November 28, 2011 - 4:02pm
KitchenAidr Cuisinart Food Processor
I am thinking about buying a food processor. I am leaning towards a KitchenAid , but the Cuisinart looks good, too.
There are just two of us, but I do prepare larger meals now amd then.... When family comes over. I do not Intend to use the FP for kneading dough, as I have a KA stand mixer for that...and I like to hand knead. I might, however, do pie crusts in it.
The more research I do, the more confused I become.... The new 13 cup KA. Is awesome, but is probably too big for my purposes. I think a nine cup is or will soon be available. I like the 7 cup KA, but it doesn't have a wide opening for larger veggies.
Any advice or information would be so welcome! HELP!!! I can't even decide what size I need!
Sandy from Cincinnati
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I just got the new Cuisinart 12 cup Elite Food Processer... Awesomely wonderful AND it has a dough blade... kneads a 2.5 pound of dough in 45 seconds... shhhhh!
Sandy, I have the older 12 cup Cuisinart - it comes with an induction motor, which is quieter and more durable than the more typical universal motor. If you want something durable, get something with an induction. I tried to check the Kitchen aid site, but it didn't say. While you say you don't plan on using it for mixing dough, a food processor is the best thing to mix very wet doughs - like Jason's Ciabatta - it does it in just a few minutes, instead of 20 minutes in a mixer. The Cuisinart Elite comes with an induction motor.
Unlike the KA mixers, I haven't had a single problem with the KA food processor I own. It's powerful, quiet, easy-to-clean. It's from 2002, however, so I don't know if they're still built as well.
What I dislike about the KA is the small feeder tube. It's so small that you have to cut things in half or quarter for them to fit into the feeder tube. Try cutting a cabbage into 8 pieces so it fits, for example, and you end up shredding the cabbage before it ever gets to the food processor.
If I was buying one right now, I'd probably buy the Breville Sous Chef because it has a huge feeder tube, 16 cup capacity, and has a 25-year warranty on the motor. (I don't know anyone who's ever broken a food processor, however, so warranties don't mean much to me when buying one.)
Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6z_71Z-3m8&feature=player_embedded
I own two other Breville applicances (toaster and toaster oven) and am very pleased with both of them. They put a lot of work into the usability of their applicances.
Oh, and yes, you'll find a 7-cup to be infuriatingly small. Even a 9-cup might be too small. I find the 11 cup+ to be ideal for home use. Unlike mixers, food processors work the same regardless of bowl size. It'll chop an onion as well in a 7-cup as in an 16-cup. (Also, the large ones usually come with smaller bowls/blades that you put inside of the larger bowl, so you can make quick work of small things like garlic cloves, shallots, etc.) The larger bowls come in especially handy for pureéing whole pots of soup (or when you need to purée large amount of fruit for canning season).
Go for the cuisinart... KA isn't what it used to be. At some point they started using plastic componants in their gear box. The Cuisinart will be a better machine if you want a something with a bit more power that is less likely to overheat. The down side to the Cuisnart is that it doesn't have the nearly the number of handy attachments that KA has and it likes to go for walks.
Bah sorry thought you people were talking about mixers lol.. it was a late night.
which I only use for making pie crusts and the occasional loaf of banana bread and it didn't last a year! I just bought the (I think) 7 cup Cuisinart and watched the DVD that came with it, I love the larger feed tube, and can see that it will be worth the price (the thing was $184 dollars with all the darn taxes and the new eco fee) it seems to have better and stronger attachments, the one I replaced with the kitchen aid was breaking the plastic bits off the knife blade, and I had used that one about a year, and only made pie crust with it! So if this one goes in under a year, I will know I have a kitchen gremlin that eats food processors.