Food processor

What it does very well

• Rubbing fat into flour. Pastry, scones and crumble in ten seconds, and colder than hands can manage. This alone justifies owning one.
• Grating in quantity. Cheese, carrots, celeriac. The grating disc turns a twenty-minute job into thirty seconds.
• Slicing evenly. Potatoes for a gratin, onions for a large batch, cabbage for slaw.
• Chopping aromatics in bulk. A soffritto for a big batch of ragù.
• Pesto, hummus, dips and pastes. Anything where a slightly coarse texture is right.
• Breadcrumbs. From stale bread, in seconds.

What it ruins

• Mashed potato. The blade shears the potato cells open and releases free starch, which turns it to glue. Irreversible. Use a ricer.
• Creaming butter and sugar. It shears rather than aerating, so a creamed cake made in a processor is denser. Use a mixer or a wooden spoon.
• Bread dough. Some models manage it; most heat the dough and over-work it.
• Anything you want in neat pieces. A processor chops unevenly — some pieces are dust and some are whole. For a dice, use a knife.
• Delicate herbs. It bruises rather than cutting, and much of the aroma ends up as green paste on the bowl.
• Whipping cream. It goes to butter almost instantly.

What to look for

Bowl size

A large bowl cannot process small quantities — the blade spins above the food. Many come with a small nested bowl, which is genuinely useful.

A pulse button

Essential. Continuous running is what over-processes things; pulsing gives control.

Grating and slicing discs

The reason to own one over a stick blender. A reversible thick/thin disc covers most needs.

A wide feed tube

So whole potatoes and blocks of cheese go in without pre-cutting.

Solid, simple construction

Processors are mostly let down by plastic catches and lids. Fewer parts is better.

Dishwasher-safe parts

A processor that is a nuisance to clean is a processor that stays in the cupboard.

Processor, blender or mixer?

These three get confused and they do different things. A food processor chops, slices, grates and blends thick mixtures using a short blade near the base of a wide bowl. A blender purées liquid mixtures using a tall narrow jug that creates a vortex. A stand mixer beats, creams, whisks and kneads using a slow, high-torque action.

They overlap only slightly. A processor makes a poor soup — no vortex, so it stays grainy and it leaks. A blender cannot chop or grate. A mixer cannot chop at all.

If you can only have one, the answer depends on what you cook: a processor for anyone who cooks a lot of vegetables and pastry, a stick blender for anyone who mostly makes soups and sauces, a stand mixer for anyone who bakes.

Common questions