Cuisinart Custom 14 Cup Food Processor

A good food processor can shave off precious minutes from your cooking routines. Used properly, these machines can chop, grate, grind, mix and knead to perfection. There are many reasons why Cuisinart remains the number one choice of chef's worldwide.

The larger models have a powerful motor necessary for dealing with larger amounts of ingredients. The big work bowl is another factor. Until you've used one of these machines, you don't really understand what they can or cannot do. For many of us, a big food processor is a major investment in the kitchen. At the time I purchased mine, it was priced at $399.00, so I spent days doing cost comparisons and asking kitchen experts for help defining just what size processor I'd need. Since I bake breads, and loads of cookies the 14 cup model seemed to be ideal. It would also assist me in my daily meal prep, which often involves alot of dicing and chopping.

This is a big small appliance requiring a generous amount of room on the countertop. It's not  beautiful nor is it  sleek looking. But it does the job. It chops onions in a matter of seconds, grates a pound of potato with ease, and kneads sticky biga doughs like a champ. The feed tube is wide enough to push generous amounts of fruits or vegetables easily.

The processor requires that you get used to the pulse button. You don't want to depress the pulse button when chopping vegetables such as onions, carrots or celery. You can easily end up with puree. Instead short pulses, with stops to check, are necessary to get good results. Hard veggies like carrots, potato, turnip and rutabaga, require chunking in small pieces to avoid getting stuck.

This is a versatile machine that can puree hot or cold soups, mix cake batters or even whip egg whites. The more you use it, the more you come to rely on it for those truly big dinners or marathon baking sessions. This is not a machine to be stuck in a cupboard or closet. If you rarely if ever cook or bake in large amounts, get a smaller model.

Clean up is easy. Though they say the Lexan bowl is dishwasher safe, mine eventually cracked and had to be replaced. Now I simply wash mine in hot water and mild dish soap. The other parts clean easily, and do stand up to constant dishwasher use. The exterior cleans very easily with a Clorox clean up or other multi purpose wipe. 

Cuisinart includes an instructional video, a recipe book, an instruction book and several additional parts. A shredding, and slicing set of discs are included with purchase. I also received a balloon whip and extra dough hook as part of a promo package. The Cuisinart 14 Cup comes with a full 5 year warranty on the motor, and a 3 year warranty on all other parts.

When considering purchasing a food processor, look carefully at what your actual kitchen needs are. By taking the time to really understand how you cook and who you cook for, you can save yourself time and money.