Seeking dual voltage hand mixer
 

I'm in search of a dual voltage hand mixer, one that works off of either 110 or 220, and is not too bulky or heavy. So far both Amazon and Google have failed me on this, but I thought perhaps the cooks of FT might know of one.

Kitchen appliances are one of the few electric things that generally don't come in dual voltage (don't think I've ever come across any dual voltage kitchen appliances). Your best bet may be in (east) Asia (thinking Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Singapore) or one of the countries that may have two voltage levels (e.g., Brazil) but since baking isn't that common (most kitchens for locals don't have ovens), what you'll find may be expensive.

Are you actually going to be using it for cooking in many countries?

The beaters on a mixer are one the absolute most difficult things to clean completely. Multiple members of the family are celiac - gluten-intolerant - and one of them is super sensitive, off the scale sensitive, so using a mixer that has ever been used to mix a wheat flour based product is out of the question. I do a lot of baking and cooking from scratch, even when we travel. We tend to stay in timeshares when we can, so yes, I do expect to use a mixer in multiple countries - thinking 2 weeks in Netherlands next spring, and then whatever travel we do in the US beyond that. Not having a safe mixer to use limits what I can bake and therefore what we can eat.

Then another solution; bring your own beaters? At least for North America, cheap hand mixers seem to have interchangeable beaters (you can buy these for pennies at thrift shops but cheap mixers on sale are cheap). Can't say that will be the same for branded mixers though. Worst you can do is have to buy 2 220-ish/50Hz volt one for when you go to those countries.

Anything that has an AC motor with any power is not going to have a dual-voltage equivalent--the resulting device would be heavy, inefficient, and expensive.

In the garage, I use a lot of rechargeable or DC-powered tools with dual-voltage transformers, but those aren't so common in the kitchen.

My vote is just to buy a cheap hand mixer on your trip to the Netherlands and hang on to it for future travels to 230V countries. Amazon.de has them starting at €15.

My thought as well. Either go the Amazon.de route or stop in any appliance shop at the beginning of the first stay, buy one and then keep if for future trips.

Know any good appliance shops near Apeldoorn?

Google it?

My Dutch is too primitive to read the listings, and what Google translate does to Dutch is mind boggling. Google doesn't do well with languages that use a non-English sentence structure as tends to translate the words in the order they appear, not taking into account alternative grammar patterns.

Cheapest will definitely be Amazon.de if you have anywhere you can have it delivered--free delivery over €29 works in the Netherlands too. Amazon.co.uk has the benefit of being in English, but they charge for delivery to the Continent, even when they're shipping from the exact same warehouse in Germany or France anyway... don't get me started.

Otherwise there are the usual suspects of Media-Markt (a German electronics chain with shops all over Europe) and the non-food section of the big supermarkets like Albert Heijn and Deka.

How about the manual non-electric variety? This OXO one is easier to clean than the older ones with the center pole but isn't as good for thicker batter.

Have you ever tried making cookie dough with one of those? Or cake batter? It's a complete non-starter for anything thicker eggs and milk for an omelet. (yes, we have one)

Googling Apeldoorn Appliance leads you to a yelp map with six options. Media-markt and Blokken. Those are good places to start.

Nothing more than brownie batter. Sorry.

How about a small electrical handheld unit bought on Amazon.de?

My mum used to carry small inexpensive appliances in the local voltage that she had bought from her previous travels with her. She also carried a small baggie of plug adapters. She colour-coded the wire near the plug with coloured electrical tape to remind herself which voltage that appliance was in so as to not accidentally cause a fire or destroy that appliance. Green for home voltage, red for foreign and yellow for dual-voltage.

I'm not doubting you about the gluten sensitivity but it's amazing that the beaters would make a difference. My dishwasher has a high temp and sanitize setting that I always use and I can't imagine any sort of bacteria surviving it.