What appliance is required to make dense and stable foam out of aquafaba?

Question

All of the recipes of whipped aquafaba I encountered on the web are showing chickpea brine whipped with the use of a stationary mixer with a large conical-shaped whisk. Did anyone experiment with other devices? Apart from the shape of the whisk, what power and speed of rotation of the whisk is required as minimum to achieve maxiumum foaming capacity and stability?

Answer 1

Advice for whipping aquafaba is largely the same as whipping egg whites: you'll get firmer peaks faster the harder/faster you whip the liquid.

I am not able to find a good mathematical relationship between the power of the mixer and the integrity of the resulting whipped foam. However, stand mixers have more muscle than a hand mixer (or your arm):

Because thin aquafaba needs to be whipped fiercely to achieve peaks, a powerful stand mixer really is the best tool for the job — don’t even try to whip with a whisk. A hand mixer can work if that’s all you have, but you might not get the same consistency that a stand mixer will give. source

The above article also notes that "it can take up to 10 minutes" for peaks to form — aquafaba needs both time and power in order to whip well.

Plenty of other online sources describe success with a hand mixer, but agree than whisking by hand is unlikely to give satisfactory results. (I've never gotten really good stiff peaks from egg whites whisked by hand, either.)

Regarding the whisk shape: most stand mixers have that conical whisk to help cover as much of the bowl as possible. Hand mixers have a more balloon or cylinder shape, because the user is able to move the beaters around to capture any parts of the mixture which need more attention. It's more about the power of the motor than it is the shape of the whisks.