The Best Food Processors Of 2022
Mikhailov Studio/Shutterstock By Brandon Schultz/Updated: Feb. 2, 2023 12:33 pm EST
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Kitchen appliances and gadgets tend to have charmingly literal names that describe their chief functions precisely (we’re looking at you, coffee grinder, blender, and salad spinner), but some are a bit more ambiguous. In the case of the food processor, the lack of total clarity is simply because the useful kitchen assistant accomplishes so many tasks that it would be wrong to name it after just one. Chopping, grinding, mincing, pureeing, blending, shredding, grating, slicing, and kneading — food processors handle a host of the mundane tasks involved in kitchen prep, making many recipes easier and, if you’re not super steady with a knife, a lot safer.
Whether you’re a modest home cook or a TikTok culinary sensation, there are a few key features that will make or break your food processing experience, so take a few minutes to consider your personal needs before popping a processor into your cart. In this case, size matters, and it matters a lot. From the size of your kitchen storage space to the amount of food you’re aiming to prepare, both the size of the machine and the volume of its processing bowl are critical. You’ll also want to look out for the accessories included and the power of the motor. Your needs will vary depending on your cooking goals.
How we selected our top choices
IrinaPhVideo/Shutterstock
The good news is that food processors are surprisingly customizable, from size and power to accessories and design. The bad news is that means there are countless food processors on the market today, and even more opinions on how good or bad each one is, so we understand that choosing the absolute perfect appliance for you is a daunting task. Fortunately, we’ve narrowed down the top choice in many categories to help you make the most informed decision based on your own individual goals in the kitchen.
We started with professional reviews and critiques of popular food processors to weed out the duds. With the surviving models, we dove deep into the good stuff — user reviews — to uncover the actual experience of everyday users because, let’s face it, we’re not all kitchen professionals with culinary degrees, and everyone should be able to use a product easily if it’s going to be recommended as a top choice. Poring through user reviews also helped us determine which features were most helpful on each machine, cluing us in to each appliance’s special advantage in the kitchen so we could properly rank it in the ideal category below. All the prices quoted in this ranking were accurate as of April 27, 2022.
The Best Food Processors Of 2022
Mikhailov Studio/Shutterstock
By Brandon Schultz/Updated: Feb. 2, 2023 12:33 pm EST
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Kitchen appliances and gadgets tend to have charmingly literal names that describe their chief functions precisely (we’re looking at you, coffee grinder, blender, and salad spinner), but some are a bit more ambiguous. In the case of the food processor, the lack of total clarity is simply because the useful kitchen assistant accomplishes so many tasks that it would be wrong to name it after just one. Chopping, grinding, mincing, pureeing, blending, shredding, grating, slicing, and kneading — food processors handle a host of the mundane tasks involved in kitchen prep, making many recipes easier and, if you’re not super steady with a knife, a lot safer.
Whether you’re a modest home cook or a TikTok culinary sensation, there are a few key features that will make or break your food processing experience, so take a few minutes to consider your personal needs before popping a processor into your cart. In this case, size matters, and it matters a lot. From the size of your kitchen storage space to the amount of food you’re aiming to prepare, both the size of the machine and the volume of its processing bowl are critical. You’ll also want to look out for the accessories included and the power of the motor. Your needs will vary depending on your cooking goals.
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Whether you’re a modest home cook or a TikTok culinary sensation, there are a few key features that will make or break your food processing experience, so take a few minutes to consider your personal needs before popping a processor into your cart. In this case, size matters, and it matters a lot. From the size of your kitchen storage space to the amount of food you’re aiming to prepare, both the size of the machine and the volume of its processing bowl are critical. You’ll also want to look out for the accessories included and the power of the motor. Your needs will vary depending on your cooking goals.
How we selected our top choices
IrinaPhVideo/Shutterstock
The good news is that food processors are surprisingly customizable, from size and power to accessories and design. The bad news is that means there are countless food processors on the market today, and even more opinions on how good or bad each one is, so we understand that choosing the absolute perfect appliance for you is a daunting task. Fortunately, we’ve narrowed down the top choice in many categories to help you make the most informed decision based on your own individual goals in the kitchen.
We started with professional reviews and critiques of popular food processors to weed out the duds. With the surviving models, we dove deep into the good stuff — user reviews — to uncover the actual experience of everyday users because, let’s face it, we’re not all kitchen professionals with culinary degrees, and everyone should be able to use a product easily if it’s going to be recommended as a top choice. Poring through user reviews also helped us determine which features were most helpful on each machine, cluing us in to each appliance’s special advantage in the kitchen so we could properly rank it in the ideal category below. All the prices quoted in this ranking were accurate as of April 27, 2022.
We started with professional reviews and critiques of popular food processors to weed out the duds. With the surviving models, we dove deep into the good stuff — user reviews — to uncover the actual experience of everyday users because, let’s face it, we’re not all kitchen professionals with culinary degrees, and everyone should be able to use a product easily if it’s going to be recommended as a top choice. Poring through user reviews also helped us determine which features were most helpful on each machine, cluing us in to each appliance’s special advantage in the kitchen so we could properly rank it in the ideal category below. All the prices quoted in this ranking were accurate as of April 27, 2022.
Best overall food processor
Cuisinart
While some food processors come with openings too small for large produce, causing chefs to break out the cutting board and knife just to create small enough pieces for the appliance that was supposed to do the chopping in the first place, this Cuisinart comes equipped with an extra-wide mouth that Steamy Kitchen finds to be a major pro in the time-saving department. Perhaps best of all, despite the considerable number of parts and accessories, the equipment gets high marks from user reviews noting that it’s easy to clean, and most pieces are dishwasher safe, too.
Best budget food processor
Hamilton Beach
To keep the price down, this food processor doesn’t come with a ton of extra accessories or settings, and users love the simplicity of this simple but effective machine. Still, as advertised, this handy appliance does come with a built-in bowl scraper, which means you don’t have to pause every few second to manually scrape ingredients back down to the bottom of the bowl to meet the blades, and users are obsessed with how much time and hassle this simple feature saves.
Best multi-use food processor
Braun
This tool is primarily a blender, but it comes with a large assortment of attachments, including a generous 8-cup food processor bowl that handles dicing, shredding, grating, chopping, kneading, and more. Users rave about being able to complete several recipe steps with the MultiQuick, alternating between easy-click attachments from the whisk to the masher. And don’t be fooled by the size of this hand-held device: The 700-watt motor offers more power than many other similar size appliances, leaving home cooks in awe of its performance.
Best food processor for baby food
Beaba
From fine to chunky, Babycook prepares all four grades of baby food to take your little one from newborn to toddler, and users are obsessed with its steamer function, which allows you to cook food directly in the processor without having to use a pan. You won’t find this on traditional food processors meant for preparing grown-up food, and you won’t find it on many other baby food processors, either. Perhaps Béaba’s biggest blessing to parents of very young children is how easy to clean the Babycook is, especially when compared to a standard food processor.
Best food processor for big families
The Hamilton Beach Professional Spiralizing Stack & Snap comes with an ideally-sized 12-cup bowl and six blade attachments to slice and dice ingredients the way each and every member of the family prefers, including a pretty fun spiral slicer that makes veggie ribbons that could tempt even picky eaters. Aside from a powerful motor that will stand up to repeated use churning out meals for a big family, the Stack & Snap, as you’d hope, easily snaps together for foolproof assembly, and savvy users point out this even helps with seamless storage in the cabinets.
Best food processor for small kitchens
Nutribullet
Despite its smaller size, the NutriBullet 7-Cup Food Processor is still equipped to slice, chop, knead, and shred with the power of a 450-watt motor that some users say holds up better than the motor of larger machines. Reversible slicing blades offer twice the size options without doubling the number of accessories, helping the entire package remain as compact as possible for storage, too, which Homes & Gardens praises as a top draw for buyers with small kitchens.
Best food processor for dough
Ninja
Kneading dough properly requires a strong motor, and the Ninja Professional Plus comes with impressive 1000-watt power that Foods Guy says will successfully produce two pounds of dough after a mere thirty seconds of processing with the push of a single button. Users aren’t just impressed with the ease of making dough with the Ninja — they’re also in awe of the sheer range of amazing doughs it can produce, including great pie pastry, perfect scone dough, pizza dough, and bread dough. Whatever type of dough you’re after, you’ll get it with the Ninja, and reviews show it has even converted at least one former hater into a baking regular thanks to how easy it makes the dough-making process.
Best food processor for meat
If processing meat will be your food processor’s main job, you’ll definitely require a solid motor, and a large processing bowl wouldn’t hurt, either. Cuisinart’s Custom 14 comes with a whopping 14-cup bowl to handle large quantities of meat without stopping to unload, and the 720-watt motor is more than powerful enough to chop and mince your favorite cuts. Some users rate this machine’s meat chopping capability as pro-level, and others are equally impressed with how easily it slices meats without wearing out.
Best gourmet food processor
Breville
While just about every food processor will slice, dice, and chop your vegetables, the Breville Sous Chef will even peel them first, and users are in disbelief at how well it performs this monotonous task. And while several of the fanciest food processors now come with two chute sizes for easy vegetable loading, the Sous Chef’s three-size chute is a big hit with home chefs. Finally, when it comes to the seemingly simple task of dicing, the Sous Chef goes a step further here, too; eliminating any added prep work, this processor’s two-step process first slices and then automatically dices ingredients for you, and users agree the two-step process works well and is super fast. Not only does the Sous Chef complete just about every step of meal prep imaginable, users say it operates much more quietly than other food processors on the market, making prep time that much more enjoyable.
Best food processor blender combo
For both blending and processing, users are mega impressed with the serious sharpness of the Ninja Foodi’s blades and even advise handling the blades with serious care because, well, they’re next-level sharp. Adding to this workhorse’s efficiency, the 1400-watt motor helps it power through ingredients at levels that leave some users shocked, and smoothie lovers claim they had no idea what they were missing by using other machines they previously thought were good until they met the Ninja Foodi. The one drawback some home users find with this mighty machine is that all that power comes with a noise that some liken to a jet taking off, and that may not be great for those living in apartments or shared spaces.
Best smart food processor
Magiccos
The 14-Cup Magiccos Premium Digital Food Processor introduces an LCD digital screen that adds a modern touch that users appreciate. Beyond simple appearance upgrades, the smart appliance comes with three pre-programmed task settings that activate with a light touch and complete the job from start to finish without requiring any human monitoring. Users say these useful settings can be applied to plenty of additional tasks beyond the three listed, making the machine even more valuable than advertised. While there are a couple of other smart food processors currently on the market, the Magiccos machine comes with a super powerful 1000-watt motor and a massive 14-cup bowl that set it a step above the competition.
