Choosing the Best Food Processor

Amazon.comI wish I could tell you that you don't have to spend very much to get a great food processor. I mean, there are full-sized models out there that retail for as little for $35. But you would be better off putting those hard-earned bucks toward a more expensive machine that will save you time and effort for years to come.

What Does A Food Processor Do?

First things first: What does a food processor need to do to justify the expense and, for many of us, the counter space? To begin with, it should be able to cleanly chop, slice and grate hard ingredients, such as carrots, potatoes, nuts and Parmesan cheese. And it should also grind bread crumbs, pulse butter into flour for pie crust, purée soup, and even handle a heavy, wet bread dough. It should do everything, in fact, except pack the kids' lunchboxes.

For years, the Cuisinart brand was the only brand on the block, and that was for one very good reason: It could do all the above tasks brilliantly. In fact, Craig Claiborne wrote at one point that it was the greatest invention since the toothpick. The machine was the brainchild of Carl Sontheimer, a retired physicist and a passionate perfectionist in the kitchen, who redesigned a bulky behemoth called the Robot-Coupe -- a food processor used in restaurant kitchens in France -- for the American home cook. About two years after Sontheimer unveiled his odd-looking (and pricey, at $175) Cuisinart at the 1973 National Housewares Show in Chicago, Gourmet magazine published a rhapsodic article called "The Phenomenal Food Processor," and culinary hysteria ensued. Almost 40 years later, the food processor has outlasted other seemingly revelatory pieces of kitchen equipment that pile up, dusty and unloved, in attics and on yard-sale tables across the land. (No matter what anyone says, fondue is not coming back. Really.)

If You Insist: Cheaper Food Processors

No full-sized food processor, which generally has an 11- or 12-cup work bowl, is designed to chop small amounts of food -- a few cloves of garlic, say, or half a cup of nuts. If your first instinct isn't to pick up a knife, then that's where a mini food processor, which has about a 3-cup capacity, comes in handy.

KitchenAid's Chef's Chopper ($39.95 at cooking.com) and Cuisinart's Mini-Prep Plus Processor ($32.72 at amazon.com) are both powerful enough to grate and chop evenly as well as process a very thick slurry, such as a spice paste, satisfactorily.

But what I'm absolutely crazy about is the small, sleek Cuisinart DLC-2ATQ Mini Prep Plus Processor ($39.95 at amazon.com, mainly because it's so beautiful -- the culinary equivalent of a turquoise prayer bead for the kitchen.

The Best Full-Sized Food Processors Under $150

Cuisinart's 11-Cup Pro Custom 11 DLC-85 ($132.29 at amazon.com), which is very similar to the original model, comes with five basic attachments for slicing, shredding, chopping, mixing and kneading; it also features two feed-tube options and a compact cover, for when the feed tube isn't needed. In my experience, it grates, slices and makes great pie dough. In fact, in every category except breadmaking, it outperforms the newer, more streamlined Cuisinart DLC-2011N Prep II Plus ($146.70 at amazon.com). If you are bread-inclined, however, the 2011 is the machine for you.

More Expensive Full-Sized Food Processors

The KitchenAid Professional KFP750 12-Cup Food Processor ($184.82 at amazon.com) comes with a 12-cup work bowl, a 10-cup chef's bowl, and a 4-cup mini bowl with a cute (yet lethal) mini blade. It performs all the core tasks flawlessly.

Although the performance of the KitchenAid Professional KFPW760 12-Cup Wide Mouth Food Processor ($229.99 at amazon.com) is virtually identical to that of the KFP750, above, the wide feed tube is problematic because of how the safety interlock system is designed. The tube can handle a whole baking potato, for instance, but then must be placed on its side before the plastic pusher will engage the slicer.