Making pizza dough was our most motor-intensive test, and the Custom 14 kneaded it effortlessly, without wiggling across the counter like some other processors we tried. Most full-size processors come with a wide feed tube that’s fitted with a food presser, which has a narrower feed tube in the center. The larger tube should be big enough to easily fit a block of cheese or a potato, so you don’t have to spend time cutting food into pieces that are small enough to fit. But the smaller tube needs to be narrow enough to keep carrots and other thin items upright during slicing. Depending on your needs, you might choose one over the other, or you might want both. We have a guide to the best countertop blenders if you’re interested in getting one.
If you’re not confident in your chopping skills, both manual and electric choppers are easy ways to avoid spending too much time with your knife. The blades are formed in a wave pattern and rotate for even chopping, while the nonskid base keeps the chopper from wandering around the counter when it’s being used. We tested it with a variety of vegetables, including onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and carrots, and it did a good job with them. Like many choppers, it did less well with green peppers, but they were still acceptable for our recipe.
If the food processor comes with slicing attachments, we test the slicing blade using mushrooms and celery, and the shredding blade with cheddar. The Cuisinart EvolutionX Cordless Mini Chopper ($80) was the only cordless mini chopper we tested, which was intriguing. At full charge , the model can run for 20 minutes, and because you’re not tethered to an outlet, you can complete your ingredient prep anywhere in the kitchen. But it felt a little spooky not to have the final hurdle of the plug in place to keep the machine from randomly starting to spin—and because it has to run off a charge, it’s not very powerful either. This was the most expensive model we tested, and in our opinion, not worth the cost. So whether you have a big food processor you rarely use or you’re on the fence about whether or not you should get a food processor—you should consider this mini food chopper.
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. If you’re typically just cooking for yourself and one other person, you’re probably fine to opt for a smaller, manual 1-cup chopper. Smaller choppers are great for prepping smaller items like garlic, ginger, herbs, and nuts, while larger units are great for bigger items like onions, carrots, peppers, and celery. 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.
Some food processors come with mini chopping bowl attachments to accommodate lighter loads, but if you’re only chopping small batches, all you need is a food chopper. They cost as little as $20, a fraction of the price of a processor. The KitchenAid Mini Food Chopper ($50) has a handled prep bowl like the winning Cuisinart and a two-speed motor; it chopped onions with ease and made a decent hummus. Overall, we found it just didn’t match up against the winning Cuisinart in terms of effectiveness and power and was twice the cost of our budget pick.
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. Between your food chopper and yourbench scraper, you will save a lot of time with ingredient prep, and you won’t have to worry about chopped food scattered all over your kitchen. More convenient than ever, the Cuisinart Elite Collection™ 4-Cup Chopper/Grinder effortlessly handles a variety of food preparation tasks such as chopping, grinding and puréeing. Just the right size for small batches of sauces, slaws, fruit purees and salad dressings, this mini chopper speeds along your prep and cooking.
But you can buy additional slicing disks through Cuisinart if you want them. The included slicing disk makes approximately 5-millimeter slices, which is fine for most tasks, but you’ll probably want the 2-millimeter slicing disk for making homemade potato chips. Like many KitchenAid appliances, this unit comes in a variety of colors to match the kitchen or add a pop of color. Bought to replace a prev chopper,really happy with this one,easy to use and quick great product. Prehaps one does not have the blade lock function, (my mini-prep does not–but it’s not really needed).
The zigzag blade in this chopper performs more cuts per push than choppers with an X-blade, and the blade rotates with each push so food is chopped more evenly. We found that it did well with onions, carrots, mushrooms, and tomatoes, and a little less well with green peppers. While the performance of both models was not bad, we can’t recommend spending this much for less-than-stellar results. We’ll be sticking with the practical, affordable workhorse that is our winner, the Cuisinart Custom 14 Food Processor. A food processor should deliver consistent, professional-quality results when it comes to chopping, slicing, and shredding.
“These choppers can be used wherever it’s convenient for your food prep, rather than you having to move close to an available outlet,” Casaregola says. Downsize from 4 full separate appliances to a single base with 4 attachments. It was one of the few models that didn’t leak at its maximum stated liquid capacity. cuisinart toaster costco It’s also easy to clean and store, because it comes with just a chopping blade and two disks for shredding and slicing. In spite of this malfunction, we were still able to explore the recipe database, which was easy to navigate. The preprogrammed recipes seemed straightforward, but there are only 201 total.
Donna Currie is a food writer and blogger specializing in recipes and kitchen gadgets. She covers kitchen tools and gadgets for The Spruce Eats and is the author of Make Ahead Bread. Perry Santanachote is a multimedia content creator at Consumer Reports. Not having a beat allows her to work on whatever’s trending—from parasite cleanses to pickleball paddles.