There comes a time in every food-processor’s life when the slings and arrows of outrageous recipes simply become too much to bear. That time came for my trusty Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus several months ago when I attempted to pit a handful of olives by taking them for a spin in the Mini. I learned two things from this: Spanish olive pits are *hard*, and Cuisinart blades aren’t invincible.
A Cheap Bastard (with bed head)
It took me a while to replace the unit because I’ve been busy working on a book and updating my business web site and so have spent less time cooking at home; also I am a cheap bastard.
Last week though my hunger for meatballs got the best of me and I started to do some research on food processors; this mainly consisted of reading the Amazon reviews of two comparably priced machines: the
KitchenAid KFC3100BU a.k.a. the Chef Series Food Chopper and my trusty old
Cuisinart DLC-2ABC a.k.a. the Mini Prep Plus. The KitchenAid, received an overall four and a half stars from Amazon reviewers, the Cuisinart only three. Score one for the KitchenAid.
Plus, the Cuisinart wasn’t perfect, while I’ve never noticed a drop in power, the motor frequently smells like its burning out whenever I use it for heavy tasks like grinding meat or large quantities of thick ingredients, and sometimes if I loaded it down with too much stuff the ingredients on the top would stay on top and never get chopped up. Some of the KitchenAid reviews mentioned this specifically, and stated that the KFC3100BU had a “reverse spiral action” that pulled the food down into the blade. Maybe it was time to try something new?
Finally though, what made my decision was that my local grocery store carried the KitchenAid. Laziness is one of the defining characteristics of a bachelor gourmet, and so my decision was made. I bought the KitchenAid, and a Salter 5 lb digital scale (to be reviewed at some point later on when I’ve had a chance to put it through its paces). I headed straight home after this so I could try out my new toys, cackling gleefully all the way.
So now the competition begins…
The Competitors
In the blue chassis, weighing in at 4.00 pounds, the Chintzy Chopper from China, KitchenAid KFC3100BU!
In the fake brushed chrome chassis, weighing in at 4.00 pounds, the Silver Slicer, Cuisinart DLC-2ABC!!!!
Let’s get ready to crumble!!!!!!!!
Actually we won’t do that, because as I explained earlier, the Cuisinart went tits up several months ago, so what I did instead is put the KitchenAid through the most demanding recipe that I make: pasta and meatballs. This requires you to grind up bread, parmesan and pork in separate batches and the Cuisinart blows through this recipe with no problems at all (provided you don’t overload it with too much pork).
So first, the bread. I put some old crusty sourdough into the machine and hit the switch. The blade hadn’t spun for more than half a second before it jammed. I loosened it. It jammed again. I tried removing some of the bread to give it more room. It jammed. No matter what I tried, the bread jammed.
But I *really* wanted some meatballs, so I went ahead and crushed the bread in a plastic bag with a meat tenderizer. To be fair, the bread was homemade sourdough French bread, the kind that consists of nothing but flour, salt, water and starter, which tastes fantastic when it first comes out of the oven but turns into a brick in less than a day. So I decided to give the KitchenAid another chance and used it to grind up the cheese.
I cut off several small chunks of parmesan and hit the switch. The cheese immediately caught on the blades, causing it to, yes, jam. So I took the cheese out and cut it up into smaller pieces. It jammed. Finally after three or four “de-jammings” I managed to get the cheese to spin, but after giving it thirty seconds to grind it was obvious that the BB sized pieces of parm' were just not going to get any smaller.
Now, granted, if this test were even remotely scientific, I’d come up with a list of tasks for each machine to complete with identical ingredients. But it isn’t, and the reason for that is because the KitchenAid was such a worthless hunk of junk that there was no need to give it a fair shot, it failed miserably on my favorite recipe. (Also I’m a cheap bastard, see above, and a fair test would require me to buy a new Cuisinart too.) And before anyone tries to tell me that I was doing things wrong, say that if I’d chopped the cheese smaller or the bread in a different shape things would have come out right, let me just point out that the Cuisinart JUST WORKS, whether I put in the pieces big or small, fat or skinny, it chops them all. The Cuisinart did eventually fail, but only due to user stupidity.
So the winner of the inaugural Bachelor Gourmet’s Appliance Smackdown is, of course, the Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus, with a big first round knock-out. If you inspect the picture closely you’ll see the receipt for the KitchenAid sitting on the top of the box, this sucker is going back to the store tomorrow. Anyone know a store in Seattle that sells replacement blades for Cuisinart products?