. Still, we liked the thin strands of squash it cut. As with the KitchenAid, you’re left with the zucchini core. This attachment pulls double duty, though; you can also use it as a slicer. We sliced cucumbers and potatoes with it and got perfectly thin slices. So in addition to zucchini pasta, you can make your own potato chips.
Where to buy the Cuisinart PrepExpress Spiralizer: Amazon, Macy’s, and Target
