Ina Garten Swears by This Cuisinart Food Processor, So I Put It to the Test

First: the unboxing. This is actually where most of my woes came from. Unlike Ina, I have never used a food processor on the daily and have a pretty minimal, user-friendly, one-button blender I repurpose for all my pulverizing needs. There’s honestly not much to it. You have the base (clocking in at 17 pounds), slicing disc, shredding disc and chopping/mixing blade, plus a small and large pusher, feed tube and spatula. Easy enough, right? Yes—except the instruction manual didn’t detail how to assemble anything. It wasn’t the end of the world, but tedious to have to do an internet search for every basic question I had. 

Once I did figure out how to assemble everything, it was smooth sailing. The first thing I did, before said quiche, was make a smoothie to see how the blades would handle frozen fruit. Pulverized in about five seconds flat, ladies and gentlemen. (The bowl required scraping, but that’s to be expected.)

On to the pie crust. Truly, I was giddy as this is something I’ve always done by hand, which is stressful. (Will my hands melt the butter too much?!) The 14-cup capacity easily accommodated the recipe, which yielded two 9-inch crusts. Do note that without anything to weigh it down, I found the machine a little jumpy while pulsing the butter into the flour—and some flour did escape via the feed tubes, so be sure to keep that covered with a kitchen towel or you’ll be dusting your countertop. Otherwise, it handled the dough like a champ without stalling, jamming or skidding across the countertop as the ingredients came together seamlessly into a neat ball. 

My favorite quiche is the easy quiche lorraine, which consists of eggs, ham and cheese. However, in order to make use of the slicing disc, I also made caramelized onions. Initially, I thought I’d be able to throw whole onions into the food processor, but the instructions dictate that you need to feed it into the tube flat side down. So, I ended up cutting the onions in half, then slicing off the bottom. Friends, I have never sliced an onion so quickly in my life, and at so little risk to my fingers. In ten seconds I had perfectly thin slices ready for the sizzling pan. Same for the cheese. I’ve spent years grating by hand—but that ends now. 

Regarding clean-up, I was nervous because I don’t have a dishwasher and these attachments have tons of crevices. Especially the cheese—oh, gosh, the cheese. To my pleasant surprise, everything—from the attachments to the bowl—were easy to clean, albeit tedious. Obviously, this wouldn’t be a concern if you have a dishwasher, but it’s completely possible to thoroughly clean by hand.