CUISINART is well known for its food processors. After all, the brand launched with this kitchen gadget 50 years ago.
Those who love the brand will know that they also have a powerful stand mixer – the Cuisinart Precision SM50BU – and we tested it in a home kitchen to see if it’s as good as their food processors.
The Cuisinart Precision SM50BU 5.2l stand mixer is a big, powerful machine that’s designed to handle fairly large quantities of food.
The 5.2l mixing bowl is spacious enough to whisk up to 12 large egg whites while the 500W motor will make kneading doughs a breeze. There’s also a flat paddle for working soft mixes such as batters for pancakes or wet dough for cookies.
The handy feature we love is the splash guard with pour spout, which is great at stopping splashbacks when mixing batters and cutting down the mess when you’re trying to add more ingredients.
Colour-wise it’s only available in black in the UK.
The Cuisinart Precision SM50BU stand mixer is a big and sturdy machine but it’s actually fairly light compared to some of the other stand mixers we tested.
KitchenAid’s Artisan 5KSM175PS 4.8l stand mixer weighed a hefty 11kg for example, but the Cuisinart version is only 7.6kg, which means it’s a lot easier to move around the kitchen.
The machine is fairly tall though, especially once you tilt its arm back to install the attachments or to secure or remove the mixing bowl, so make sure there’s plenty of room between your kitchen counter and any overhead cupboards.
Setting up the machine is easy. The attachment arm tilts back with the help of a lever at the back of the neck so you can secure or remove the bowl from the base with a twist.
To install any attachment, you push it into the pin and then twist, which locks it into place. There’s also a spring mechanism to make sure it doesn’t pop out mid-use.
The speed is adjusted with a dial on the right hand side of the base. We found the dial slowed the process down, which was handy for avoiding those moments when you accidentally switch the machine on at full speed and flour goes everywhere.
The Cuisinart Precision SM50BU stand mixer was great for mixing dough – all the ingredients were combined really quickly and in just a couple of minutes the dough was smooth and elastic.
The non-stick coating on the dough hook was especially good for wet doughs and made cleaning up afterwards really easy.
Its size was also a bonus – the mixing bowl has a capacity of 1.2kg for combined ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, water etc), which is more than enough for most recipes.
One thing to bear in mind is that even though the instructions say to run the machine at speeds of between five and eight for kneading bread dough, we found it worked best at four.
We tested the machine with a 500g dough recipe and found that at the recommended speeds, the machine can start rocking when the dough is thrown against the side of the bowl. It was just as effective at the lower speed and there was no rocking.
The Cuisinart Precision SM50BU stand mixer has the capacity to whisk up to 12 large egg whites at a time and because the whisk attachment is so big and airy, it produced great results really quickly.
However, because the bowl is so deep, we feel that it might struggle with smaller quantities.
We tested it with a four-egg recipe for meringue and found that it was quite slow to start with as the whisk struggled to pick up the egg whites. But once it got going, it was able to incorporate all of the egg whites at the bottom with ease.
As the Cuisinart Precision SM50BU stand mixer can be used for “cutting in” butter for pastry, we decided to give this a go with the mixing paddle.
We followed the instructions for making pastry for a quiche in the recipe booklet for this, with butter straight from the fridge.
After a few minutes, the butter was evenly mixed with the flour – it’s not quite the fine breadcrumb you can achieve by hand, but it’s pretty close. This is also where the bowl cover came in handy, as the flour can puff out of the bowl while the machine is on.
Once we added water to the mixture, the whole thing came together in just a couple of seconds and the baked result was nice and crumbly.
Hiding behind the Cuisinart logo on the front of the arm is a slot for using attachments such as pasta roller and extruder, meat grinder and spiraliser.
You can also get a frozen desserts bowl for making ice cream or gelato.
However, these are not widely available in the UK at the moment.
If you need a stand mixer for family-sized recipes, it’s hard to fault the Cuisinart Precision SM50BU stand mixer.
Its 5.2l mixing bowl is big enough to handle most recipes and the powerful motor will make any kneading, whisking or mixing a breeze.
The fact that it’s stylish and you can expand its use with additional accessories is a bonus, especially given it’s much more affordable compared to other stand mixers of a similar size.
If you’re looking for other kitchen gadgets, we’ve also reviewed the KitchenAid 5KFP0719 1.7l food processor.
For a great alternative, there’s also the Cuisinart 1.9l Easy Prep Pro food processor.
Or if you’re looking for something bigger family meals, check out our review of the Bosch MultiTalent 8 MC812M853G food processor.
