Seriously, you're never going to use these. Just do yourself a favour, covet from afar and look away. Don't believe us? We'll prove it to you.
I am not a woman who desires fancy diamonds or needs a flash mob at a train station to feel loved. No, I am a much simpler kind of lady—I like it when my husband lets me sleep in, gets me coffee and/or brushes the snow off my vehicle. Oh, and when he fills up the tank with gas so I don’t have to do it myself later? Swoon.
That said, I love to cook so, several years ago, my beloved made the only grand romantic gesture he knew I’d actually enjoy: surprising me with a shiny new stand mixer. “It’s not the colour you wanted because the white ones were on sale,” he explained as my practical heart fluttered wildly. Reader, he is my perfect match.
Alas, stand mixers offer a variety of accessories that are a not-so-perfect match for the average home cook. And while I covet them all because marketing is a sneaky devil, they are almost entirely useless to me, an able-bodied individual making dinners that will ultimately be underappreciated by her eight-year-old son. Knowing this, here is a list of the top eight stand mixer attachments that everyone wants but none of us actually need.
The Pasta Maker: Homemade pasta is incredible, and making it can be fun. But do you want to store a bunch of large extra metal parts so you can knock out some fettuccine once every six to eighteen months? Unless you’re Giada herself, probably not. Save your cupboard space (and the cash).
The Vegetable Sheet Cutter: This thing is over $200 and you already own knives. Also, you won’t use it because WTF, vegetable sheets?! Name more than one dish you’ll need this for. The existence of the vegetable sheet cutter is the sort of thing our grandparents would roll their eyes at and/or be completely baffled by. MOVE ALONG. Stop thinking about it. You don’t need to turn vegetables into sheets. No one does!
The Ice Cream Maker: Are you whimsical? Do you own multiple floral aprons from Anthropologie and have bangs like Zooey Deschanel? Would your original ice cream flavours have cutesy, pun-based names like Britney Spears-mint and Butter Rum-springa? Then okay, fine, go ahead and buy this one...just make sure you have plenty of disposable income, a walk-in pantry for storage and a freezer to turn into your very own 31 flavours.
The Shredder: Why use a normal cheese grater when you can attach a more expensive grater to your mixer and, uh, grate cheese? Like, this attachment just grates stuff, right? And it’s a lot harder to clean than a standard grater?? Am I missing something??? Why complicate something as simple as shredded cheese?!? This attachment is the reason people hate millennials. (I’m a millennial, which makes this statement factually true.)
The Grain Mill: You know, for all that fucking grain you’re milling.
The Juicer: Okay, so this makes fresh juice, which is lovely. Everyone loves a good hit of citrus in the morning, and vitamin C is good for the ol’ body. But you can literally do the same thing in 30 seconds with a manual juicer and your bare hands.
The Sifter: This is a really great tool if you’re a professional cake baker (you’re not) or if you’re the kind of person who likes to over-complicate something as simple as all-purpose flour (you might be, we don’t know your life). Choose your path wisely.
The Grinder: Who makes their own sausage, aside from actual butchers or chefs? Are you a contestant on Chopped? Did you accidentally purchase a whole pig while placing your online grocery order? Have you murdered someone and have no other way to dispose of the body? (Please say no.) Then nope, you do not need a meat grinder in your home. Were you even serious about this one? Go buy your sausage like a normal person. This isn’t the Food Network and honestly, half of the people on those shows can’t work a meat grinder, anyway. Or an ice cream maker. Or the pressure cooker. Cooking is hard, I guess. Anyway, enjoy your stand mixer!
Post image: David Yohanes/Pexels