It’s not often that an appliance takes your breath away, but I’m not kidding that my jaw hit the floor when I was first introduced to this Swedish kitchen wonder. Every week, I review and test out new kitchen appliances and gadgets, but this one was really…stirring.
The Ankarsrum Assistant Original Stand Mixer is far from your average tool. It has an innovative design with a powerhouse motor, adjustable mixing arm and rotating bowl. This splurge-worthy appliance certainly isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely worth a peek for avid bakers.
Pros:
- The 600-watt motor is powerful, yet quiet.
- The open-bowl design makes it easy to add ingredients while working.
- The adjustable arm provides superior mixing control.
- The 8-quart bowl can hold up to 21 cups of flour.
- There are a wide range of attachments available.
- The power cord is detachable for easy storage.
- The appliance is made to last a lifetime and boasts a 7-year warranty.
Cons:
- The speed control knob doesn’t have numbers for guidance.
- The mixer and its accessories are expensive.
What Is the Ankarsrum Assistant Stand Mixer?
Ankarsrum is a Swedish company, and while it may not have the same name-recognition around here as, say, KitchenAid, it’s by no means a fledgling brand. The company has been manufacturing and selling its iconic stand mixers in the 1940s, and to this day, each mixer is assembled by hand and tested in the small industrial village of Ankarsrum, Sweden. Hence, the name!
It’s common for kitchen brands to sell all sorts of appliances, but Ankarsrum solely makes its Assistant Original Stand Mixer—and the attention to detail has certainly paid off. The mixer is carefully considered from top to bottom and it’s an absolute workhorse in the kitchen. It has a 600-watt motor that delivers speeds between 45 to 130 revolutions per minute, and because the motor is located in the base, you can adjust the positioning of the mixing arm to suit the task at hand. Oh, and did we mention the mixer’s bowl rotates, not the attachment? It truly turns everything we think we know about mixers on its head! Speaking of turning things on their head, the whole mixer can be flipped on its side, allowing you to use it with even more attachments.
The Ankarsrum mixer comes with two bowls—a large 7-liter stainless steel bowl and a plastic 3.5 liter bowl—as well as a wide variety of tools, including a dough hook, dough scraper, two sets of whisks and more. The whole unit weighs just 19 pounds, and its power cord comes off for easy storage.
We know what you’re thinking: Aside from its unique form, how does the Ankarsrum Original Stand Mixer compare to the cult-favorite KitchenAid Stand Mixer? For comparison, the KitchenAid Artisan 5-Quart Stand Mixer has a 325-watt motor and its bowl holds just 5 quarts (roughly 4.7 liters). So when it comes to both power and capacity, the Ankarsrum definitely has the KitchenAid beat.
Everything We Love About the Ankarsrum Stand Mixer
I have to say, this beautiful stand mixer handled everything we threw at it with surprising ease. The first recipe I made with the Ankarsrum was a 4-loaf sandwich bread recipe calling for 13 cups of flour. I thought that was a lot of flour, but then I discovered the mixer can blend up to a whopping 21 cups of flour (enough for almost 12 loaves of bread) at one time. The large stainless steel bowl size and the internal design and engineering of the machine means the Ankarsrum can handle that much weight.
One of the stand-out features of the Ankarsrum Mixer is the open bowl design. It was a real treat to be able to freely and cleanly pour, sprinkle and spoon ingredients into a mixing bowl during operation with nothing in the way—there were no obstructions to work around, like a motor head, just a wide open bowl that I could get food into and out of without a fuss.
The adjustable arm is also an inspired design feature. It’s there when you need to mix, but it can be moved off to the side when you want it out of the way. In fact, you can lock the arm into any spot over the bowl where you feel it will give the right amount of mixing action. Once locked into position, it can still be toggled manually for additional movement, and when you release your hold on the arm, it will return to the locked position.
The dough roller is yet another unique part of this machine. It’s designed to emulate kneading bread dough, with gentle pressure like you would create with your hands. The bowl turns while the attachment rolls through the ingredients, giving you more control than what you’d get from a dough hook, which kneads by stretching and pulling. Not surprisingly, the Ankarsrum dough roller works well with all kinds of mixtures, not just yeast dough. You can use it for creaming butter, with stiff cookie dough (including all the mix-ins like chips, chunks, oats and fruits), pate-a-choux, and buttercream frosting. It can handle the whole gamut, no problem, and is still gentle enough to mash potatoes to a nice creamy consistency without turning your spuds into glue.
Plus, one of my favorite features is the scraper attachment, which is used in combination with the dough roller. Forget about stopping the machine every couple of seconds for scraping! The stiff scraper glides along the inside of the rotating bowl, keeping it nice and clean.
The only real downside I found when testing this mixer was that the speed control knob took some getting used to, since it has no numbers on it. A good tip is to look at it like a clock—the lowest setting is the 12 to 1 o’clock position, and the highest is at 9 o’clock.
Is the Ankarsrum Assistant Stand Mixer Worth It?
There’s no denying that the Ankarsrum Mixer is pretty dreamy, but of course, there’s a caveat. This high-end stand mixer definitely qualifies as a splurge, costing $700 for the base package. However, if you bake regularly and are frequently whipping up large batches, the large capacity and high power of this mixer will certainly help you in the kitchen.
If you do decide to invest in this stunning appliance, you’ll be happy to hear that there are 16 different accessories to increase its functionality even further. The brand offers a blender, citrus press, grain mill, vegetable cutter, meat grinder, pasta rollers and more that can be used with the mixer. These attachments are all sold separately, and most cost between $50 and $200 a piece.
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Sarah Farmer