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3 Best Food Processors

When you’re cooking up a storm, a large food processor can reduce your prep work drastically and make you wonder how you ever lived without it. In mere seconds it can chop pounds of onions, blitz a bunch of parsley into dust, or turn a hunk of Parmesan into snow. It needs just minutes to form perfect pie or pizza dough. You’ll find yourself using it for things like pesto, hummus, and gazpacho that are a real chore to make by hand and come out too smooth from a blender.

If you’ve never used a food processor, you may find there's a bit of a learning curve. But once you master the operation, you’ll never again find it too much trouble to slice spuds thinly for scalloped potatoes or shred carrots for salad.

Cuisinart DFP-14BCNY

It’s not small, but the nearly 16-inch tall Cuisinart will fit under a cabinet, and at 17 pounds it isn’t too heavy to move around. The operation is simple: There are two large levers to press, one to run the processor continuously and then shut it off and one for pulse. In addition to the basic chopping/mixing/dough blade, it comes with shredding and slicing discs. To use the discs, you attach them to a stem that sits in the bowl. Be aware that it’s a little tricky to click them into place.

The food chute locks into place at the rear of the bowl, which is slightly inconvenient when you’re feeding in food but makes it easier to see what’s happening in the bowl during processing. As the tube is large, there’s no need to cut a block of mozzarella or a beefsteak tomato in half before processing them. While it’s running, the Cuisinart is so quiet it won’t shut down conversation in the kitchen.

Black & Decker FP4200B

In spite of its rock bottom price, the Black + Decker 3-in-1 Easy Assembly 8-cup food processor (model FP4200B) wowed us with its ability to mince, chop, and slice. Although large ripe tomatoes had to be cut in quarters to fit in the feed tube, they came out in perfectly uniform slices, ready to be arranged around a salad bowl or tucked between slices of mozzarella. This Black + Decker was also the only one we tested to cut a complete stick of pepperoni into perfectly even rounds.

What you don’t get at this price is the ability to knead dough. The bowl is particularly easy to position on the base. With this machine you get only one attachment besides the chopping blade: a reversible slicing and shredding disc that can easily be stored in a drawer. The noise isn’t great either. When it’s running it pretty much sounds like a hair dryer.

Breville BFP800XL Sous Chef 16 Pro

It’s big, with a footprint of 11 x 8 inches, and at 18 inches tall, it’s too high to fit under a cabinet. And because it weighs 26 pounds, you won’t want to be lugging it in and out of a closet or cabinet. Once you invest in the Breville you’ll want to give it a dedicated space in your kitchen. With it you get a 2 ½-cup bowl that turns it into a mini chopper and a storage box that holds 5 discs, 2 blades, spatula, and a cleaning brush. While that gives you lots of flexibility as to how you use your machine and store all the stuff, that’s two other items to find room for.

But there’s much to love. The Breville screams quality with parts that glide into place. It has three lighted control buttons: on/off, run, and pulse. There’s an LCD timer that counts up or down—handy for example, when a recipe specifies to knead for 2 minutes. The shredding disc is reversible so you have a choice of two size shreds and the slicing disc is adjustable from very thin to about a third-of-an-inch thick. Among the accessories are julienne and French fry blades so you don’t have to slice potatoes twice to get strips. On the bowl you’ll find measurements in cups, liters, ounces, and ml, maximum fill lines for liquids and shredding, and a spout. The cord, which is particularly easy to pull out of a socket, stores in a compartment in the back. As it has a huge food chute, you can slice a small pepper without cutting it in half. When your machine is running it practically purrs. If you’re the type who likes to throw everything in the dishwasher, keep in mind that it’s recommended that you wash the parts by hand. You can choose a silver, red, or black housing.