Costs more, does better

After a terrible experience with a Euro-Pro Quad-blade food processor (see another review), I decided it was time to stop being frugal and look for the best quality machine I could afford. After all, with three children in the house, my wife uses this appliance almost daily. A food processor is supposed to make life easier, and she deserves the best!

Eventually we narrowed our choices down to either a Kitchen Aid or the Cuisinart Custom Prep 11. Both looked like excellent choices, but we ended up choosing the Cuisinart for the simple reason that it was available at our local Costco for $169, a very good price.

This is a very elegant looking machine, almost sleek compared to some others we̢۪d looked at. As packaged at Costco it comes with two 11-cup bowls, one stainless steel chopping blade (They warn you that it is VERY sharp, and we can testify to this due to an unfortunate slip while cleaning), a stainless steel dough blade, a 4mm slicing disk, a medium shredding disc, and an ultra-fine shredder. The cover has a huge wide-mouth feed tube, but there is a clever plunger-within-the-plunger assembly that allows you to feed narrow foods such as carrots through the smaller opening. There is also a handy storage case for the shredding/slicing blades.

Of course we had to test the machine immediately when we opened the box. My wife put in some peppers and onions for our spaghetti sauce and hit the on button for high speed. "Oh no, Honey. It's very slow! I hope this is going to work." We turned off the machine and took a look inside the bowl to discover a finely chopped slurry of veggies. The machine wasn't slow. It was QUIET! Amazingly quiet. Our old food processor could wake the dead and danced all over the counter while doing so. This beauty just hums while making short work of any project we give it.

We have not tried the grater, but the slicer makes beautiful perfect slices of any veggies. The power is awesome, and the blades are remarkably sharp.

Another great feature is clean up. The bowl and lid are well designed, and there are no little nooks and crannies where bits of food become lodged. Everything is dishwasher safe. To deal with the sharp blades, Cuisinart suggests that you put dirty blades back in the machine with a little warm water then pulse several times to clean them. Works like a charm.

There are only four buttons on the front of the machine: Off, On, Pulse, and Low. The slow speed is for making dough. I'm not a big fan of using food processors for making breads and pie crusts, but the video that comes packaged with the unit is convincing enough that I'll give it a try one of these days.

Also packaged with the unit is an instruction booklet with lots of recipes, and another hard cover book with gourmet recipes. If only I had time to try all of the ideas!

The only negative I can come up with is that there is only one slicing blade and the two shredders. I'd like to see a fine and a coarse slicer and maybe a french fry slicer to make this great machine even more useful.

Let's face it. A food processor is a motor with a whirling blade. But the well-thought-out design of this unit makes it a pleasure to use. That means it will stay on the counter instead of in a cupboard, and that makes it worth the extra cost to us. We highly recommend it.