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Vegetable food processor


How to Prep Vegetables with a Food Processor

While we definitely think that home cooks should develop their knife skills, we can all use a little assist in the ingredient prep stage of a recipe, especially when we have to chop, dice, slice, and/or shred our way through a laundry list of components.

The detailed lineup of ingredients in many vegetable-centric main dishes can make these recipes seem intimidating, and often different vegetables need to be prepared in different ways. Luckily, a good food processor permits you to put down your knives (and your mandoline and your grater)—the food processor will act as your prep cook. You'll get more uniform results while saving time, energy, and your sanity.

Here are a few tricks we've discovered for making vegetable (and other ingredient) prep easier in the food processor:

1. The Slicing Disk Is Your Best Friend

Some food processors have adjustable blades so you can change the thickness of the slices. You can also purchase smaller or larger slicing disks for most models. The way you feed ingredients into the processor affects the slices, so pay attention to the orientation of the ingredient in the feed tube. Slicing works best with firm ingredients, so we prefer tightly packed greens, like the heart of romaine (see below). You can also roll greens like kale to create a tightly packed bundle for slicing.

2. Choose the Right Feed Tube

Many food processors come with a small and large feed tube. Choosing the appropriate size for your ingredients will help you pack them tightly; you'll get cleaner, more consistent results if they don't have room to move around. Whole potatoes, onions, and big pieces like wedges of cabbage benefit from the larger tube, while smaller amounts of narrower carrots, zucchini, and celery work best in the smaller one.

3. When In Doubt, Underprocess

Our best advice for chopping in the processor is to err on the side of underprocessing—you can always give the ingredients another pulse to chop them more finely, but you can't go back. For this precise reason, we tend to use the pulse function instead of the processing function when chopping, grinding, or mincing ingredients in the food processor. Pulsing food offers more control than processing it; the food is chopped more evenly because the ingredients are redistributed—akin to stirring—with every pulse. This allows you more control over the final texture, as with something like Cauliflower Rice.

4. Trim the Ingredients and Use Steady Pressure

Depending on the size of your ingredient, you may need to do some trimming before placing it in the feed tube. Use steady pressure when pushing food through the tube into the blades. If you're slicing several different ingredients that will ultimately be combined, you can even put them all into the feed tube together.

5. Shredding Disk Easy Cleaning

The shredding disk can shred all kinds of ingredients into small, even pieces. You can power through pounds of potatoes and other firm ingredients (like carrots) in just seconds. To make cleanup easier, spray the feed tube, disk, and workbowl with a light coating of vegetable oil spray before you begin to keep the ingredients from gumming up the shredding disk.

The 3 Best Food Processors of 2022

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Photo: Michael Hession

UpdatedNov 2022

FYI

We've revisited this guide and still stand by our picks.

If you’re a cook who needs to get dinner on the table quickly, a food processor can feel like an additional pair of hands in the kitchen. It will allow you to prep a range of food—whether you’re grating cheese, chopping nuts, slicing vegetables, or kneading dough—at lightning speed. We’ve been testing food processors since 2013, and we remain convinced that the simple, sturdy, and powerful Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor is the best choice for most home cooks.

Our pick

Cuisinart Custom 14 Cup Food Processor

This is one of Cuisinart’s most basic models, but it consistently chops, slices, and kneads better than any other food processor we’ve found for under $250.

We like the Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor for its simplicity: This 14-cup model’s pared-down design makes it easier to use and to clean than models with more settings or multiple bowls. It comes with a handful of accessories and disks that are needed to complete common kitchen tasks, but nothing extra. This food processor also has a straightforward interface, with just two buttons, and one bowl. However, its simplicity doesn’t come at the cost of performance. In our tests, the Cuisinart tackled a multitude of chopping, shredding, and blending tasks exceptionally well, and it’s built more solidly than other processors in its price range.

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Budget pick

KitchenAid 3.

5 Cup Food Chopper

This mini, 3.5-cup processor is too small for making bread dough or coleslaw, but it’s the ideal size for chopping one onion or making small batches of mayo or vinaigrette.

We recommend the inexpensive KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper for anyone who wants to make small batches of dips, spreads, or mirepoix. It chopped vegetables more evenly than the other mini models we tested. On top of that, its handled jar with push-button activation was the most convenient to use. 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.

Upgrade pick

Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro

We recommend this large, 16-cup processor only if you’re cooking for a crowd multiple times a week. The Sous Chef is more than twice the price of the Cuisinart Custom 14, and it’s more powerful (and much bigger) than most people need.

The Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro is more powerful than the Cuisinart Custom 14, so it’s the machine you’ll want when you’re cooking for large groups or if you process food several times a week. Its 1,200-watt motor and smart design save you time in use and cleaning. In fact, despite the 16-cup Sous Chef’s many accessories, it was one of the easiest models to clean. That said, if you only use a food processor occasionally, the Breville’s high cost probably outweighs its benefits. And given that this processor is huge—more than 18 inches tall and nearly 20 pounds—you’ll need a big counter to keep it on.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

Cuisinart Custom 14 Cup Food Processor

This is one of Cuisinart’s most basic models, but it consistently chops, slices, and kneads better than any other food processor we’ve found for under $250.

Budget pick

KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper

This mini, 3. 5-cup processor is too small for making bread dough or coleslaw, but it’s the ideal size for chopping one onion or making small batches of mayo or vinaigrette.

Upgrade pick

Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro

We recommend this large, 16-cup processor only if you’re cooking for a crowd multiple times a week. The Sous Chef is more than twice the price of the Cuisinart Custom 14, and it’s more powerful (and much bigger) than most people need.

The research

Why you should trust us

To help us suss out the features you should look for in a great food processor, we turned to two best-selling authors of food processing cookbooks: Jean Anderson, the James Beard Award–winning author of Process This, and Norene Gilletz, author of The New Food Processor Bible. Both authors were early adopters, purchasing their first Cuisinarts shortly after the company introduced the appliances, in the 1970s. Combined, they’ve logged thousands of hours on many machines. In our efforts to choose which models to test, we also looked at reviews from other publications, such as Serious Eats, and examined user reviews on Amazon, Macy’s, and other sites.

Michael Sullivan is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and has covered food processors since 2016. He's spent dozens of hours shredding cheese, chopping vegetables, mixing doughs, and whipping up mayonnaise for this guide. This guide builds on work by Wirecutter deputy editor Christine Cyr Clisset.

Who should get this

Our food processor picks (from left to right): the Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor, the KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper, and the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro. Photo: Michael Hession

If you find tasks like chopping nuts, slicing vegetables, and shredding cheese too tedious, strenuous, or time-consuming to perform by hand, you should consider getting a food processor. This kitchen tool is also handy for blending dips like hummus, preparing homemade mayonnaise, and mixing pie or bread dough.

To process small batches of ingredients, you may want to consider getting a mini food processor—even if you already have a full-size version. Mini processors are most useful for tasks such as chopping one onion, preparing salad dressing, or making a small batch of pesto. A mini model will process smaller quantities more efficiently than a full-size model, and its diminutive size means a mini model is easier to move around a counter, store, and clean.

If you have an older machine that still works well, stick with it. But if your current machine’s motor base is so lightweight that the appliance stutters across the counter while it’s running, or if the motor seizes while it’s kneading dough, you should consider upgrading to a model that has a heavier build and a better motor.

Food processor vs. blender: Which one should you get?

Although there’s some overlap in what they can do, food processors and blenders aren’t interchangeable appliances. A food processor is the best tool for chopping and mincing, because its wide base allows the blades to slice through more at once, so you can coarsely chop ingredients quickly and evenly. Most full-size food processors also come with blades for slicing and grating, which a blender can’t do. While many people use their food processor for mincing vegetables, this appliance is also your best friend for easily grating cheese, slicing potatoes for a gratin, grinding fresh bread crumbs, or quickly cutting butter into flour to make pie dough.

You can use a food processor for pureeing dips and sauces too, but it will yield coarser textures than a high-powered blender—it’s best for things like hummus and pesto. You’ll need a blender if you want to make silky smoothies or to puree liquids like soup, which can splatter and leak out of a food processor’s doughnut-shaped bowl.

How we picked

We included both full-size and mini food processors in our testing. Photo: Michael Hession

After speaking with experts and spending years long-term testing several models, these are the qualities we look for in a good food processor:

Sharp, useful attachments; few extras: All food processors come with an S-shaped blade for chopping, and most full-size models also include a couple of disks for grating or slicing. In our tests, we looked for blades and grating disks that were sharp out of the box and durable enough to remain sharp over years of use, so that they could chop delicate herbs and tough nuts evenly, grate cheese uniformly, and slice vegetables cleanly.

Beyond the main blade and one disk each for shredding and slicing, you don’t need much else. Many food processors also come with a dough blade made of plastic, but we found that a metal blade mixed dough just as well, so we don’t think the dough blade is essential. You can usually purchase everything from a juicing attachment to julienne disks separately, but such extras often go unused. Both cookbook authors we spoke with essentially said these add-ons were a waste of money, so we didn’t test any.

Large capacity or mini, nothing in-between: In the past we tested food processors ranging in capacity from 11 to 14 cups, which cookbook authors Jean Anderson and Norene Gilletz told us was the ideal size for most home cooks. But after a couple rounds of testing, we decided to focus on full-size models that were 14 cups or larger, which we found to be more effective and useful. As Gilletz said, “It’s always better to go a little bigger than a little smaller. It’s one investment that’s going to last you a lot of years. You’ll regret getting one that isn’t big enough.” If you cook for a family or simply cook a lot, a bigger machine makes more sense.

That said, we also looked at mini food processors (also called mini choppers). Some full-size models come with an extra, smaller bowl that essentially acts as a mini food processor, but in most cases, we found that a dedicated mini processor did a better job. Mini food processors have bowls ranging in capacity from about 1½ cups to 6 cups, but we focused on those with a capacity of about three cups. Models smaller than that are too limited, and if you think you need one that’s larger than three cups, you’re probably better off with a full-size model.

Some feed tubes were too wide, such as that on the Magimix by Robot-Coupe 14-Cup Food Processor (left), which caused carrots to fall sideways and cut unevenly. The narrow feed tube insert on the Cuisinart Custom 14 (right) kept carrots upright while shredding. Photo: Michael Hession

Some processors, such as the Magimix by Robot-Coupe 14-Cup Food Processor (pictured above), have a wide gap between the shredding disk and the bowl lid, which allows large pieces of food to slip into the bowl. Photo: Michael Hession

Some feed tubes were too wide, such as that on the Magimix by Robot-Coupe 14-Cup Food Processor (left), which caused carrots to fall sideways and cut unevenly. The narrow feed tube insert on the Cuisinart Custom 14 (right) kept carrots upright while shredding. Photo: Michael Hession

Easy to use: Most food processors we looked at were relatively simple to operate, with not much more than an on/off button and a pulse button (good for roughly chopping things). But the way the bowl is put together can make a huge difference in how easy a processor is to use. Bowls with fewer parts and accessories are easier to assemble and clean, as are bowls with fewer nooks and crannies between the parts.

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.

Heavy base: A good food processor will have a strong motor and a heavy base that anchors it to the counter so the processor can mix sturdy yeast doughs. Low-quality machines, which are typically lighter, often skid across the counter when processing dough, or the motor may even seize up.

How we tested

We chopped 1 cup of whole almonds in each processor to gauge evenness of texture. From left to right: Cuisinart Custom 14, Breville Sous Chef (using mini bowl), Breville Sous Chef, Breville Sous Chef 12-cup, Magimix 14-cup, Magimix 14-cup (using mini bowl), Cuisinart FP-13DGM Elemental, Cuisinart FP-13DGM Elemental (using mini bowl). Photo: Michael Hession

To start, we tested how evenly each food processor could chop a variety of ingredients, including onions, fibrous carrots, soft tomatoes, delicate parsley, and whole almonds. We also made a 1-cup batch of mayonnaise in the processors to see how quickly and evenly they could produce a stable emulsification. We made pizza dough in each full-size processor to see if the motor could withstand the rigors of kneading. With the processors that came with a disk for grating, we also tried shredding both carrots and soft mozzarella cheese (which can turn to mush if the grater blades aren’t sharp). Finally, we cleaned the bowls, lids, disks, and food pressers of each model by hand—eight times. This test revealed more difficult-to-reach nooks and crannies than we’d expected to find in some machines.

Our pick: Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor

Photo: Michael Hession
Our pick

Cuisinart Custom 14 Cup Food Processor

This is one of Cuisinart’s most basic models, but it consistently chops, slices, and kneads better than any other food processor we’ve found for under $250.

The Cuisinart Custom 14-Cup Food Processor has been our top pick since 2013 because it does everything a great food processor should do, without any unnecessary extras. With one blade, one grating disk, and one slicing disk, this 14-cup processor excelled at nearly every chopping and shredding task we attempted, working as well as or better than costly machines with more attachments. Unlike those of some other models we tested, the Cuisinart’s base remained stable on the counter, even when processing double batches of dough. This model is easy to clean, and the attachments store neatly inside the bowl, preventing clutter.

In our tests, the Cuisinart evenly chopped almost everything, including juicy tomatoes. (The only exception was almonds—more on that in the Flaws but not dealbreakers section, below.) The grating disk also shredded soft mozzarella cheese without getting gummed up. And we made a firmer, more stable mayonnaise in the Cuisinart than in any other full-size model we tested.

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 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.

The Cuisinart Custom 14 comes with a small but well-chosen set of attachments: slicing and shredding disks, a regular chopping blade, and a spatula. Photo: Michael Hession

We also appreciated the Cuisinart’s large, 14-cup work bowl, which offers a lot of room for grating cheese or shredding big batches of coleslaw ingredients. By comparison, we found that the 11-cup Cuisinart we tested was a little too small, particularly when processing wet ingredients. (Liquid tended to leak out of the Prep’s bowl. )

We made a batch of mango salsa in the Cuisinart Custom 14 in about 20 to 30 seconds. Photos: Michael Hession

At first the Cuisinart seemed kind of puny next to some other models, which boasted nesting bowls, taller bases, and big boxes of attachments. But after years of using it in our test kitchen and our homes, we continue to be won over by the Cuisinart’s simplicity. We love that it comes with only one bowl and two operating buttons: pulse and on. It also comes with only the most useful attachments: a stainless-steel chopping blade and disks for shredding and slicing. Earlier versions of the Cuisinart Custom 14 included a dough blade, and you can still purchase one through the Cuisinart website. But we find dough blades unnecessary and have successfully prepared doughs using regular chopping blades for years.

Finally, the Cuisinart Custom 14’s work bowl was easier to clean than the bowls of most of the other models we tested. We cleaned each model eight times, so we were achingly familiar with the gunk that can get trapped in more-complicated lids. We also appreciate the Cuisinart’s hollow handle, which doesn’t trap food particles and moisture as much as the Breville Sous Chef’s enclosed handle.

With some careful layering, you can store all of the Cuisinart’s blades and disks in its work bowl, with the lid on, which saves a bit of storage space (and keeps you from gouging a hand on a loose blade in a drawer). By contrast, our upgrade pick, the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro, comes with a plethora of disks and accessories, requiring more storage space. At only 15 inches tall, the Cuisinart should also fit under most cupboards. We like its slightly retro, sleek design, and the base is also available in several colors (each of which has a different model number).

The Cuisinart’s three-year warranty on parts and five-year warranty on the motor aren’t the best among the models we tested, but they’re still pretty good. And Cuisinart’s food processors have a solid reputation for overall durability—anecdotally, we know of some that have lasted for decades.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The only task the Cuisinart Custom 14 didn’t excel at was chopping nuts. Most were evenly chopped, but there were a handful of nuts that remained in large pieces. Since the Cuisinart mastered every other task, we don’t think this is a dealbreaker.

We read a few reviews by people who disliked how the Cuisinart Custom 14’s lid locks with the feed tube in the back rather than in the front (which is standard for most models). However, we think it’s actually easier to see the ingredients in the bowl when the feed tube is positioned in the back of the lid.

The Cuisinart’s slicing disk isn’t adjustable like the Breville Sous Chef’s slicing disk, which has multiple settings, similar to a mandoline. But you can buy additional slicing disks through Cuisinart if you want them. The included slicing disk makes approximately 5-millimeter slices, which is fine for most tasks, but you’ll probably want the 2-millimeter slicing disk for making homemade potato chips.

The Cuisinart doesn’t come with a storage case for its attachments. If you don’t want to store the attachments in the bowl, it would be worthwhile to purchase a case for about $30.

Long-term testing notes

We’ve been long-term testing the Cuisinart Custom 14 since 2013, and it remains a workhorse in the kitchen. Year after year, we’ve made slaws, grated cheese, blended dips, chopped nuts, and kneaded pizza dough in it—and it continues to work well. The 14-cup bowl doesn’t leak, and the controls are exactly what you need. The bowl has scratched a bit (because we’ve stored the sharp blades inside it), but otherwise it looks like new. We’ve found that it’s slightly annoying to clean under the on/off buttons, but a damp sponge or paper towel makes the task easier.

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. 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.

Budget pick: KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper

Photo: Michael Hession
Budget pick

KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper

This mini, 3.5-cup processor is too small for making bread dough or coleslaw, but it’s the ideal size for chopping one onion or making small batches of mayo or vinaigrette.

For small chopping tasks, the inexpensive KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper offers the best value and performance we’ve found in a mini processor. It evenly chops a range of ingredients, including tough jumbo carrots. This machine is a good supplement to a full-size model, or it’s a great alternative, if you don’t want to spend a lot. In our tests, this processor even performed better than the mini bowl attachments that come with some of the larger processors. It’s too small for kneading bread dough and lacks the attachments to shred or slice, but it’s great for completing basic tasks quickly, and it’s easier to clean and store than a full-size model.

The Food Chopper looks almost identical to a full-size processor, except that it has a knob you can adjust to either “chop” or “puree.” The chop setting moves the blade at a slower rpm, and the puree button operates at a faster rpm. Like the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus (our former mini chopper pick), this model runs only while you hold the “on” button down. But the KitchenAid’s design makes it particularly easy to do so. To operate it, you squeeze a tab on the top of the handle, which we found more comfortable to do than holding down buttons on the base of the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus.

The placement of the “on” button at the top of the handle makes the KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper easy to use. Video: Michael Hession

The KitchenAid chopped more evenly than the other mini processors we tested, and it did so quickly. It diced onions more consistently than the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus, and it chopped a quartered tomato evenly—we had to cut a tomato into smaller pieces to get the same results using other models. The Food Chopper also minced parsley cleanly, whereas the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus tore it, causing it to oxidize faster. One task this processor doesn’t excel at is chopping whole almonds evenly, but that’s typical of most mini choppers. Full-size processors are best for chopping nuts.

Most mini choppers don’t have hefty bases like full-size processors do, and the Food Chopper is no exception. However, at just under 2 pounds, it has a slightly heavier base than other mini models, which helps keep it stable. 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.

This KitchenAid also excels at emulsifications. In fact, of all the food processors, blenders, and immersion blenders we’ve tested for various guides, we found making mayo easiest in a mini food processor like the Food Chopper. That’s because its lid has a small indent to hold oil and a small hole that allows the oil to pour directly onto the blades so you have a consistent, measured stream. With this method, the mayonnaise comes together without your having to control the flow of oil.

Making mayonnaise in the KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper was exceptionally easy due to the lid’s small well and hole for adding oil. Photo: Michael Hession

This KitchenAid comes with relatively few parts and it disassembles easily for cleaning. We especially appreciate that the bowl has a handle, since we struggled to remove bowls that didn’t have one, especially when we were working with greasy hands. The Food Chopper is covered by a one-year warranty, which is standard for appliances in this price range, and you can get the base in a wide range of colors.

Long-term testing notes

We’ve been long-term testing the KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper since 2017. Besides being a bit loud—and having hard-to-clean crevices underneath the blade’s core and around where the cord is stored—it’s easy to use and continues to chop evenly. The Food Chopper has handled tough jobs, too: One Wirecutter staffer who owns this machine (and who doesn’t have room for a larger machine in his tiny kitchen) has successfully used it to make pie dough in small batches.

Upgrade pick: Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro

Photo: Michael Hession
Upgrade pick

Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro

We recommend this large, 16-cup processor only if you’re cooking for a crowd multiple times a week. The Sous Chef is more than twice the price of the Cuisinart Custom 14, and it’s more powerful (and much bigger) than most people need.

In terms of pure performance, the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro was hands down the best food processor we tested. It offers extra power; a larger, 16-cup blending bowl; and nicer features compared with the Cuisinart Custom 14. And it performed well in every test, especially excelling at slicing. The Sous Chef powered through an entire russet potato in less than a second—noticeably faster than any of the other models. And despite its power, the Sous Chef was the quietest of the bunch at kneading dough. But it’s oversized and significantly more expensive than the Cuisinart, and it comes with a bulky bundle of accessories that you may not need.

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.

Both the mini and large bowls on the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro produced evenly minced parsley. Photo: Michael Hession

The Sous Chef’s thoughtful design was what really sold us on this machine. We love how the bowl fits flat on the motor base. Other machines require you to fit the bowl over a shank on the base, but the Sous Chef has a flat attachment, with the shank attached to the inside of the work bowl. This means that, if you like to cook by ratio, you can put the bowl on a kitchen scale and measure ingredients into it with the blade attached, and then seamlessly connect the bowl to the motor base. If you’ve ever struggled to fit a blade over a pile of flour in a processor bowl, you’ll appreciate this design feature.

We also like that you can remove the work bowl with the lid attached. The KitchenAid 13-Cup Food Processor with ExactSlice System and the Cuisinart FP-12DCN Elite Collection Food Processor also have this handy feature, but most models (including the Cuisinart Custom 14) require that you loosen the lid before removing the bowl.

Breville clearly put a lot of thought into other design elements as well. 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. In addition to the standard blades, the Sous Chef comes with a reversible shredding disk and an adjustable slicing disk that goes from a whisper-thin 0.33 millimeters to a generous 8 millimeters (it’s a true alternative to using a mandoline). 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.

The Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro comes with a plastic case to store loose attachments, but it takes up a lot of cupboard space. Photo: Michael Hession

Another drawback to the Sous Chef is that it made a slightly looser mayonnaise than the Cuisinart Custom 14 and the mini processors we tested. Also, its mini bowl insert did not chop almonds evenly, so we recommend using its 16-cup bowl for this task.

The Sous Chef is solidly built, with a hefty base that weighs about 15½ pounds (excluding the bowl). This processor also comes with a limited one-year product warranty and has a 25-year warranty on the motor—by far the longest warranty on a motor of any of the models we tested.

Care and maintenance

Food processor blades are not designed to be sharpened. Yours should last you a long time. But, as Cuisinart told us, if you’re using the blade “more aggressively or more frequently than the average consumer it can become dull.” If that happens, both Cuisinart and Breville sell replacement blades.

As for cleaning, The New Food Processor Bible’s Gilletz recommends putting water and a few drops of dish soap into the work bowl and running the machine. A bottle brush is handy for cleaning around the feed tube, inside the food pressers, and along the sharp blades. Never submerge the base of a food processor in water; only wipe it down with a damp cloth or sponge.

After testing models with storage boxes, we found that such boxes are convenient for keeping attachments organized, and they’re worth investing in if your model doesn’t come with one. You can also organize blades and disks in a designated Tupperware-style container, basket, or other receptacle. We store the Cuisinart Custom 14’s extra blades and disks inside the processor’s work bowl, but be advised that this can scratch the bowl.

Most brands sell replacement parts, which may come in handy after the limited warranty on parts expires. You’ll find replacement bowls, food pushers, blades, and various other attachments for the Cuisinart Custom 14 and the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro (though we should note that they can be quite expensive). You can sometimes find cheaper, secondhand parts on eBay, but just be sure you get the right model number.

The competition

Full-size food processors

The Cuisinart Complete Chef chops, slices, and cooks food all in one 18-cup stainless steel bowl (it comes with attachments and built-in recipes for cooking things like risotto or beef stew). We were eager to see how it would compare to the Thermomix (a wildly expensive blender that cooks, and which has something of a cult following outside of the US), but we weren’t able to get it to work. We probably just got a lemon, but that doesn’t bode well for a $700 appliance (at the time of this publishing). An error consistently appeared on the screen each time we attempted to run it, even when the correct lid and blade attachment were in place. The customer service representative we spoke to wasn’t able to offer much guidance since they weren’t familiar with the model (they even confessed it doesn’t sell often).

This error appeared on the Complete Chef’s screen any time we tried to operate it. Photo: Michael Sullivan

In spite of this malfunction, we were still able to explore the recipe database, which was easy to navigate. The preprogrammed recipes seemed straightforward, but there are only 201 total. That may sound like a lot, but this model lacks the capability to add more recipes to its digital database down the road (something the Thermomix can do), so you’re stuck with what you get at the time of purchase. This model also takes up a ton of counter space and weighs 30 pounds; it’s definitely not something you’ll want to lug around your kitchen often. Ideally we’d like to test a working model in the future, but we feel we can dismiss The Complete Chef for now due to its size, weight, hefty price, limited recipe database, and lack of customer support.

The Breville Sous Chef 12 BFP660SIL food processor did well in our tests, but it didn’t outperform the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro or our top pick, the Cuisinart Custom 14. The Sous Chef 12 wasn’t able to chop tomatoes or almonds as evenly as the Sous Chef 16 Pro. Its smaller, 12-cup capacity was also more limiting than the Cuisinart’s 14-cup bowl.

We weren’t impressed with the Magimix by Robot-Coupe 14-Cup Food Processor. It wasn’t able to chop as evenly as the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro or the Cuisinart Custom 14. The feed tube is very wide, so thin items like carrots fall to the side, and the rounded lid creates a wide gap around the perimeter of the slicing blade, allowing large pieces of food to slip through, into the bowl. The machine also seized up while preparing pizza dough and was noisier than other models we tested.

The Cuisinart FP-13DGM Elemental 13 Cup Food Processor and Dicing Kit didn’t chop as evenly as our picks. Our testers were impressed with the dicing kit, which chopped firm vegetables like potatoes and carrots into even cubes. However, since this was the only task this model excelled at, we don’t think it’s best for most people. The motor on the Elemental was noisy, and the base is very lightweight.

We decided not to test the Braun FP3020 12-Cup Food Processor since, at the time of testing, it was roughly the same price as the Cuisinart Custom 14, but with a smaller capacity. We couldn’t justify paying more for a smaller machine. The Braun FP3020 is also only 600 watts, versus the Cuisinart’s 720 watts.

The Cuisinart FP-12DCN Elite Collection Food Processor performed well in our tests, but it came with a gasket on the lid that frequently trapped flour and sticky ingredients. Our testers also preferred the Cuisinart Custom 14’s 14-cup capacity over the Elite’s 12-cup capacity.

In our tests, we found that a 14-cup capacity food processor bowl was ideal for most people. For this reason—and based on other reviews we’ve read—we were able to rule out many models from Cuisinart, Breville, Braun, Hamilton Beach, Magimix, Proctor Silex, KitchenAid, Oster, and Black+Decker that had bowls with capacities under 14 cups.

Mini food processors

The Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus was our former mini chopper pick. It wasn’t able to chop as evenly as the KitchenAid 3.5 Cup Food Chopper, and it moved across the counter as it struggled to chop a tough jumbo carrot. It also tore parsley, whereas the KitchenAid produced a clean, even cut.

Sources

  1. Sal Vaglica, The Best Food Processors, Serious Eats, October 17, 2017

  2. Jean Anderson, author, Process This, phone interview, July 2013

  3. Norene Gilletz, author, The New Food Processor Bible, phone interview, July 2013

About your guides

Michael Sullivan

Michael Sullivan has been a staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter since 2016. Previously, he was an editor at the International Culinary Center in New York. He has worked in various facets of the food and restaurant industry for over a decade.

Christine Cyr Clisset

Christine Cyr Clisset is a deputy editor overseeing home coverage for Wirecutter. She previously edited cookbooks and craft books for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and she started reviewing kitchen gear back in 2013. She sews many of her own clothes, which has made her obsessive about high-quality fabrics—whether in a dress or bedsheets.

Further reading

Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing to save people time, energy and money when making buying decisions. Whether it's finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we'll help you get it right (the first time).

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