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We’ve added the KitchenAid Shave Ice Attachment as another pick. It’s fast and fun, and it would be especially good for kids or entertaining. Sweet Potato Production Line
There comes a time in an ambitious cook’s life when they start to want a KitchenAid stand mixer. It’s a stand-by in amateur and professional kitchens, automating tedious tasks like kneading and whipping—and often producing better results than anything you could achieve by hand.
The stand mixer is widely considered a baker’s tool. But once you’ve taken the leap and dedicated a section of your counter or cupboard to this sizable multitasker, you have a whole world to explore, thanks to KitchenAid’s catalog of proprietary attachments. They work with the mixer’s sturdy motor to automate tasks—such as shredding, grinding, slicing, peeling, coring, and sifting—that you might otherwise do manually or with a separate machine. Some attachments also open the door to culinary hobbies, like making sausage or pasta from scratch.
But not all of KitchenAid’s three dozen or so attachments are worth the cupboard space. And with prices ranging from $50 to $200, they’re not always the cheapest way to achieve your goal.
We’ve tested eight of the most promising-looking attachments and found a few we’d recommend. These attachments equip you with new ways to use your stand mixer and make it easy to fearlessly level up your skill set and conquer new recipes. Also, they may actually save you space by allowing you to rely on the same powerful motor for a diverse set of tasks, rather than having to find room for several heavy appliances.
Once you taste the difference of meat you grind yourself, you may never buy it from the store again. Get this if you frequently cook with ground meat and want to control its quality.
Whether you’re making hamburgers or meat loaf, using store-bought ground meat is undoubtedly the most convenient approach. But grinding your own is compelling for many reasons. For one, it gives you total control over what cuts go into your custom blend. Also, if you’re concerned about the transparency of where your ground beef comes from, processing it yourself takes care of that, too.
If those reasons speak to you, KitchenAid’s Metal Food Grinder Attachment makes grinding your meat swift and easy.
Although you could grind meat in a food processor, the three different grinding plates that come with this attachment allow you to customize the coarseness of your grind and achieve a more precise texture than a food processor could.
In our tests, the largest die gave an evenly rough texture to a cut of steak for tartare and was a lot more efficient than hand-chopping.
Using the medium die, we ground a blend of pork and beef cuts for meatballs. Being able to grind the two together means you don’t have to manipulate the meat as much during mixing; less manipulation is said to be the trick to tenderness. As a result, the overall flavor in the final product was better than anything we’ve achieved with store-bought mince.
The grinder also comes with a nozzle and an attachment for making sausage, though we didn’t get around to stuffing the 4 pounds of chorizo we ground into links.
Since all of the parts are metal except for the sausage-stuffing nozzle, you can chill the whole attachment in the freezer to keep whatever you’re grinding as cold as possible; this keeps the meat firm and pathogen-free during processing. The grinder maintained a steady clip while it ran for five minutes or so, and the motor on the KitchenAid Pro 600 mixer we tested never got hot.
The grinder leaves about an ounce of meat scraps that don’t get pushed through the die, but here’s a chef’s trick you can use: Scrunch some plastic wrap into a strip, and drop it into the hopper behind the last bit of meat. It will wind through the gear and push the meat through, leaving the plastic behind, neatly wrapped around the auger.
Although you can get a decent standalone meat grinder for about the same price as this accessory, it’s essentially a motor with the same auger-and-die mechanism as the KitchenAid attachment. The attachment takes up less space, since it relies on the multi-tasking motor of your stand mixer (which also has a reputation for longevity and repairability).
Nothing compares to the texture of fresh pasta, whether it’s tossed in the simplest of sauces or stacked for lasagna. This pasta roller attachment offers as good an experience as you could ask for and is a step above manual-crank machines.
Silky, fresh pasta made from scratch is well worth the effort. And for something fashioned only from flour and eggs, it’s deceptively luxurious. But if you’re working alone using a hand-crank machine, it can be hard to coordinate your actions while rolling out the pasta dough again and again.
The KitchenAid Pasta Roller attachment simplifies the job of making pasta sheets by automating the roller, which frees your other hand to focus on guiding the pasta dough through. With two hands, it’s much easier to keep the pasta sheet from tearing or going off track. Even accounting for a 30-minute rest time, with some practice, you can easily have fresh pasta in about an hour using this attachment. You can also roll thinner pasta sheets than you would by hand, with much less skill required.
We quickly and easily rolled several batches of pasta dough using Samin Nosrat’s recipe, which is yolk-rich and particularly smooth to roll out.
To make sure the motor and roller could stand up to tougher doughs, we also tried noodles made with bread flour, which has more gluten and produces chewier results. The bread-flour dough was harder to work with; it dried out faster and took longer to roll out. But that would be the case with any roller, and even with the slower pace, we preferred using the attachment to hand-rolling.
At the time of testing, none of the pasta-cutter attachments were available, but we had no problem hand-cutting our sheets into noodles. If anything, the irregularity added some bespoke character to the results.
You can make wonderful pasta on a whim with this attachment, and it’s ideal for entertaining. Few things are as elegant as a freshly sauced pappardelle. And thin, delicate layers of pasta make the biggest difference in lasagna, whether you’re serving it to a crowd or freezing one to give away later. Pro tip: You don’t need to boil the noodles beforehand.
It’s noisier than a manual roller, but that’s a small price to pay to be able to have your hands free to control the pasta dough.
The steel roller is prone to rusting and shouldn’t be cleaned with water, but that’s something most pasta rollers have in common. For maintenance, all you have to do is use the included brush to dust any excess flour off the rollers after using. KitchenAid also recommends greasing the roller with mineral oil every 50 or so uses to prevent rust and maintain optimal function.
Hand-crank pasta rollers run from about $30 on the low end to $100 for a heritage brand like Marcato. But they are clunky, with many parts, and potentially destined to be forgotten in the back of your cupboard.
The KitchenAid Pasta Roller attachment, which is priced on a par with a nicer manual roller, is easy enough to operate that you might reach for it on any day—not just when you’ve carved out the time for a project.
This attachment shreds root vegetables and hard cheeses with aplomb. But it’s a little messy and not the best option for heavy use. You don’t need it if you already have a food processor.
The KitchenAid Fresh Prep Slicer/Shredder Attachment is handy for tackling everyday grating and slicing, and it can minimize the amount of time it takes to prepare things like macaroni and cheese, pizza, and salads. But a food processor does a better job.
In testing, this attachment shredded 5 pounds of potatoes and a pound of carrots with ease, though we had to stop to clear the grater from time to time, since it has a tendency to trap things. Cabbage was a little harder to grate because the opening of the attachment isn’t very wide, and the narrow wedges we tried to run through wouldn’t shred completely. We also grated a pound each of cheddar, mozzarella, and Romano cheeses. The cheddar and Romano did well, but the mozzarella was a little soft and benefited from an initial 15-minute freeze to improve the results.
Collecting the shredded food can be a little messy. Since the attachment is so high up, some bits of food can be propelled beyond the circumference of most bowls that fit underneath it. The best receptacle is a tall bowl with a smaller base so it can fit flush against the base of the mixer.
After grating carrots, the white plastic body of the Slicer/Shredder attachment was briefly stained and required a couple minutes of focused scrubbing to fully lift the color. Something like fresh turmeric or beets could cause permanent staining, especially if you don’t deal with it right away.
Most food processors come with graters and can handle larger batches, plus they have a built-in receptacle to catch your shredded ingredients. They also have a bigger opening and can handle whole potatoes and large wedges of cabbage, which were a no-go for this attachment.
For smaller batches, a box grater or mandoline can do the same job and leave you with fewer things to wash afterward. This attachment is for those who are in between: people with a KitchenAid stand mixer who don’t want to acquire a food processor but who want an automated way to shred and slice.
You can make a couple servings of shaved ice in under 30 seconds with this attachment. It’s a bit of a splurge but great if you want a fun, easy treat for kids or if you like to entertain.
If you yearned for a Snoopy Sno-cone Machine as a child (or if you were disappointed by the clunky, laborious reality of using that device), the KitchenAid Shave Ice Attachment may finally fulfill your snow cone fantasies. It makes good shaved ice lightning fast, and you can also use it to make an instant granita with frozen juice or coffee.
To use the attachment, freeze 6 ounces of any liquid in each of the four included cylindrical molds. After choosing either the coarse or fine blade, pop a puck of ice out of its mold, insert it into the machine, and crank your mixer up to high. In less than 30 seconds, you’ll have a mound of shaved ice big enough to serve one or two people—about two cups total.
The fine blade is the one we’d choose most of the time. It shaves plain ice into a fluffy texture with a bit of crunch. The result is not as soft and snow-like as, say, kakigori, but it’s still pleasant to eat and soaks up syrup well. The coarse blade produces something a little too crunchy to be entirely pleasant to eat. It would be best in a cocktail that requires crushed ice or as a bed for raw oysters.
Besides ice, we tried shaving frozen mango juice and frozen sweetened cold brew coffee, and the results were delightful. Sugar made the frozen liquids softer than ice, so they shaved up into a lighter, downier texture.
This attachment is purely for fun. But as fun gadgets go, this one yields a high level of delight for a very low level of effort. Especially if you freeze juice and skip the step of making or acquiring syrups, you can make a sweet frozen treat in not much more time than it takes to unwrap a popsicle.
Kids will undoubtedly love this thing and can go nuts experimenting with freezing and shaving different beverages. But it could also make for a nice dinner party trick: Delight your guests with bowls of shaved ice and an array of toppings while saving yourself from the stress of baking a cake.
You’re somewhat limited by the number of ice molds that come with the machine (four), but you have a couple ways around this. The most economical, but more time-consuming, is to pop the ice out of the molds as soon as it’s frozen and store it in a zip-top bag. You can then refill the molds, and over time build up a stash of ice pucks ready to shave.
KitchenAid also sells a set of four molds separately for $20, so you can supplement your supply (or replace molds if they crack).
We don’t know how well the blades will hold up over time or how quickly they’ll dull. But if you do need to replace them, KitchenAid sells those separately, too. And we’ll continue using this attachment to see how it holds up.
We haven’t tested standalone shaved ice machines, including the popular Hawaiian Shaved Ice S900A Electric Shaved Ice Machine, so we can’t say how they compare with the KitchenAid Shave Ice Attachment in terms of speed or effectiveness.
The Hawaiian Shaved Ice machine has one possible advantage over the attachment: You push the ice puck down onto the spinning blade manually (the attachment uses a spring-loaded mechanism), so you can adjust the amount of pressure applied to achieve a wider range of ice textures.
It also has an obvious downside: It takes up more space.
And we don’t know much about the motor on the Hawaiian machine, but we would guess the KitchenAid attachment has the advantage there too, since the stand mixer’s motor has enough power to mix dense cookie doughs or knead bread and is durable enough to last for decades.
The KitchenAid Gourmet Pasta Press is a pasta extruder. To use it, you load the hopper with dough, which is churned by an auger through a die to make your desired shape, like rigatoni or spaghetti. The plastic construction left something to be desired, and the pasta itself (made using the dough recipe included in the manual) was tough and too thick. At times it felt like two people were necessary to coordinate loading the hopper and cutting the pasta to size, and the parts (especially the dies) were so tedious to clean that we decided against experimenting with other recipes.
The KitchenAid All Metal Grain Mill has several issues, from the slow rate at which it produces flour to how messy that flour is to collect. But the thing that you’ll notice first is just how loud the attachment is. Between the sound of the grains cracking, the hum of the heavy-duty mill, and the fact that you have to run the KitchenAid stand mixer at top speed for it to work, this thing creates a lot of noise. You could do a lot better by getting a manual mill, such as the VKP Brands Hand Crank Grain Mill, which is a fraction of the price.
We tested the KitchenAid 5 Blade Spiralizer with Peel, Core and Slice for our guide to spiralizers, but it didn’t perform as well as hand-crank models. Its blades produced noodles and ribbons that were too thick, and zucchini noodles cut on the thinnest blade were slightly uneven. It’s potentially worth it if you want to spiralize a lot of vegetables at once, but the OXO Tabletop Spiralizer we recommend costs less and is quite efficient.
We’ve had trouble with older versions of the KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment. The one we tested in 2020 was difficult to attach to the machine, and customer reviews suggested that older models tended to crack and leak blue fluid from the freezer bowl. But the attachment has recently been redesigned, and we plan to test it again.
Tammie Teclemariam, who wrote the original version of this guide, has worked in food and wine since 2008 and used stand mixers from KitchenAid and other brands professionally as a pastry student and at work in a restaurant kitchen. As an avid home cook and recipe developer, she’s also put in enough time into grating, chopping, and whipping things manually to know when an upgrade really makes a difference.
Marguerite Preston, who tested the shaved ice attachment in 2022, is a senior editor overseeing Wirecutter’s kitchen coverage.
KitchenAid makes over three dozen attachments for its stand mixers, but they’re not all worth buying. For this guide, we decided to focus on the ones that seemed the most effective and versatile. We dismissed attachments that felt a little too specific, like the vegetable sheet cutter or the sifter-and-scale attachment.
Tammie tested the meat grinder, slicer and shredder, grain mill, and both pasta attachments with her KitchenAid Pro 600 mixer. She tested the coarseness settings on the meat grinder and all of the shapes on the pasta press. She grated three textures of cheese (from soft to firm), as well as an assortment of vegetables with the shredder attachment. She rolled out yards of pasta, and tried grinding corn and wheat berries. For weeks she used her KitchenAid stand mixer almost every day. Some meals consisted almost entirely of attachment-produced components, like a lasagna Bolognese using meat, fresh pasta, and cheese that had all been processed that day.
Marguerite tested the shaved ice attachment on a KitchenAid Artisan mixer. She tested both coarseness settings, tasted the ice plain and dressed with syrup, and tried shaving not only ice but also frozen juice and frozen sweetened coffee.
Each time, we asked if the attachment could become a tool that we’d use regularly enough to warrant the space and cost. We also considered whether it performed as well as (or better than) a comparable standalone machine.
Ultimately, none of our picks are essential kitchen tools or must-haves for the owner of a KitchenAid stand mixer. But they all work well and are worthwhile purchases if you can see yourself getting pleasure out of using them. Some—like the meat grinder and pasta roller—can make outsize improvements in your everyday dishes.
And, in many cases, there is only a brief learning curve to using these attachments before you can reap the rewards.
This article was edited by Marilyn Ong.
Tammie Teclemariam is a freelance food and drinks writer who contributes to Wine Enthusiast, Eater, Taste, and other publications. Before becoming a wine and spirits professional, she studied philosophy, apprenticed as a pastry chef in France, and interned at Ceremony Coffee Roasters. She lives in Brooklyn.
Marguerite Preston is a senior editor covering kitchen gear and appliances at Wirecutter, and has written guides to baking equipment, meal kit delivery services, and more. She previously worked as an editor for Eater New York and as a freelance food writer. Before that, she learned her way around professional kitchens as a pastry cook in New York.
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