If you plan to use it a lot, you may want to spend a few extra dollars for an electric version. Not only can it process more food at once, it’s also as easy to use as the push of a button, so there’s no need to crank or press down on anything to chop the food. Great for prepping ahead, this compact chopper has a 3/4-cup capacity, although the chopper cup has measurement marks up to one cup so you can measure ingredients without needing a separate measuring cup.
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. Like the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus (our former mini chopper pick), this model runs only while you hold the “on” button down.
All we had to do was load a halved onion and push down to shove it through the blades. Iconic Cuisinart® food processors chop, purée, slice, and shred with ease. 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.
With a Cuisinart food processor, you can quickly and effortlessly chop, grind or mix your favorite foods. When this innovative appliance first debuted in 1973, chefs and home cooks across the country quickly realized that Cuisinart food processors could drastically speed up food preparation. Today, thanks to new technology and added functions, cuisinart choppers are even more efficient at making food for your favorite dishes.
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. For the most part, food choppers—including their blades, bowls, and lids—are dishwasher safe. However, to maintain the sharpness and integrity of the blade, it is probably in your best interest to skip the dishwasher and hand-wash. Unfortunately, the blades on these choppers cannot be sharpened, so it’s important to take the best possible care of them. They should last you a long time, but not forever, so if you notice a blade dulling, it is probably time to replace it.
While both models are fine for cooks of all levels, an electric food chopper definitely takes some of the labor out of the process. It will run you a bit more money, but operating it is as simple as the push of a button. Whether you’re dicing celery, carrots, and onions for a pot pie or cutting in butter for a crust for pecan or apple pie, a food processor can be a handy helper in the kitchen. The Cuisinart® Stainless Steel Food Chopper is great for chopping vegetables, hard cheeses, nuts, herbs, garlic and more. Most brands sell replacement parts, which may come in handy after the limited warranty on parts expires.
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. Food choppers can hold anywhere from 1 to 6 cups of food (in comparison, full-size food processors can hold anywhere from 11 to 16 cups), but the most common size is a 3-cup processor. Determining how many people you’re typically cooking for and how much vegetable prep you are generally doing are great ways to figure out what will work best for you.