And this KitchenAid is a great option for people who don’t want to invest in a $250 machine. You can’t knead dough or shred ingredients in it, but you can grind or chop small portions of vegetables or nuts, which is more tedious to do by hand. Downsize from 4 full separate appliances to a single base with 4 attachments. The Good Housekeeping Institute’s Kitchen Appliances and Innovation Lab has tested more than 30 food processors, including mini food processors in recent years.
Its strong motor blended hummus and pesto with minimal scraping, and its small feeding tube allowed us to slowly add oil for fantastic mayonnaise. Handle of a variety of food prep tasks with the convenience of this Cuisinart chopper and grinder. One Wirecutter staffer, who was initially skeptical of the large, 14-cup bowl capacity, has said that so far their Cuisinart hasn’t been too small or too large for any preparations. cuisinart toa60 Another staffer (who admitted to being a little rough on her machine) replaced her Cuisinart with a new one after 11 years of use. Meanwhile, senior kitchen and appliance editor Marguerite Preston still uses a decades-old Cuisinart Custom 14 that she inherited from her parents. The Cuisinart® Stainless Steel Food Chopper is great for chopping vegetables, hard cheeses, nuts, herbs, garlic and more.
The Sous Chef is the only model we tested that had an LCD timer (which counts up and down), and this model also has retractable cord storage. We didn’t try the machine’s french fry disk, julienne disk, or emulsifying disk attachments, but we did use the handy cleaning brush, which did a great job of getting trapped bits out of the slicing disk. The obvious drawback to all of these attachments is that they take up a lot of space, and they may not get much use (how often do you make fries, for example?). We appreciate that Breville provides a storage case for the attachments, but the box takes up almost as much cupboard space as the machine itself.
And we didn’t notice any straining or stuttering of this model’s 240-watt motor, even when it was chopping a fibrous jumbo carrot. As long as you don’t try to use the Food Chopper for heavy tasks, such as making nut butter, we don’t think there’s much risk of burning out the motor. The Cuisinart has a strong motor and a heavy base (roughly 18 pounds with the bowl on) that keeps it stable. Though its 750-watt motor is less powerful than those on cuisinart air fryer oven some other models we tested, such as the 1,200-watt Breville Sous Chef (our upgrade pick), this didn’t negatively affect the Cuisinart’s performance. Making pizza dough was our most motor-intensive test, and the Custom 14 kneaded it effortlessly, without wiggling across the counter like some other processors we tried. As a private chef, I can say this brand’s mini food processor is worth the splurge, as I’ve owned one for over two decades.
The blade was effective in chopping mode, and when using the grind setting — perfect for spices — the blunt side of the blade is engaged for more gentle processing that helps crush rather than chop. The lid has two holes and a long well so you can add liquid when making dressings or mayonnaise. The Breville Sous Chef diced tomatoes and onions evenly, and it chopped nuts to a more consistent texture than the Cuisinart. The Sous Chef’s grater disk shredded soft mozzarella cheese easily. And though we’re not huge fans of the mini bowls on most of the big processors, we liked the Sous Chef’s 2½-cup bowl best among the ones we’ve tried. Deeper than the others, this bowl has a design that seemed to make uniformly mincing fresh parsley easier.
The size of the feed tubes in the lid (used to insert potatoes, carrots, or other hunks of food to be sliced or shredded) also makes a difference. Most full-size processors come with a wide feed tube that’s fitted with a food presser, which has a narrower feed tube (with its own presser) in the center. The larger tube should be big enough to easily fit a block of cheese or a potato, so you don’t have to spend time cutting food into pieces that are small enough to fit. But the smaller tube needs to be narrow enough to keep carrots and other thin items upright during slicing. Michael Sullivan is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and has covered food processors since 2016.