Meals processors are excellent summer time grill sidekicks. They’ll mix marinade for steaks, chop onions for decent canines, slice greens, and purée salsas. Irrespective of your culinary ability degree, these sensible instruments can deal with facet dishes and just about any fast meal prep so as to concentrate on grilling—or entertaining friends.
“Even skilled dwelling cooks preferring to slice and cube by hand discover loads of makes use of for his or her meals processor,” says Tara Casaregola, the engineer who oversees CR’s kitchen equipment testing. The complete-sized meals processors we check are available quite a lot of sizes and capacities, starting from 3 cups to a formidable 18 cups. They’re too massive for processing small volumes of meals, akin to minced garlic or chopped herbs and nuts. Some meals processors include mini chopping bowl attachments to accommodate lighter hundreds, however in case you’re solely chopping small batches, all you want is a meals chopper. They value as little as $20, a fraction of the value of processors—which may value as a lot as $500.
Within the lab, we consider every mannequin’s capacity to cut almonds and onions uniformly, grate Parmesan cheese, and purée peas and carrots right into a clean combination. We additionally measure noise, as a result of whereas all fashions are noisy, some are far more grating than others. If the meals processor comes with slicing attachments, we check the slicing blade utilizing mushrooms and celery, and the shredding blade with cheddar.
Learn on for evaluations of the highest meals processors and meals choppers from Shopper Studies’ exams, listed in alphabetical order. Test our full meals processor and meals chopper scores and shopping for information for extra particulars. We’ve additionally rounded up one of the best meals processors and choppers for beneath $100 in case you’re seeking to spend much less.
