opinions on food processors?

[Kali]

Have one? Like and use it? How is cleaning? What about grating cheese? What are the other functions? Can they grind meat? Dough for bread or is a heavy duty mixer better?

[Stinky The Clown]

1. We have this one

Cuisinart DLC-2014CHB

Ours is a few years old and has fewer letters in the name.

It is a workhorse. It will do everything you ask about. Including making dough. Nothing has ever bogged it down.

[Kali]

2. Do you use it every day?

Or for most meals? (thanks for the reply)

Does it slice things like say cukes nice enough for serving? or is it more of a chopping function? I have never used one or even seen one in use. I use a hand mixer fairly often and a blender rarely. But I cut and chop a lot as well as grate a fair amount of cheese. Use the bread machine for mixing dough and have been thinking of moving to a stand mixer or one of these for that little chore.

Do they have time settings or anything similar to the bread dough setting on that machine or can they be left running for a while?

[Stinky The Clown]

3. No, we don't use it that often.

But when we use it, it is because it is the right tool for the job. Our knife skills are good enough that for slicing and chopping, it is usually easier to clean a knife and cutting board than a food processor.

Dough ...... these things make dough, literally, in seconds. There is no need whatever for a timer.

It slices very nicely. Yes, good enough for serving. And it does it very fast. It will grate cheese with the right disc, but I think it is too powerful for that. I'd be afraid it would melt the cheese from the friction.

We use it when we are making something that has a lot of one item - like sliced onions for onion soup. Cabbage for slaw. To make pesto. Lots of different uses.

[tkmorris]

9. I have the same one

And for what it's worth, I have used it to grate cheese. I had the same worry you did Husb, but it went through the cheese so fast there was no chance of heat buildup. Worked great. Even on soft cheeses like mozzarella (we needed to make a couple pizzas). I don't use it every day either but when I need it, the thing just WORKS.

[eridani]

20. I'm finding the same to be true of my KitchenAid slicing and shredding attachements

Big jobs only--a knife is faster for the small stuff.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

15. Making dough

It never even occurred to me that I could make bread using my Cuisinart - which is just like yours, I believe.

So I went and checked the instruction book - always good to do a few years after buying the gadget, right?

I CAN MAKE DOUGH!!!!!!!!

<thud>

[Tesha]

4. we have the same model

I make bread or pizza dough with it about twice a month, and grate cheese for fondue and pizza. When there are a lot of veggies to prepare I use the slicing disk - mmmm cucumber salads...

I really love mine, had it for several years and it's a real workhorse. Fits in the dishwasher too!

[TygrBright]

5. We have what's probably the same one Stinky's talking about.

It is, as he says, the right tool for some jobs. Grating potatoes for hash browns, for example. We make peanut butter with ours. I don't make bread dough in it but other doughs, like biscuits and/or tart crusts, definitely. It's not good for larger batches of dough, I find. Now and then I make extra-fine sugar for making ice cream and merengues.

Cleaning isn't bad, I just take the bits apart and put them in the dishwasher.

I sorta wish I'd known about the Bimby before I bought the food processor, though. I have a serious lust for one of them things. Being as how I have a heavy and impatient hand with sauces.

wistfully,
Bright

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Love mine-- it's a cheap Black&Decker and I've had other...

cheap ones from Hamilton Beach and the like. All worked well for just about everything I did with them, and I found them indispensable for things like grating several pounds of Swiss cheese or slicing up cabbage for coleslaw. Most of them you only get one size grating blade, so things like finely grating hard cheeses like Parmesan are best done some other way. Truth is, though, I only use it for mass quantities-- I agree with the other guy who said a knife is a lot easier to set up and clean for small amounts.

Does pie dough, but my bread dough is too heavy for any but the best mixers-- it even broke a bread machine.

Meatgrinding is a little tricky-- best to cube the meat and have it almost frozen, but even then some cuts can have strings. Serious fruit and veggie chopping is a breeze once you get the hang of it, and it's great for some saucemaking.

More expensive models like Cuisinart and KitchenAid are more powerful and reliable-- I've burned out some of the cheapies-- but don't necessarily do a better job when they work. I got the B&D because it was cheap, and even cheaper on sale, and I don't use it enough to justify the higher cost of a KitchenAid.

I've seen a "wide mouth" model in the stores, and like the idea of something with a big enough hole so I don't have to prep so much and can get bigger slices. Not quartering the potatoes before slicing them in the processor works for me. (Everyone else seems to worry more about fitting hands down there.)

[MagickMuffin]

7. KitchenAid

KitchenAid’s KFP740CR food processor has a 9-cup work bowl and an exclusive 4-cup mini bowl for smaller chopping tasks. It features a tall feed tube and pusher for continuous processing, a powerful 1/2-horsepower motor, premium-quality stainless-steel blades, and an easy-to-clean design.


I received it for Xmas last year. I thought it might be too large, returned it to the store, but went back and brought it home with me.

I have used the mini bowl to make hot sauce. The larger bowl to make scones, biscuits, shortbread. I even tried to make a carrot cake with it, since they had a recipe in the book that comes with it. Bad idea. It grated the carrots just fine, however the larger bowl doesn't have a stem to cover the stem on the machine. Batter oozed out the bottom of the bowl and down the machine.

There are only 3 buttons; Off, On, Pulse. They are also covered so nothing gets inside them. Also the bowl can't come off until you remove the lid from the bowl. Easy clean up as well.


I had a cheap Hamilton Beach. I grated Parmesan Cheese with it and it broke the disk. I continued to use it until it died. I decided I would ask for a workhorse next time I needed a replacement, hence the Xmas present.

I :loveya: my KitchenAid appliances. :-)

Good Luck, Kali:hi:

[sazemisery]

8. My children gifted me with this one several years ago

I use it when making copious amounts of pesto, peanut butter, bread, etc.

I find much more gratification out of chopping vegetables by hand when time is not a consideration.

[hippywife]

10. I have a seven cup

Cuisinart that I bought brand new from a co-worker probably fifteen years ago. She got it as a wedding gift except she didn't cook.

I love it! Peanut butter, pesto, slaw, hummus, lots of things. I don't use it for dough because I have my stand mixer.

Works great! I bought it really cheap because she was going to put it in a garage sale. I'm going to hate to have to replace it when it goes but so far it's standing tall and I use it quite frequently.

[spinbaby]

11. Watch out for the food processor/blender combo

Cuisinart makes it. I bought one thinking that it would save space. It doesn't save space and isn't particularly good at being either a blendor or a food processor. Plus, it's dreadfully noisy. I gave it to the Goodwill, choosing to live without a blender and a food processor rather than live with that thing.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. I have one, and I love it.

I use the blender more often than the food processor, but I've been really happy with mine. It's for the little jobs. The big Cuisinart gets put to work when the big jobs present themselves.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience. Somebody at Goodwill got a great deal, though.

[spinbaby]

18. It didn't work out for me

The blender didn't have enough power for making drinks involving ice cubes--a basic blender chore. The food processor--besides being to small to be really useful--tended to move stuff around without chopping it. And the whole thing was unbearably noisy. If I'd known you liked them, I'd have mailed mine to you.;)

[pipoman]

12. At home we use

the same model as Husb, it works great for most home use. For hard everyday use there is simply no better on the planet than Robot Coupe. I use one every day and they are definitely a production machine.



http://www.robotcoupeusa.com/products/

[mopinko]

19. i have an old robot coupe.

about 20 years old, i think. it is limping, but still works. i have beaten the snot out of it, but it will not die.

and as others here have said, there are just times you need one. i would use mine more if i didn't have the chopper for my kitchen aide. it works better for most slicing and chopping because it feeds through into a container, instead of into the machine's bowl. so, you don't have to stop to empty it. just keep going.

[Stinky The Clown]

25. The robot coupe is a commercial machine

They're built like Abrams tanks. They make all sizes from table top to huge models that gobble cases of vegetables at a time.

[Warpy]

13. I bought a discontinued Cuisinart

to replace a big commercial job from Sunbeam. The commercial job was working fine, but the 15 cup bowl was too big for most of my jobs and the arrangement that allowed one to slice anything from a single stalk of celery to a tomato was a pain in the ass to clean.

The main thing you need to decide on is bowl size. I find 7 cups is big enough for a single or a couple. Someone with a few kids might want to go for the bigger sizes. The mini machine is great for salad dressing or mincing garlic or ginger but not much else. The micro machines are great for grinding spices or small amounts of coffee.

Once you've decided on that, look at the feed tube arrangement. How many parts does it have (the Sunbeam had 6) and how easy is it to get in there and clean it all? If the machine is a pain in the ass to clean, you are simply not going to use it.

I find the machine indispensable for doing things like turning stale bread into crumbs and cutting fat into pastry, although I did both jobs without a food processor for many years. One that's the right size and a breeze to clean is like hiring a non complaining kitchen slave and you'll get many years of very happy use out of it.

Notice I didn't mention brand. Brand doesn't much matter. Even sturdy models like my old Sunbeam complain about bread dough, so you're better off with a Kitchen Aid mixer for that. Any brand will do the jobs the food processor was actually designed for.

[Stinky The Clown]

26. We also have one of the Cuisinart mini jobbies

Yes, it is very limited in what it can do, but like the bog one, is the right tool for certain jobs. I actually use the little one more than the big one. The only reason I didn't mention it is that I don't think of it as a real food processor .... even though it is.

edit/typo

[NashVegas]

14. I Have These

Cuisinart's Li'l Pro, which has had about 16 years' use



and the Classic, which has had only 7 or 8 years, I think




Neither gets used more than once a month, on average, but I couldn't imagine kitchen life without either.

[eleny]

17. I'm glad I finally got one a few years ago

The bowl and blades clean up in the dishwasher, so it's easy to maintain.

I use it for lots of things, even simple stuff like guacamole and tuna salad. But it's great for when you need to cut up lots of veggies for soup. Recently I treated myself to more blades and had fun trying them out to see how I'd like to use them.

I've used it for slicing veggies. It takes a different blade and you use the feeder at the top. I've had success with slicing onions, cukes and such. My aunt grinds lean beef for making patties. But she cuts the meat in pieces first - probably 2" squares.

I keep mine on the counter so I don't forget to use it.

[Stinky The Clown]

21. eleny, where did you get the extra blades?

A store or the intertubes?

[eleny]

23. Amazon

6-by-6mm Fruit, Vegetable and French Fry Disc
Cuisinart 3-Piece Specialty Disc Set for 7- and 11-Cup Processors

The french fry disk makes shreds like little twigs instead of thick fry shapes. But I can't say I'm disappointed. I like making Potatoes O'Brien and the shreds are nice.

[fortyfeetunder]

22. Had one for almost 20 years?

I think I bought it after we got married, maybe 1990, a Cuisinart DLC-11. I don't use it every day but when I do it gets a workout.

I do use it to grate cheese, I spray some PAM (non-stick) on the blade and it works like a champ.

I haven't ground raw meat with it but have used it to make meatloaf, tuna or chicken salad with it.

Never made bread with it -- but there is a pie crust recipe specially made for the food processor. I have a bread maker and a mixer so I'd rather play with them for my dough recipes.

[Gormy Cuss]

24. Have a Cuisinart, use it when necessary.

I use it when I have either a lot of veggies in need of shredding, slicing, or julienne OR when I need to pulverize a fairly dry combo of ingredients. I have ground meat (passable results but not ideal) and used it to make dough (ditto the meat grinding assessment.)

Sometimes it's the best way to approach the problem. Sometimes it's not. I have a jar blender and a stick blender too. Usage really is dependent on past results.

[cmf]

27. I have an old Cuisinart my mother in law gave me

It doesn't get used weekly, but it definitely comes in handy certain times of year like the holidays or when you have a lot of produce on hand. Cheese grating - yes. Grind meat - no, but you can chop meat. Bread Dough - I don't think so, you'd probably be better off with a mixer or bread machine. My food processor is a snap to clean up.