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. If an electric chopper is more your speed, the Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus Food Processor not only makes quick work of chopping small foods, from nuts to apples, but can also emulsify your salad dressings. 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. In spite of this malfunction, we were still able to explore the recipe database, which was easy to navigate.
If you don’t want to store the attachments in the bowl, it would be worthwhile to purchase a case for about $30. Christine Cyr Clisset is a deputy editor overseeing home coverage for Wirecutter. She previously edited cookbooks and craft books for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and she started reviewing kitchen gear back in 2013. She sews many of her own clothes, which has made her obsessive about high-quality fabrics—whether in a dress or bedsheets.
A food processor is the best tool for chopping and mincing, because its wide base allows the blades to slice through more at once, so you can coarsely chop ingredients quickly and evenly. Most full-size food processors also come with blades for slicing and grating, which a blender can’t do. They’re useful for rough chopping nuts or vegetables, and particularly good for making salsa.
Mini food processors have bowls ranging in capacity from about 1½ cups to 6 cups, but we focused on those with a capacity of about three cups. Models smaller than that are too limited, and if you think you need one that’s larger than three cups, you’re probably better off with a full-size model. Although there’s some overlap in what they can do, food processors and blenders aren’t interchangeable appliances.
Most mini choppers don’t have hefty bases like full-size processors do, and the Food Chopper is no exception. However, at just under 2 pounds, it has a slightly heavier base than other mini models, which helps keep it stable. And we didn’t notice any straining cuisinart toaster costco or stuttering of this model’s 240-watt motor, even when it was chopping a fibrous jumbo carrot. As long as you don’t try to use the Food Chopper for heavy tasks, such as making nut butter, we don’t think there’s much risk of burning out the motor.
At 3.5 cups, it takes up minimal counter space; even snug kitchens should be able to fit this on the counter without issue. The Cuisinart’s three-year warranty on parts and five-year warranty on the motor aren’t the best among the models we tested, but they’re still pretty good. And Cuisinart’s food processors have cuisinart choppers a solid reputation for overall durability—anecdotally, we know of some that have lasted for decades. By contrast, our upgrade pick, the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro, comes with a plethora of disks and accessories, requiring more storage space. At only 15 inches tall, the Cuisinart should also fit under most cupboards.
Large dice and small dice blades allow for uniform cuts of onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, cheese and much more. You can operate this chopper with one-hand and the blades store safely in the unit. Contributor Ariane Resnick is a special diet chef, certified nutritionist, bestselling author, and lifelong devotee of her Cuisinart mini food processor. She used market research and her expertise to determine the best mini food processors for every home cook. Most food processors are electric, however, there are some quality manual models on the market, such as the Zyliss Easy Pull Food Processor.
The size of the feed tubes in the lid (used to insert potatoes, carrots, or other hunks of food to be sliced or shredded) also makes a difference. Most full-size processors come with a wide feed tube that’s fitted with a food presser, which has a narrower feed tube (with its own presser) in cuisinart air fryer oven 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.