Food Processor Recommendation

by Karen
(La Plata, MD)

Hi Sassy,

Thanks for helping me understand the value of a pressure cooker. I have a Vitamix but recipes sometimes call for a food processor. Do you have a recommendation?

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Sassy Sez: Hi Karen! Glad I could help out -- both the pressure cooker and the Vitamix are major components of my kitchen and my vegan cooking. I honestly don't know what I would do without them! Right now we have lima beans soaking to be cooked a bit later. And this morning, as usual, I used my Vitamix to make a delicious fruit and superfoods smoothie. Yummmmy.

As to your food processor question, the one I have in my kitchen was recommended to me by one of my fellow personal chefs Debbie Hickerson years and years ago. Debbie gave a demonstration of a KitchenAid food processor at a Personal Chef convention I attended, and I fell in love! I bought one pronto.

There are many different kinds of food processors out there, but I love my KitchenAid!

Firstly, I have owned it for years (approx. 8 years) and it is still going strong. The kind I have has two bowls; one 12-cup size, and one smaller 4-cup size that stacks handily inside the larger bowl and sits on the counter top as a unit until you need to process something.

You may be thinking "What's the big deal about having a smaller bowl? Won't the big one do the job just the same?" Well, yes, the larger bowl can do everything the smaller bowl does. But sometimes you just need to make a small amount, such as when I make a quickie batch of pesto, and the smaller bowl is just easier to use for the smaller amount. It would be like using your largest pot to heat up one cup of soup -- you CAN do it, but why wouldn't you just use a small pot, ya know?

Also, I find that cleanup is a snap with the smaller bowl. The smaller bowl can go into the dishwasher, whereas the larger bowl should be handwashed because it has the handle permanently attached to the side of it.

Now, how do I know the larger bowl should be handwashed? Because I used to always put my larger bowl into the dishwasher, and one day I noticed the handle was getting sort of icked out and moldy inside. So I called the company to ask how the heck to clean it.

And this leads to my next reason for loving KitchenAid, their amaaaazing customer service. When I called to ask about cleaning the handle of the processor, the nice customer service lady told me that it cannot be cleaned and it was likely caused by putting the larger bowl in the dishwasher which forced water into the handle. So she sent me another large bowl - at no extra charge! Talk about a good experience. And now you can bet I hand wash the large food processor bowl every single time.

So here's what I recommend. Check out the KitchenAid food processors with the two bowls. It also comes with attachments for shredding, slicing, etc. Well worth the investment, in my opinion.

Hope this helps. xo