5/5
Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor
Check Latest Price
5/5
Hamilton Beach 10-Cup Food Processor
Check Latest Price
5/5
Ninja 450 Watt Food Processor
Which Is The Best Food Processor To Buy?
Are you looking for which is the best food processor to buy? Well, in today’s article we will breakdown the top 5 best food processors to buy that is available on the market.
One of the unsung heroes of this electronic kitchen revolution is the humble food processor.
While not as common as electric ranges and microwaves, a food processor is one of those appliances that will leave you wondering how you ever lived without one.
If you regularly cook for multiple people, like to concoct your own sauces and dressings, or need to make healthy homemade baby food for a little one, then this often-overlooked tool can greatly simplify your meal prep.
#1. Cuisinart Food Processor
If you’re making food for multiple people and you want the best jack-of-all-trades food processor for the money, then you probably won’t have to read on past our first pick:
The Cuisinart DFP-14BCNY food processor is the one.
It’s simple and rugged motor housing, great build quality, easy-to-use design, and versatile functionality offer almost everything you need to prepare large meals.
This food processor has a large 14-cup working bowl that secures well, with reviewers reporting little to no lid leakage even with wet and powdery ingredients.
The extra-wide feed chute is a nice time-saving touch that allows you to easily insert larger ingredients like whole potatoes.
The operation is simple and intuitive.
Two large paddles are pressed to turn the machine on and off.
The “off” paddle doubles as the processor’s “pulse” function for quick jobs where you don’t want the blades spinning constantly.
The processor comes with a slicing disc, shredding disc, and chopping blade, which can be used for a variety of functions, including mincing and slicing fruits and veggies, grating cheese, whipping up sauces and purees, and making pie crust.
The Cuisinart’s stainless steel blades and strong motor make short work of most ingredients without binding up or getting too hot.
Being a large food processor, the Cuisinart is rather chunky at around 16 pounds, so be prepared to reserve some counter space.
On the other hand, this heft is owed to the food processor’s sturdy and well-insulated housing, so its powerful motor doesn’t get too noisy and the unit won’t shake or rattle around on your counter when doing its thing.
The 720-watt motor is also on the higher end of the spectrum when it comes to food processors, allowing the blades to punch through tougher tasks like mixing bread dough.
Although the dough mixer attachment must be purchased separately, adding to the cost of what is already a fairly expensive unit.
Nonetheless, the Cuisinart DFP-14BCNY is well-priced given its size, power, and great features.
#2. Hamilton Beach’s 10-Cup Food Processor
The best budget food processor goes to Hamilton Beach’s 10-cup food processor.
Maybe the price of the Cuisinart causes sticker shock, you just want a solid no-frills food processor to handle basic tasks, or you want to make sure that you actually need something like this in your kitchen and want to start off with a cheap one.
You’re in luck: You don’t have to empty your wallet for a good food processor, and this 10-cup unit from Hamilton Beach proves it.
The Hamilton Beach food processor features a pretty standard design.
It comes with a stainless steel disc that’s reversible for shredding and slicing, plus a steel S-disc for chopping everything from nuts to vegetables.
The 450-watt motor is powerful enough for most jobs —although not for things like mixing dough — and features two speeds plus a pulse function.
The food processor is lightweight, so the motor does get noisy, but the trade-off is that it’s not too large and heavy to move or store between uses.
Suction cups on the base also keep it from “walking” around.
One notable and incredibly convenient feature on the Hamilton Beach food processor is its handy built-in scraper, which most other designs lack.
Instead of having to scrape the insides of the working bowl with a spatula, this food processor has a scraper that’s integrated into the lid.
Simply turn the lever on top to remove ingredients that are stuck to the sides of the bowl, either while you’re mixing — even when the blades are spinning — or after you’re finished and ready to dump the processed contents.
The 10-cup working bowl is more than large enough for serving small- and mid-sized groups.
The feed chute is not as wide as those on other units like the Cuisinart and Breville Sous Chef, however, so you may have to do some quick pre-shopping before adding larger items.
The bowl and blades are also dishwasher-safe for easy clean up after use.
Best of all, the Hamilton Beach 10-cup food processor rings in at less than $40, so it’ll quickly pay for itself in the time you’ll save in the kitchen.
#3. Ninja Master Prep Professional Food Processor
The best hybrid food processor and blender go to the Ninja Master Prep Professional.
You can tell just by looking at it that the Ninja Master Prep is not your standard food processor.
There are no traditional base or control buttons, there are three different working bowls, and the motor housing goes on top.
Yet this unique design is exactly what makes the Master Prep one of our favorites.
It’s that it effectively doubles as both a food processor and a blender.
We recommend the Professional model, which contains the complete Ninja Master Prep system.
Along with the 450-watt Power Pod, the package includes three workings “bowls” — a large 48-ounce pitcher, a 40-ounce bowl, and a small 16-ounce jar.
You also get two attachments, one six-blade assembly with three “stacked” S-blades for use in the large pitcher, and a smaller stacked four-blade assembly for the 40- and 16-ounce bowls.
Two lids, one for the larger containers and one for the small jar, are nice for preparing things ahead of time and for whipping up creations in larger batches that you can toss into the fridge for later.
The tall pitcher is perfect for making shakes and smoothies, while the 40-ounce bowl is better for more traditional food processing tasks.
The 16-ounce jar is ideal for mixing up smaller things like sauces, baby food, and single-serve items.
The unique design of the Master Prep comes with some disadvantages, one relatively minor, and one that could be a deal-breaker depending on your needs.
The top-motor design requires that you remove the Power Pod from the working container in order to add new ingredients, so there’s no lid to pop open.
The second, bigger drawback is that the stacked S-blades are designed to chop and blend.
There’s no slicing or shredding disc for things like cheese.
Any ingredients you add are going to get pulverized, but on the bright side, it easily crushes ice.
The Ninja hybrid design is fine for making purees, sauces, dips, baby food, smoothies, and so on, but if you need slicing and shredding functionality, then a traditional processor like our other picks might be better.
But what the Ninja Master Prep Pro sacrifices in processing utility it more than makes up for in its versatility and blending capability.
If you need a hybrid food processor that can chop food as well as it can make smoothies, then this one is a great option.
#4. KitchenAid 3.5-Cup Food Processor
The best mini food processor goes to the KitchenAid 3.5-cup food processor.
You’re obviously not going to be preparing large meals with it, but a miniature food processor still deserves a place in your kitchen.
A smaller unit is ideal for homes where counter space is limited and times when you’re only making food for one or two people.
It also serves particularly well as a dedicated machine for making sauces, purees, and baby foods.
If your food processing needs are relatively small or you just need something to whip up dressings and the like, then this unit from KitchenAid is just the ticket.
There are a number of popular mini food processors out there, and KitchenAid’s is just as good as any other for making meals for yourself and another person, but where this one really shines is in the little design details.
First among these is the way it operates: The 3.5-cup working bowl features an over-sized handle for easy gripping, but instead of on/off/pulse switches on the motor housing, the handle itself has a button that you operate with your thumb.
Choose the setting you want by flipping the switch on the base — it’s got two speeds, one for chopping and one for pureeing, plus a pulse function — and depress the button to get the S-blades spinning.
The blade mechanism is also somewhat unique.
The S-blade attachment locks into the bottom of the bowl itself rather than directly into the motor housing, allowing you to remove the entire working bowl, blade and all, and pour your mix right away.
There’s no reaching into the bowl to remove a messy attachment until you’re ready to clean up, which is easy enough considering both the bowl and blades are dishwasher-safe.
The lid of the KitchenAid food processor features a neat drip basin, too, making it a great workhorse for making sauces and dressings via the emulsion process, which requires you to slowly add ingredients such as oils to your mixture as you blend.
At around $35 and available in a wide array of colors instead of just the usual white/black/silver, it’s an inexpensive, unobtrusive, and surprisingly feature-rich addition to your cooking station.
#5. Breville Sous Chef Food Processor
The best high-end food processor which goes to the Breville Sous Chef.
Experienced home cooks are likely already acquainted with Breville, a well-known maker of many award-winning kitchen appliances.
And if there is a “Ferrari” of food processors, Breville’s Sous Chef might be it — although a better comparison might be to a high-end pickup truck, as this powerhouse of a machine has plenty of power plus a number of specialized attachments to easily handle virtually anything you need it to do.
You can probably tell just by looking at it that the Sous Chef is a big machine and heavy at 26 pounds.
That’s thanks to its generous 16-ounce working bowl and unrivaled 1,200-watt motor.
It can do small jobs, too, however, with the included 2.5-ounce mini bowl.
The large bowl has an extra-wide feed chute for adding whole ingredients like tomatoes, but you can swap this out for a narrow chute for inserting longer food items such as carrots more easily.
Breville has included eight attachments with the Sous Chef as well: Along with three different S-blades, large and small steel blades, and one plastic hook for kneading dough, you get five specialized slicing and shredding discs.
These include a Julienne disc for fine slicing, a whisking disc, a French fry cutter, and an adjustable disc that can create slices ranging in thickness from 0.3 to 8mm.
Another nice design feature of the Sous Chef’s bowls is that they are totally sealed.
This is in contrast to other processors, which often have an opening at the bottom of the working bowl to interface with the motor — a potential leakage point through which liquids can seep.
Some additional conveniences include an LCD screen with a built-in timer that can count up or down and a caddy for storing all of the attachments when the Sous Chef is not in use.
Breville thought of just about everything when designing this powerhouse, but if there’s one drawback to the Sous Chef, it’s that the motor gets hot when in use for a while.
This heat could become a problem when kneading yeast-based dough, so be sure to slow down and take your time when doing so.
The other consideration is the cost.
This is a high-end unit with a price tag to match, but if you’re a serious home chef who wants to “buy the best and only cry once,” then the Sous Chef is the one.
Conclusion
So that sums up the top 5 best food processor to buy.
We hope you enjoyed this article.
If you did please leave a comment on this article and share it.