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. A manual processor is only ideal if you don’t want to deal with cords or batteries or will be using it in a place where there isn’t electricity. For standard everyday usage, an electric model with motors between 200 and 400 watts is your best option.
Electric food choppers (aka mini food processors) are a great way to cut down on prep time. They take up a small amount of counter space and require access to an outlet (though there are some battery-operated choppers that are cord-free). Unlike cuisinart air fryer oven full-size food processors, electric choppers are much smaller, only have one blade option, and cannot process as much food. Electric choppers can cut up small amounts of produce, while food processors can make purees, doughs, and sauces.
However, we think it’s actually easier to see the ingredients in the bowl when the feed tube is positioned in the back of the lid. Ham has a great texture for easy chopping, with either a manual chopper or an electric one. Chopping cooked chicken breast to make chicken salad would be easy in many choppers. A medium rare steak would be more of a challenge and might not be possible in some choppers.
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Unfortunately, when we tested it and then washed it with dishes with tomato residue, the spoon and cap got stained by tomatoes. For folks who like to do a lot of prepping ahead, extra bowls with covers are available for separate purchase. There are buttons to choose either chopping or grinding, which spins the blade to chop through food with the sharp edge or bash with the flat edge. The bowl holds three cups, so it’s enough for a batch of salsa or onions for a recipe.
This test revealed more difficult-to-reach nooks and crannies than we’d expected to find in some machines. They’re useful for rough chopping nuts or vegetables, and particularly good for making salsa. They’re great for rough chopping, just like the manual choppers, but they can also be used for making small amounts of purees. They’re easier to use than manual choppers, since you just press a button to pulse or puree. With all choppers, the results are best if larger foods, like onions, are first cut into pieces. With a Cuisinart food processor, you can quickly and effortlessly chop, grind or mix your favorite foods.
The customer service representative we spoke to wasn’t able to offer much guidance since they weren’t familiar with the model (they even confessed it doesn’t sell often). Like the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus (our former mini chopper pick), this model runs only while you hold the “on” button down. To operate it, you squeeze a tab on the top of the handle, which we found more comfortable to do than holding down buttons on the base of the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus. Finally, the Cuisinart Custom 14’s work bowl was easier to clean than the bowls of most of the other models we tested.
The accessories can be stored inside the chopper, and a case is included to keep everything neat and clean in storage. Handle of a variety of food prep tasks with the convenience of this Cuisinart chopper and grinder. Weight of chopper rounded to the nearest pound, includes the base, bowl, lid, and chopping blade. Wirecutter is the product recommendation service from The New York Times. Our journalists combine independent research with (occasionally) over-the-top testing so you can make quick and confident buying decisions. Whether it’s finding great products or discovering helpful advice, we’ll help you get it right (the first time).
Overall, it’s ideal for individuals who don’t need a large blender and families who want to make medium-sized batches of sauces. The KitchenAid chopped more evenly than the other mini processors we tested, and it did so quickly. It diced onions more consistently than the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus, and it chopped a quartered tomato evenly—we had to cut a tomato into smaller pieces to get the same results using other models. The Food Chopper also minced parsley cleanly, whereas the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus tore it, causing it to oxidize faster. One task this processor doesn’t excel at is chopping whole almonds evenly, but that’s typical of most mini choppers. Food choppers can hold anywhere from 1 to 6 cups of food (in comparison, full-size food processors can hold anywhere from 11 to 16 cups), but the most common size is a 3-cup processor.
And we didn’t notice any straining 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. Beyond the main blade and one disk each for shredding cuisinart choppers and slicing, you don’t need much else. Many food processors also come with a dough blade made of plastic, but we found that a metal blade mixed dough just as well, so we don’t think the dough blade is essential. You can usually purchase everything from a juicing attachment to julienne disks separately, but such extras often go unused.