Guide to Food Processor
First idea of a food processor, a helping machine came through a french catering sales man Pierre Verfun, whose clients were tired of time spent in kitchen, doing menial tasks such as chopping, shredding, grinding and mixing. In 1960s, he produced a simple machine with bowl and blade in a base to help with these tasks. It was not available to general public for a decade or so. Around early 1970s, domestic food processor called Magimix was ready for people’s kitchen in France, UK and North America. Now food processor as widely popular in available in every part of the world.
Having a food processor in your kitchen can come handy to do time consuming tasks such as chopping, shredding in short time, making whole cooking time more enjoyable. Food processor is convenient and can work like a helpful assistant for many cooks.
Food processor and blenders seems to share many traits however they are different in a few ways such as food processor has many interchangeable disks and blades, bowls are short and wider. In food processor you can add solid food and no need add liquid in your ingredients like you have in blenders.
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What does food processor do?
Food processor can do multiple functions depending on blade and its placement.
- Slicing and chopping vegetables
- Grinding nuts, seeds, meat and dried fruit shredding
- Grating vegetables and cheese
- Pureeing sauces
- Mixing and kneading doughs
- Whipping egg whites and cream
- Making juice
There are basically two types of food processors, 1) mini chopper and 2) large capacity food processor
How to choose a right Food processor for your kitchen:
- Varied size for varied work:
Larger food processors comes in various sizes from 1 cup capacity to 12 cup models. Mid size model around 8-10 cups are great for chopping and making a salad. Smaller size processor are more suited for thinly chopped onions, or grinding nuts. If you often make and knead dough in the food processor than, large 12 cup model are best. Many cooks have mini chopper and large food processor both. If you get a food processor with several sizes of bowl, you may need only one machine to do all various processing tasks.
- Types:
Find which functions are included such as chopper, juicer, slicing, shredding, dough kneading, one may need to buy some accessories to do different tasks or buy multi-function processor which can do many things in one machine. Choose a food processor with functions that you use in your daily kitchen tasks.
- Power
The more higher the wattage, more chopping and grinding power food processor will have. In general, 500-700 wattage should be able to handle most tasks, if you get low wattage it may not be powerful enough to do some tasks such as grind finely.
Our recommendation:
We recommend a choosing a food processor with several sizes of bowl to do various kitchen tasks, to save storage space, time and money. Choose a food processor with right functionality such as multiple functions, good reliability and best price. Other features that you want to look at is that bowl does not leak during processing, easier clean up, easier to attach and remove disks. Get nesting bowls in various size to make storing much easier.
Many brands offer warranties and replacement parts as needed so you do not need to replace whole machine.
Cuisinart DLC-10S Pro Classic 7-Cup Food Processor
Cuisinart DLC-2009CHB Prep 9 9-Cup Food Processor, Brushed Stainless
Other Food Processors Info;
Various Food Processors
See our review of Cuisinart DLC 10s Pro Classic Food Processor