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. 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). Michael Sullivan is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter and has covered food processors since 2016.
If an electric chopper is more your speed, the Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus Food Processor not only makes quick work of chopping small foods, from nuts to apples, but can also emulsify your salad dressings. The blades are very sharp, so take care when handling them, but a plastic piece on top of the blade assembly provides a place to hold it safely. Browse our full selection offood processors and choppersto find exactly what you’re looking for. 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.
With this method, the mayonnaise comes together without your having to control the flow of oil. 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.
This test revealed more difficult-to-reach nooks and crannies than we’d expected to find in some machines. They’re useful for rough chopping nuts or vegetables, and particularly good for making salsa. They’re great for rough chopping, just like the manual choppers, but they can also be used for making small amounts of purees. They’re easier to use than manual choppers, since you just press a button to pulse or puree. With all choppers, the results are best if larger foods, like onions, are first cut into pieces. With a Cuisinart food processor, you can quickly and effortlessly chop, grind or mix your favorite foods.
In our tests, we found that a 14-cup capacity food processor bowl was ideal for most people. In fact, of all the food processors, blenders, and immersion blenders we’ve tested for various guides, we found making mayo easiest cuisinart choppers 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.
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.
Consider including a Cuisinart food processor on your wedding registry as you set up your new home. This little chopper has a 3.5-cup bowl that is big enough for serious food prep when a full-sized food processor is too big for the job. It has two speeds and operates when the top is pressed down at the handle, so it’s easy to pulse or to run continuously.
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. They make light work of heavy meal prep jobs, and they’re user friendly and easy to clean. Most blades are made of stainless steel, because they can withstand rust or corrosion. Since the blade will be coming into contact with lots of moisture-heavy foods like onions and tomatoes, it’s a good idea to make sure that it’s resistant to rust.
It offers extra power; a larger, 16-cup blending bowl; and nicer features compared with the Cuisinart Custom 14. The Sous Chef powered through an entire russet potato cuisinart toa60 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.
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. 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.