Egg beaters and cast iron , oh my!

The lovely Jen of This Woman Wanders was in MN (she was here, then to North Dakota, then back) so we embraced the time together and did what we loved to do: antiquing and thrifting!

A brief moment prior, I was engaged in mixing a base for ice cream and the electric hand mixer proceeded to splash mix EVERYWHERE on the lowest speed. (Damn you vintage Pyrex and lack of depth to the bowls!)

A trip down to the basement to find the vintage hand mixer (aka egg beater). Found! The black handled one with the crimped blades. (There was a second mixer, but its location took a bit more hunting to find.) Another batch of ice cream base, and the black handled mixer worked like a slick car salesman. The mixture was frothy, well mixed and it was oddly satisfying to watch the magic of the manual operation at work.

The turquoise and brass mixer was found and sent upstairs to be integrated into the regular kitchen “staff”. Two mixers. Yup. Dandy. A lovely count.

Then Jen and I popped over to Hutchinson on an antiquing adventure. Stop one yielded ample – a couple of vintage cookbooks (the collection now sits at 175…), 4 pieces of cast iron and… a hand mixer. And being that they were on my mind, they were everywhere. Some were older, some were newer, some turned with finesse, others were caught, their gears or beaters jamming on half a turn. I used great digression in picking the keeper.

Further questing in Hutch yielded another cast iron piece, more cookbooks and … another hand mixer! Haha!

We departed ways for the evening (Bender isn’t a fan of other dogs, so Jen stayed with her dogs – Poe & Greg – at my parents’ house).

In the morning, I was super excited about the cast irons and promptly dropped the Griswold and the big unmarked pan into the darkeness that is the lye bath. Then realized my glove had holes. Dammit. Quickly ungloved and diluted the lye bath with water, then soap and water.

Lye is gnarly stuff – it eats the crust, seasoning and grime off of cast iron to reveal the bare iron below. Additionally it can eat through aluminum, clothing and skin. Luckily my exposure wasn’t long and my hand was just fine.

To make your own lye bath:

one big opaque bin with lid, dedicated to the lye bath
second bin with water
gloves – I like rubber ones that go up to mid arm
lye (100% sodium hydroxide crystals) – find it in the plumbing section of a hardware store
water
Ratio: 1 pound of lye crystals per 5 gallons of water
*** Always add the lye to the water, never the reverse! ***

Mix and keep outside.

Once mixed, slide in your pans, make sure they’re covered and let the lye do it’s magic. The lye bath will turn the color of tar after the initial pans have been dropped in, don’t get rid of it! The lye will work its magic no matter how dark the bath is! Lye baths work best when its warm and depending on the crud level of your pan it could take a day or week to have the crud completely melted away.

Glove up and handle your pans with care when removing them from the bath, lye has a soapy slickness that will coat the pan and make them slippery.

Rinse in the second bin of water. If there is more crust on the pan, redrop it into the lye bath until the pan is as clean as you can get it. When its ready, bring it into the house and give the pan a formal washing, making sure the lye slickness is completely gone.

You can use your bare hands now, make sure the slickness of the lye is completely off the pan. The pan will be a gunmetal to dark grey color – that’s bare iron! Address rust with a vinegar bath (1:1 ratio vinegar and water) or do electroysis to counter the rust.

Season and cook! Easy peasy!

Onward to more adventure!

Jen and I coordinated for the morning and set off towards Buffalo for further antiquing and thrifting. Our first stop, one of my favorite antique stores, yielded cookbooks, a space age peeler & grater and… another hand mixer! Bwhhahahahahaha!

Additionally, another piece of cast iron was added into the mix, but not of the skillet types. It was a waffle iron!

We popped into the other two antique stores, but had smaller finds. I did find some vintage Halloween decorations (the one with skunks is derpy adorable) and an opalescent cake stand. A little thrifting then a visit to The Nordic Brewing Co in Monticello where I fell in love with a mango sour in a flight of 4 (it beat out the IPA!). Once we were delightfully bubbly (did I mention there was a cake… and I ate the corner piece? BWHAHAHA!) we struck out for a quick dinner at Taco Bell for a giggle tastic adventure. Laughs on the way home, then we departed ways.

The formal sendoff of Jen happened the following morning. Man, I wished she lived closer than Maryland!

Now there is a collection of hand mixers living in my house! Curiosity beckoned and I looked into the history of hand mixers.

Surprisingly they are a relatively “modern” kitchen tool with patents arriving in 1856 (165 years ago) for a mixer with rotating parts, while the first electric mixer was invented in 1885 (29 years later / 136 years ago). KitchenAid was born in 1914 and the Model K arrived in 1937 wearing the design we love and know as modern KitchenAid stand mixers.

The first hand mixers were heavy duty tools made of cast iron. First patents had one beater, followed shortly by a pair of beaters. Cast iron mixers grew in stylization and art, though by the 1920s they started to fall out of fashion. They were replaced with tin and aluminum models.

The mixers I have:

Black handle = Flint Ekco Best with Arrowhead wavy blades, 1950s
Turquoise & copper = Turner and Seymour, 1950s-1960s
Aggressive sprocket red = Favorite / Mfg by Mille Lacs Lake Spinner Co, 1940s
Aggressive sprocket no handle = Ladd Beater No. 1 Pat’d July 7, 1908 – Oct 18, 1921 / Other pats pending / New York USA / United Royalties Corp (all on the main sprocket!)
Green handle = unknown, maybe from the 40s? No markings, though the brass is unique