How To Clean And Maintain Your Stand Mixer

Modern stand mixers are kitchen marvels, featuring tools and accessories to make everything from pasta to ice cream. Keeping that all-in-one kitchen workhorse clean isn’t always easy, but AppliancePartsPros.com is here to help! Keep reading to learn some easy cleaning and maintenance tips for your stand mixer.

Cleaning Your Stand Mixer

For the most part, cleaning your stand mixer is a fairly straightforward process, but there are a few small things that can cause issues with your mixer. Keep reading for everyday and deep-cleaning walkthroughs!

Step 1: Make sure it’s unplugged

Trust us, getting your hand caught in a stand mixer, even at a lower speed setting, isn’t a fun experience. Getting water inside your mixer while it’s plugged in could give you a nasty shock. Cut those potential injuries out of the equation entirely by making sure you’ve unplugged your appliance before you start any cleaning or maintenance.

Everyday Cleaning

To prevent mold, mildew, or caked-on food debris, your stand mixer needs to be cleaned after each use. Here’s how:

• Time: less than 10 minutes
• Tools: damp (not wet) rag or sponge, dish soap, warm water, drying cloth

Once your stand mixer is turned off and unplugged, remove any attachments, including the bowl and fill guard. Wash these items by hand in hot, soapy water or by placing them in the dishwasher if they are dishwasher safe – some attachments, like the whisk, are not, and will corrode if run through the dishwasher. Consult your mixer’s manual before popping anything in the dishwasher.

If you have a stainless steel bowl, you can additionally use a stainless steel cleaner on it to remove any water spots or smudges.

Next, wipe down the body of your stand mixer with a damp (not wet) sponge or cloth, making sure to clean the base, pedestal, and head. Be sure to clean the beater shaft with a damp sponge or rag. If you used the attachment hub at the top of the mixer head, this can usually be cleaned with a dry q-tip or toothbrush.

Use a clean cloth or dish towel to dry everything off, particularly the mixer body and whichever attachments were used. Ensuring your stand mixer’s accessories are dry before they’re put away will help combat rust.

Finally, for standard post-use cleaning, make sure you check around your mixer for any spatter. You’ll likely need to clean the space where the mixer was set up at a minimum, but you’d be surprised by how many odd places flour and batter can end up. Check walls and cabinets nearby and wipe them down if needed.

Deep Cleaning Your Standing Mixer

Depending on how often you use it, your standing mixer may need a deeper cleaning once or twice a year or as frequently as once a month. Here’s how to handle a deeper cleaning:

• Time: 15 – 30 minutes

• Tools: damp (not wet) rag or sponge, a firm bristle toothbrush or q-tips, toothpicks, baking soda, dish soap or a mild cleanser of your choice

Deep cleaning your stand mixer starts much the same as your standard everyday cleaning. Hand wash any attachments that need cleaning – accessories like safety guards and fill guides can have gunk trapped in their nooks and crannies – then do an initial wipe-down of the body of the mixer with a damp cloth or sponge.

Once you’ve wiped the body down, carefully turn your mixer over on its side and clean the bottom. Make sure the mixer’s feet are intact and clear of debris. If your stand mixer is missing feet or if they’re falling apart, it may start to move across your countertop when in use, so be sure to replace them if you see any issues. If you always leave your stand mixer out on the counter, be sure to wipe down the countertop, as well.

After you’ve done your first pass with a damp cloth, the next step is to bust out the detailing tools. Use a dry toothbrush or q-tip on the following spots:

• The vent at the back – this will help with airflow to the mixer.
• Any of the crevices around the accessory hub, if your mixer has one, and the beater shaft.
• Each lever and the area around them.
• Tilt the head back and clean underneath it – you may want to use a damp sponge here, too. Once you’ve gotten this spot clean, be sure to dry it thoroughly before lowering the head again.

If you’ve got stubborn gunk or rust spots, you have two fairly easy options for getting rid of dirt:

• If you’re dealing with buildup in a spot that’s tough to reach, like the vent, and a toothbrush isn’t getting it, use a toothpick to scrape out the dirt.
• For rust spots, stains on the body of the mixer, and other stubbornly stuck-on gunk, make a paste out of baking soda and a bit of water. Apply it to to the stain and let it sit for around 10 minutes before scrubbing it gently in a circular motion with a toothbrush and then wiping it away. This mild abrasive should get rid of most stains without damaging your mixer.

Again, before you call the job done, be sure to dry everything off completely to help fight rust or other issues.

Extra Mixer Cleaning & Maintenance Tips

We’ve got a few cleaning tips that apply to just about any brand and model of home stand mixer.

Hand wash the attachments, especially the whisk.

If you have an older stand mixer, the metal beaters (sometimes called polished aluminum or burnished beaters) are generally not dishwasher safe. The whisk (KitchenAid calls it a Wire Whip), especially, can start to corrode after just one trip through the dishwasher. While this isn’t harmful, it does give you extra work and weakens your mixer’s accessories. When cleaning, don’t let attachments soak too long, as this can also cause corrosion.

Some newer stand mixers do come with metallic finish attachments that are dishwasher safe. Check your stand mixer’s manual or brand website for specific washing guidelines from the manufacturer, but as a general rule, burnished attachments are not dishwasher safe while the coated ones usually are.

Your stand mixer can’t stand up to too much water!

Any moisture could seep into the stand mixer’s head and damage the mechanical components. This sort of damage can gum up the works, making your mixer noisy, slow, or stopping it from working entirely. Thankfully, almost all stand mixer issues are fixable, but it’s still a task and an additional extra cost that you probably want to avoid if you can, so:

• A damp rag or sponge should be sufficient for most cleanings. Wring out your cleaning tools before using them on the body of your stand mixer. If you’re dealing with stubborn stains, use the baking soda paste trick we described above.
• Apply any cleaner you plan on using to your cleaning tool, not the appliance itself. If you spray cleaner directly onto the body, you risk that soap reaching the gearcase.
• Don’t ever submerge your stand mixer’s body in water, and don’t put any part of the mixer body in the dishwasher.

Avoiding rust and corrosion is easy.

There are a few things you can do to avoid rusting on your mixer and its accessories.

• Be sure to dry all attachments and accessories completely before putting them away. This can also help to prevent water spots or potential mildew growth.
• Don’t use bleach-based cleaning agents on any part of your mixer. Bleach can particularly cause rust to form on stainless steel.

Is there a strange gray residue in your stainless steel mixer bowl?

Don’t worry! It’s harmless – just annoying, and it can potentially discolor any food you put in the bowl. This residue is a product of the mechanical polishing process, and it can be difficult to get rid of even with thorough scrubbing.

To clear it up, you’ll need some olive oil:

• Put a tablespoon or so of olive oil in the bowl and spread it around the interior.
• Let it sit for three to five minutes, then wipe the oil out.
• Thoroughly clean the bowl with hot water and dish detergent.
• If that doesn’t do the trick, you can also try a mild abrasive – either lemon juice and salt mixed together, or a baking soda and water paste.

• Disassemble accessories to clean them more easily. Mixer accessories like grinders and pasta makers can be disassembled for easier cleaning, but that still doesn’t make it a breezy experience. Use a toothbrush to reach nooks and crannies in these more complicated attachments, and otherwise consult your manual for additional cleaning tips and instructions.

The wrong beater height can cause a host of problems.

A beater that’s set too high can leave a bunch of unmixed ingredients in the bottom of your bowl. If it’s too low, it can damage your attachments, your bowl, or cause the head of the mixer to knock our bounce. It’s not a bad idea to check your stand mixer’s beater height about once a year (or as soon as you start noticing issues). The proper height will depend on your mixer’s make and model, but almost all stand mixers can be adjusted in roughly the same way:

• First, turn off and unplug your mixer if you haven’t already.
• Next, raise the head of your stand mixer or lower the bowl (whichever you need to do to access the underside of the head) and lock it into this raised position. This will allow you to locate the adjustment screw to raise or lower your beater height.
• Using an appropriate screwdriver, make quarter turns either clockwise or counterclockwise to raise or lower the beater height.

Wrapping Up

With this guide, you should have no trouble keeping your stand mixer shiny and in great shape. If you do run into any issues with this handy countertop appliance, come back our way. At AppliancePartsPros.com, you’ll find genuine OEM parts for all major brands of appliance, including your stand mixer. Need more help? Check out our YouTube channel – guides to walk you through just about any appliance issue you can imagine – or consult with a member of our helpful staff. We’re happy to help you fix your appliance yourself!