KA 7 Quart 'Commercial' Model- Progress Report

[justplainbill]

KA's RVSA instructions recommend operation at speed #4 and to stiffen cheeses prior to grating by partial freezing.
I wanted finely grated Locatelli Pecorino for use in my cheese shaker dispensers / applicators. Due to concerns about condensation from high humidity, I brought the cheese to room temperature before unwrapping and rind trimming. To achieve the desired fine particle size and avoid coarser particles which jam my cheese shakers, I had to slowly feed the cheese through the rotary grater. As a result, it took 1/2 hour to grate 1 pound of cheese. The 1/2 hour of operation raised the rear end of the KA motor housing's temperature to about 125*F.

 

[CharlieD]

that doesn't sound good, even though I did not completely understand what you were doing.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I helped a friend grate a pound of Parmesan a few weeks back. I cut it up into chunks and fed them into her food processor (typical model you find in most kitchens) and the whole job took about 10 minutes. Final consistency was same as you find in pre-grated cheese sold at markets.

A half hour seems a bit excessive to me. Why so much time?

 

[justplainbill]

that doesn't sound good, even though I did not completely understand what you were doing.

My 50 year old machine gets hotter more quickly.

 

[Andy M.]

125º F is not that much hotter than body temp. I wouldn't be concerned.

 

[blissful]

125º F is not that much hotter than body temp. I wouldn't be concerned.

Andy M--you have a fever, take some tylenol and an ice bath.

What IS a temperature that an appliance rises to, that is a sign the appliance should be turned off and let it rest? (I use my blender a lot.)

 

[justplainbill]

I helped a friend grate a pound of Parmesan a few weeks back. I cut it up into chunks and fed them into her food processor (typical model you find in most kitchens) and the whole job took about 10 minutes. Final consistency was same as you find in pre-grated cheese sold at markets.

A half hour seems a bit excessive to me. Why so much time?

I do not know about Parmesan, but Parmigiano Reggiano is often available in a form that is often harder than Locatelli Pecorino Romano. Harder cheeses are easier to finely grate more rapidly.
I imagine food processor disks rotate at a much higher RPM than a drum grater at speed 4 (200 RPM?) on a KA.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

If it's uncomfortably warm to your touch that's when you should turn it off.

I hear about this happening all the time with people who over-use their stick blenders. They just keep going until the stick blender quits working.

Most appliances like this (e.g. stick blenders, hair blowers) have what is called a thermal fuse inside them. It's designed to melt or cut out when the internal temperature of the appliance reaches an unsafe temperature. Unfortunately they do not reset and are not user replaceable, so when one goes it generally means the appliance is ruined.

If it's hot to the touch turn it off and let it rest until it's cool before turning it back on.

 

[justplainbill]

125º F is not that much hotter than body temp. I wouldn't be concerned.

Agreed. That was sorta my point.

 

[Greg Who Cooks]

I do not know about Parmesan, but Parmigiano Reggiano is often available in a form that is often harder than Locatelli Pecorino Romano. Harder cheeses are easier to finely grate more rapidly.
I imagine food processor disks rotate at a much higher RPM than a drum grater at speed 4 (200 RPM?) on a KA.

The cheese I grated was Parmesano purchased at Costco. That's all I was told.

I imagine the food processor was faster than 200 RPM but I wouldn't think a lot faster.

I wonder if an ordinary food processor might be a more suitable tool than the KA for this job. The FP certainly got the job done quicker and probably with less labor.

 

[justplainbill]

If it's uncomfortably warm to your touch that's when you should turn it off.

I hear about this happening all the time with people who over-use their stick blenders. They just keep going until the stick blender quits working.

Most appliances like this (e.g. stick blenders, hair blowers) have what is called a thermal fuse inside them. It's designed to melt or cut out when the internal temperature of the appliance reaches an unsafe temperature. Unfortunately they do not reset and are not user replaceable, so when one goes it generally means the appliance is ruined.

If it's hot to the touch turn it off and let it rest until it's cool before turning it back on.

Agreed, except some fusible links are replaceable, and some thermal protection devices are intended to reset when allowed to cool. Lubricant breakdown and leakage can also become a problem at high operating temps.

 

[bakechef]

I use a kitchenaid mini chopper to grate or "grind" my parm. It actually does a better job than my full sized black and decker, the cheese will usually stop the blade on the black and decker unless I feed it one small piece at a time through the chute. I can put a few chunks in the KA mini chopper and it tears them up quick! My last batch was a much harder pecorino and the little mini chopper had no issues killing that either, so far I'm impressed with that little machine.

 

[gadzooks]

I helped a friend grate a pound of Parmesan a few weeks back. I cut it up into chunks and fed them into her food processor (typical model you find in most kitchens) and the whole job took about 10 minutes. Final consistency was same as you find in pre-grated cheese sold at markets.

A half hour seems a bit excessive to me. Why so much time?

Agree. I have an older food processor, a Cuis' dlc8, and I have a disk made for grating hard cheese, with tiny raised teeth on it. It comes out like commercial grated hard cheese, and it's fast.

 

[GLC]

This is another report that reinforces my belief that KitchenAid make pretty good mixers and pretty poor accessories. There are just limits to how far from the primary function you can get and still get good results. And some reports suggest KitchenAid has some peculiar design philosophies. Food processors are already designed for rotary chopping, slicing, grating, etc. and seem to be consistently better. And of course, there is no end of excellent hand rotated and plain hand rubbing type graters available, all of which would have finished a pound of hard cheese in far less than a half hour.

 

[gadzooks]

Of course, it's a mixer before it's a cheese grater. Please let us know how it does everything else it does. My N50 has a slicer/grater attachment like your 7 qt, but I seldom use it. It also has a pelican head, but Hobart never, to my knowledge, made a fine grating disk for their #10 hub pelican. Too bad, it would have been nice. When I think about having one kitchen appliance that does everything, I think of Jackie Gleason in The Honeymooners episode where he and Art Carney try to make an infomercial for a do-all kitchen gadget. "Oh, Chef of the Future, will it core a apple?"

 

[Oldvine]

I don't think I would have brought cheese to room temperature if my plan was to grate the cheese. When I grate Parmesan, I take it out of the fridg, whack off a few hunks, fit the grater blade on my food processor, run the chunks through the tube. Or, toss the hunks into the bowl with the chopper blade and pulse the stuff until it's what I want. 1/2 an hour to grate a pound of cheese? A hand grater wouldn't take so long. I have the attachments for my KA, but that's way too much fooling around to grate up some cheese.
One more point, I hope the a pound of grated Parmasan is for a crowd. I might not grate up that much at a time in order to preserve flavor.

 

[bakechef]

I would love to know if the commercial version has a tougher gearing and a more durable motor than the regular retail versions, or if it is just because they have an NSF rating. A better built machine would put the commercial KA at the top of my list when I'm shopping for one again.

 

[justplainbill]

I don't think I would have brought cheese to room temperature if my plan was to grate the cheese. When I grate Parmesan, I take it out of the fridg, whack off a few hunks, fit the grater blade on my food processor, run the chunks through the tube. Or, toss the hunks into the bowl with the chopper blade and pulse the stuff until it's what I want. 1/2 an hour to grate a pound of cheese? A hand grater wouldn't take so long. I have the attachments for my KA, but that's way too much fooling around to grate up some cheese.
One more point, I hope the a pound of grated Parmasan is for a crowd. I might not grate up that much at a time in order to preserve flavor.

Unfortunately, for us, a pound of Pecorino is normally no more than a 30 day supply; and I'm not interested in grating cheese during the 85 - 90*F, 80 - 90% relative humidity that is common during our summers.

 

[justplainbill]

Based on today's experience of making dough for five 10 ounce loaves of Italian bread; it looks like dough for 5 pounds of bread is about the max batch I can expect to handle with the KA 7 quart. More than that would likely have the dough climbing too far up the dough hook and, without a spatter shield, throwing some of the last added flour out of the bowl and onto the counter. I've already observed a little shaking of the machine with the dough for 3.125 pounds of bread. With dough for 5 lbs. of bread, at speed 2, I would not be surprised to see the machine dance the Hully Gully. At about 25 lbs, the machine is pretty easy to move around.

 

[CharlieD]

Bill, what is it in quarts, I mean the flour?