I can't believe this thing only cost $28. I've never owned a food processor in my life - I've always had this weird thing about having to chop everything by hand. And I cook a LOT. But I was finally thwarted by falafel - I had a grinder attachment for my KitchenAid that was just not cutting it, and my blender wasn't cutting it for the hummus I also love to make on the regular. Both made these simple foods take too long to prepare and make a huge mess. So I decided to initiate the Food Processor Experiment. This thing had great reviews so I thought it would probably be a good test subject.
I had a batch of soaked chickpeas on deck and ready to go when this thing arrived in the mail (oh I love Prime.. as close as you can get to instant gratification). The first thing I threw in there was a big bunch of cilantro and parsley. Packed to the brim. Pulverized to perfectly uniform bits in seconds. I think I screamed. I took out the greens and next I threw in five cloves of whole garlic. Instantly shredded into fairly uniform bits, the size you'd get from chopping by hand. Then added two huge jalapeno peppers and some onions. Five seconds later, they are obliterated. At this point, I'm snapchatting the before and after photos of my chopped food to my sister and boyfriend, who are laughing at me. After all, I'm 27 years old, it's not like I've never witnessed modern technology before.
Finally, I removed the previously mentioned ingredients and did the beans. Amazingly, they didn't stick, whole beans didn't float at the top while the bottom layer was turned to mush, but I think I did about 4-5 cups of whole beans at a time and let it go for 45-60 seconds and the falafel was perfectly ground with excellent uniform particle size and cohesion. They were my best batch yet.
Since then I've been tossings things in there willy nilly, just to try out the shredding disc as well as the chopping blade. Made some almond and hazelnut flour from raw nuts. Sliced a whole bunch of celery and beets, cabbage, onion, with the shredding disc.
My favorite things:
- It's idiot proof and easy to click the bowl onto the base with one hand.
- Easy to clean
- The chopping blades are spaced well so that food at the top is drawn down toward the blade and your whole substance receives a uniform chop.
- 8-cups is perfect. I think 10 cups would be too big for anything, really. I have made batches of food big enough for 10 people with this size easily.
My only gripes with this processor...
- It only has two speeds: 1 "Really High", and 2 "Insanely High". The Pulse function pulses at "Insanely High." So you can't really coarsely chop things like greens.
- It is extremely loud. Think: laying your face directly against a vacuum cleaner. Or, a cheap hand mixer at its highest speed. If you live in an apartment your neighbors will definitely know when you're a-processin.' On the other hand, it'll only be for a few seconds because dang this thing is powerful.
- Because of the high speeds, it is difficult to get uniform slicing when doing small/soft things like green onions or cucumbers with the shredding/slicing disc. It is just so fast that after the green onions get past the point where you can hand-feed it into the chute, they just get sucked in and shredded from whichever angle they hit the slicing blade. So, I had a bunch of green onions which were perfectly tiny cross sections, and a bunch of long skinny shreds of green onion that had been sliced longitudinally rather than axially. This wasn't a problem for harder things like onion, beets, and cabbage. which I was fine with being sliced that way. (If anyone has ideas on maneuvering around this, leave a comment!)
If I could change anything, I would give it a low speed setting.
Nevertheless, that doesn't change my overall starry-eyed adoration for this amazing contraption. It is an excellent value and super powerful for its price. I am very, very happy with this purchase. $30 well spent.
Hamilton Beach Food Processors rely on robust motors to chop, slice, shred, mix and puree just about anything you put in the bowl. In-bowl blade storage and dishwasher-safe parts make these food processors easy to clean and store and some models offer special conveniences like reversible slicing and shredding discs and continuous feed chutes.
- Enter your model number above to make sure this fits.
- Fast and versatile - quickly chop onions, slice salad ingredients, shred cabbage, grate cheese, mix sauces, or prepare pesto
- 2 speeds plus pulse control
- Stainless steel slice / shred disc and chopping blade & S-Blade for chopping, mixing & pureeing
- Powerful 450 watt motor
- Lid flips over for compact storage
