I won't be much help, I'm afraid, I tend to puree vegetables on a regular basis when I'm only trying to chop. Just one extra second and it's too long. Heck, I even gave up making pastry crust, I processed too long, it gets warm and then I have to put it in the fridge for an hour to cool off and I negate any time savings from just using a pastry cutter by hand.

It' sgreat for cabbage when I'm making a lot of sauerkraut, though, and I use the steel blade to grind pork when I'm making sausage or beef when I'm making meatloaf or pasties.

Use the pulse button and use it judiciously. Take off the lid when you think it isn't enough and check before you give it another whirl. Or, if you're like me, you'll never get it to chop vegetables very well, it's either too big chunks or it's puree.

It's great for making hummus, though, and Jessica's lime/chipotle marinade, and when I make salsa I put the onions and peppers in there and chop the tomatoes by hand so I can have big chunks of tomato in the salsa.

I know people make bread in their processors too, but I haven't.

Annie

I have a Cuisinart and 7 discs....so I can slice thin or thick and shred fine or like you said thin julienne.
When "chopping": pulse the blade with less than 1 second bursts....just blip blip blip....
I grate or shred cheese.......and I also shred raw apples for a little bit of sauce....cook after shredding.
I use the 1 MM slicing blade to make cole slaw, the 2 mm for slicing carrots onions, and celery for soups or salads, the fine shredding disc for carrot cake cheese mac and cheese but the coarser shredding blade for softer cheeses like mozzerella. I use the coarse grater for making bread crumbs, and I sometimes use the shredding blade for chopped nuts.
Play with it....you'll catch on.
Linda C

Pulsations are your friend. Take that any way you like!

For thin slices, I tend to use a mandolin. Even a cheap one works well. The food processor is a little hard to control for fine cutting. Of course mine is an older model, without all the fuzzy logic and soft touch gee-gaws of today's girly-man food processors.

You know, once upon a time, men were men. Transmissions were stick shifts, rifles had bolt actions and wood stocks, and food processors were just food processors. They weren't blenders, mixers, juicers, frappe makers, milk frothers, or nail buffers. Times were better then. All together now!

"Boy the way Glen Miller played
songs that made the hit parade
guys like us we had it made
those were the days
and you know where you were then
girls were girls and men were men
mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again
didn't need no welfare states
everybody pulled his weight
gee our old Lasalle ran great
those were the days!"

Pant. Pant. I'm done ranting now.

For grating cheese, etc, no finesse needed. Just grind that block into shreds, stopping just before your fingernails get, uh, buffed.

Ok - I'm trying. I pulsed onions - ok, little small.
Green pepper made microbits with juice. Sauteed both for a sauce base.

Sauce turned green. Tried to sell dh on that being a feature - bronx cheer. Tastes alright and its kinda pretty since I beat it to death with the blender.

I tried talking to dh about a mandolin - I feel incompetent to choose one. All I ever hear is how dangerous they are. But being a manual gadget would be closer to my heart.

Just in case, I still have the receipt, the packaging and know the return policy.

I can't speak for the Kitchenaid, but if I had the brand that my Mother bought I would hate a food processor and never use one either. We have Cuisinart (several of them, actually), and there is no comparison between ours and my mom's. Ours works much better, and the ease of cleaning is much better also. Linda's instructions of how to do things is exactly right, and really very simple. It's easy to assemble and all parts go in the dishwasher. Love my Cuisinart and would not be without it. We use it for just about every meal.

dlynn....I tried not to be a food processor snob.....but perhaps I am.
You put it well.
Linda c

Also....I would never chop green peppers in the work b owl....I would slice them and then put the slices into the feed tube and cut again into dice.....but actually for green peppers....a chef's knife is easier and doea a better job.

What Lindac said about green peppers. That tough outer skin on peppers doesn't lend them to processing well. Since getting a Chinese cleaver, I don't use my FP nearly as much as I used to. Seldom use it, actually.

A tip for grating soft/ semi-soft cheeses like cheddar, mozarella, etc.--spray the grating blade with PAM or, better yet, one of those silicone release sprays. The cheese grates much more cleanly & doesn't load up on the blade. A lot of people recommend putting the cheese in the freezer for an hour or so before grating. I'm sure that works, too. I can never remember to do that in advance of needing grated cheese.

Food processors do a lot of repetitive tasks pretty quickly, but they aren't worth using for just a little bit of stuff. But you can prepare some stuff in advance, and save time in the long run sometimes:

I do a lot of braising and pressure cooking which involves the use of mirepoix. The classic french mirepoix is about 2 parts onion to one part celery and one part carrot. I personally like to have these aromatics disintegrate into the sauce; they're unpalatably mushy when they've given up all their goodness to the sauce.

So I use the food processor to fix a LOT of mirepoix at once. A few weeks ago I went to Sam's and got ten pounds of onions and a couple of bags of carrots and celery. I used a fairly fine blade (I wanted them pretty finely chopped so they would disintegrate pretty well). The FP made quick work of all that veg, and in the freezer I now have several Ziploc bags of mirepoix, in various amounts.

Having those bags of mirepoix available makes cooking something like a pot roast almost effortless. Throw about 4 cups of frozen mirepoix into the pressure cooker with a little broth, pressure cook it a few minutes to thaw--while you're doing that, sear a chuck roast then put in the pressure cooker. Bring up to pressure, cook for 40 minutes or so. Fork tender and delicious with very little effort.

@arly Is that mirepoix blanched before processing or you freeze it raw?

I tried the slicer-grater blade for onions and got wafer thin slices, was for home fries so that was actually good. I'm thinking applying pressure is the way to get thicker slices, but I can't see how to load tube and insert pusher before the onion is already sliced.

Tried the potatoes too. Silly me. I usually do them with 1/2-3/4 cooked potatoes - I figured out pretty quickly not to ever put a cooked potato in again.

You guys can be food processor snobs all you want - its fine and roughly what I figured from the reviews. This one is a big step up from the murderous B&D, but I'm not attached to it. There aren't any other blades other than what I already have.

If not an invasive question - what processor do you have? We looked at Cuisinart at Macy's and quickly became confused. My main interest is slicing veg in small batches - except in this season of the year as prep for freezing.

Mine's a KitchenAid, the big one, in stainless steel. Has the 4 cup bowl also, I've never used that. (shrug). Elery bought it for me for my birthday the first year we were dating.

It got great reviews, equivalent with the Cuisinart, so I doubt that's why I don't love it. I just don't think it's good for everything. I use a knife for many small jobs, the food processor will sit on the counter for weeks at a time and never get used a single time, but for some jobs it's excellent. I got the five blades, plus the knife blade and that little plastic blade, I haven't figured out a single thing THAT'S good for yet...

Annie

The little plastic blade is for dough. My old Cuisinart makes dough pretty well, and lickety-split too, and it forms up into a ball with the plastic blade.

Something I'd found surprisingly useful is a "mini-chopper", one of those teeny food processors that costs about $25.

bmo, we're not food processor snobs. If I had $1,500 for a Robot Coupe, then I'd be a food processor snob. I'd have a bumper sticker and everything.

Bmo.... I think half of it is figuring out what they are good for and what is just better done by hand. Pulse is good.... unless it sticks! I haven an antique Moulinex La Machine 2 from the 70s or 80s that my granny gave me when I was a kid and the thing is powerful, but the button sticks on sometimes, and when I'm trying to pulse a pie crust without overworking it, that can be a nightmare. Since yours is new, you don't have issues like that yet! I think shredding cheese and carrots is what they excel at. I only use the S shaped blade for grinding cookies and bread crumbs and making pie dough. I have a smaller, rotary crank food processor for vegetables and nuts that is easier to use and takes up less space in the dishwasher. It's truly a trial and error kind of thing, but sometimes, just the thought of cleaning it is enough to make you take out a knife and cutting board instead! Any kitchen toy is fun, so I do hope you learn to love it and get some benefit from it!

Omg, Bobby, that's the processor I have! That thing is a workhorse. It just won't die. I've used it for grating cheese for hundred of quiches for the French Market. Gallons and gallons of veggie soup. All kinds of catering jobs, etc. Mine just started sticking occasionally about a year ago. LOL. I can usually get it to stop pretty quick though. The poor old thing is so old it's cream color is not yellow, but very yellowed. Smiles. Love that thing.

I think one of the problems when trying to mince veggies is filling the bowl too full and then not stopping to push down the bigger parts after some pulsing. As soon as you notice there are larger pieces above the mass whirling you need to stop and scrape down. Usually only takes once or so when doing medium cuts.

Not to get too far off topic, but Coconut, it is a great machine, isn't it? I usually rush out to buy a new appliance when one dies, but I've tried to baby this thing because I love it. It's the oldest thing I have in my kitchen, and even though my granny doesn't remember giving it to me, I think of her when I use it. It's powerful and simple.... when it dies, I will likely cry and have a funeral and burial for it and wait 6 months for a period of mourning before I replace it. I hope that day never comes since I don't use it often. I've used new machines and they have so many controls and the top takes about 45 minutes and a college degree to put on and take off.... the Moulinex is just so easy.... mine's yellow too! :o)

I use mine for slicing onions and potatoes for scalloped potatoes, and shredding carrots and zucchini for the freezer.

The steel blade gets used when I made bread crumbs.
I've never made dough in this one, because it didn't come with a plastic blade, which in my mind, makes more sense than using the steel blade. I could try it, and see though.

It's a brand sold by a Canadian grocery store chain (Presidents Choice). What is nice is that it has a storage drawer built into the bottom, where the blades all stay. No extras to worry about where to store.

The slicing blade is adjustable....you turn the centre knob to the desired thickness.

Those Moulinex, and replacement blades, bowls, and other parts, are available on eBay and from some parts vendors. So there's no need to toss out the sturdy French workhorse when something breaks.

When you say your Moulinex are "sticking", what do you mean? Sticking in "run" position? How do you switch them from "run" to "off"? I ask because I added a toggle switch to my oldest Cuisinart that makes it a lot easier to use. No more turning the bowl to start and stop the motor.

It's so nice to hear people talk about actually using these creatures! Thanks to everyone replying.

@johnliu - how I wish you lived in my 'hood.

Yeah on the cleaning point. I completely understand the people who have two main bowls, but not the mini bowl inside the big bowl thing.

For me, it looks like I'm narrowing down to 2 choices - go big(get one that can have a selection of blades) or go small with a chopper for turning things into particles plus a mandolin.

I'm sorta having a mini-revelation about making what I could make instead of sometimes what I wanted to make - maybe that's the sunshine behind the pain. Who knows where wafer thin veg will lead :)

My cuisinart isn't huge....it's a DLC 10....don't know what that's called these days....if you watch sales you can get one for about $100.....and then buy the blades one at a time as you see the need....or as I did all at once on a big deal sale.
Having the 1 mm slicing blade and the 2 and 3 and 4 inch slicers makes it so much more versatile...
The only thing I would do is omit the julienne blade....the smaller one and trade off for a fine shredding blade for hard cheeses and chocolate.
Oh and the metal blade works fine for bread....just knead it by hand for about 30 seconds to reconnect the gluten strands....they say.

I don't blanch the veggies; just put them in a ziplock, squeeze out as much air as practical (I've been hinting to DW that a Food Saver would be nice) and freeze.

Until I had a dishwasher I didn't use the FP very much because they are a royal PITA to clean by hand. (Mine's a Cuisinart, around 1990 vintage.)

Cooks Illustrated did a review of food processors in November 2010. They won't let you see it online unless you sign up for a trial subscription, but the results leaked out anyway; they liked the KitchenAid. The safety switch which tests whether or not the bowl is secure is a little iffy on my current Cuisinart FP (you have to manually hold the bowl down with downward pressure for it to run); when I decide to replace it I'll probably go with the KitchenAid.

Here is a link that might be useful: kitchenaid food processor.

I did return the kitchenaid in the end.

I got a mandolin and am very happy. Easy to clean and easy to use and very quiet. I also figured out that immersing my hands in very hot water 20 times a day did not promote healing. Since dh took over the dishes and I've let the dw do more, my hands are actually improving!

I am very grateful for the food processor advice received and I feel like I have a basic understanding of what I would shop for if I decide to get one.

Ok here's my best advice for chopping w your food processor - if you're not feeding through the tube put a loose sheet of plastic wrap across the bowl (avoiding the click lock mechanism at the back) before adding and twist- locking in the top piece. You can chop your goodies without getting the top (hardest to clean portion) dirty. I use my Cuisinart a heck of a lot often once I learned that trick!

Bmo, you are such a Luddite.

Sands, just put the whole thing in the dishwasher....beats fiddeling with plastic wrap.

Just to add to the general info here: I like this one because I don't struggle with getting the work bowl to click into place, or with getting the lid to lock on, like I did with my Cuisinart models. It's made by Robot-Coupe and still made in France. The only complaint I have is that a hunk of whatever I'm slicing or shredding remains on top of the blade at the end of the slicing process. I believe this happens with all processors. That bit has to be hand sliced or snacked on. Oh, well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Magimix

I bought my Cuisinart in 1983 and am still using it. I did buy a new bowl and a new blade.
I use it often and have used it hard.....holding up and I use it several times a week now.

Last week while shredding yellow squash for kugel, my 1980's Cuisinart that I got second hand from my mom, kinda broke. The shaft cracked and now the shredding disk tube cracked too. I don't think I can replace the shaft, I can't see any way to detach it. I really hate the idea of replacing this thing. Newer appliances are even shoddier, IMHO, if that is possible. My newer Cuisinart blender/small food processor is almost completely broken up, the plastic on the bottom of the bowl broke so it doesn't lock in place, and the feeding tube is cracked. It's a different kind of plastic from the older Cuisinart one, more brittle.

I use the Cuisinart basically to do things that calls for large batches--like shredding cheese, chopping nuts, making bread crumbs, pie crust, chopping up parsley to freeze, pesto and other herb pastes, hummus. I have never been able to finagle coleslaw.

Lpink, check your email.