Basic Question from someone just starting

[mumu]

Hello,

This may seem silly, but having no past cooking expierence I'm kind of lost.

I'm coming across some reciepies that only tell you to use Low, Medium, or High when mixing stuff. The problem is I have a 9 speed mixer and it's not labled for low medium or high mixing. Is there a rule of thumb as to what speeds are associated with low, medium and high? And where would you go to learn things like this? I'd imagine it comes from expierience, which at this point is an area I lack in, but hope to improve.

Along with that, some reciepies I come across, just tell you to mix the ingredients with your mixer. No speeds are given, how is one to know if they should mix with low medium or high?

Thank you all very much,

Mumu

[Suzanne]

Nothing is silly, if you're asking it to learn! Welcome, Mumu! You've come to a good place to learn.

Have you tried turning on your mixer with the beaters in place, but nothing in the bowl? Turn it on to 1, then 2, then 3, and so on until you reach 9, pausing each time to see how fast the beaters are turning. By the time you get to 9, you'll know the answer to your first question. Once you start mixing something, it's nice to have those extra speeds in case what you thought was "medium" makes stuff fly out of the bowl You can just turn the speed down a notch and still be in a medium range.

Which brings me to your second question: "Along with that, some reciepies I come across, just tell you to mix the ingredients with your mixer. No speeds are given, how is one to know if they should mix with low medium or high? " A safe approach is: always start at the lowest speed, and increase the speed bit by bit until the stuff in the bowl is ALL getting mixed, without anything flying out, nor anything getting stuck at the bottom of the bowl. This is expecially important when you are whipping cream or egg whites. if you start at too high a speed, you'll never get the cream or eggs nice and fluffy; all you'll do is make a mess of your kitchen.

Don't worry if some of the stuff in the bowl sticks to the sides; just stop the mixer, "scrape it down," and start the mixer again, moving more rapidly through the speeds until you get back to where you were.

And remember, ALWAYS stop the mixer before you reach in with a spoon, a spatula, a finger, or anything! (That's something we all need to be reminded of -- and we are, every time we see that spot of batter on the ceiling that we couldn't reach to clean off. )

[mumu]

Hi Suzanne,

Thanks a lot for the information I really appriciate it.

Thanks again,

Mumu

[salvatore]

Originally Posted by Suzanne

Nothing is silly, if you're asking it to learn!

I really like that! Mind if i use it next time someone askes me a question? When they would send folks to me to lern, i always prefered those that asked questions, it shows a willingness to lern and can only benefit the one who asks. 15 years and i still ask questions every chance i get (the way i see it, the more i lern, the more i know )

[Chef Heather]

Originally Posted by mumu

Hello,

This may seem silly, but having no past cooking expierence I'm kind of lost.

I'm coming across some reciepies that only tell you to use Low, Medium, or High when mixing stuff. The problem is I have a 9 speed mixer :

Low Medium High

Three Speeds

Divide 9 by three speeds and you get:

1...3....and 9 (Low, medium, high).

Easy peasy.

[deltadoc]

Actually, I think Mumu would be better off to divide the 9 speeds in to three ranges (like school grading system) Low, Medium, High, which would be kind of as follows

Low Range: 1=low-, 2=low, 3=low+

Medium Range: 4=medium-, 5=medium, 6=medium+

High Range 7=high-, 8=high, 9=high+.

Therefore the low, medium, high speeds would be 2, 5, 8.

doc

[Headless Chicken]

Originally Posted by Chef Heather

Low Medium High

Three Speeds

Divide 9 by three speeds and you get:

1...3....and 9 (Low, medium, high).

Easy peasy.

Thats how I figured it when I got my KitchenAid. My bakers manual's methods were based on the industries Hobart mixers that only have 3 speeds.

[Chef Heather]

I actually should have been a bit more specific in that basically anything between 3 and 5 would be "medium". So my take on it again:

1-3 Low/Low Medium

3-5 Medium

5-7 Medium/Medium High

7-9 High

Maybe that makes a bit more sense.

[mumu]

Hello,

Thanks again for all the help! This is what I was thinking: My mixer is labled 3 low speeds and 1 high speed. So four would be low? Five medium low? And six would be medium? 7 would be medium high? 8 high? Finally, 9 fast?

Is this basically what you guys are saying?


Thanks,

Mumu

[deltadoc]

It's not what I was saying. The speeds, unless you have a really different mixer than I've ever seen, are a continuum from very low to very high. You can confirm this by starting out at 1 and progressing one speed at a time to 9. You will see that the speeds increase incrementally.

In that case, re-read my post above. Think of three ranges, each range having a lower, medium and higher speed within that range. Like A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, and D is off!

With that said, Suzanne's post makes the most sense, because it really doesn't matter what number of speed you use is, use the speed that seems best for what you are mixing. You don't want to splatter it all over, and you don't want to use a speed that even if it doesn't splatter, it is too high a speed for the density of what you are mixing. In other words, I use lower speeds for dough like mixtures, higher speeds for batter type mixtures, even higher speeds for cream based mixtures (up to the point where you don't have it coming out of the mixing bowl!)

doc