Dec 27, 2023 9:00 AM

The Best Food Processors for Creative Cooking

Chop, grate, grind, crush, and puree with ease using the perfect tool for the job.

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If you’ve already got a blender, stand mixer, or juicer, you may feel like you’re all set for prepping for meals, but—as the best chefs will agree—no kitchen should be without a decent food processor. The perfect multitasking tool for slicing, dicing, chopping, and more, with a good food processor you’ll always feel like you’ve got an extra pair of hands helping you in the kitchen.

The latest appliances can chop, shred, slice, grind, grate, dice, knead, and puree at the touch of a button. A food processor is particularly good for shredding vegetables to spice up salads and for smoothing homemade sauces such as pesto or hummus. You can also use it to puree ingredients for whatever stage you’re at in life—be it for weaning a 6-month-old baby or making champagne Bellinis for a Friday night.

In our pick, we’ve included a range of tall and small designs to suit both large and petite kitchen cupboards. To assess the performance of each food processor, we used them to prepare hummus with chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, tahini, and sea salt. We also used them to chop carrots evenly to hide in Jamie Oliver’s Versatile Meat Ragu recipe, which is delicious in pies or served with pasta and rice. We’ve also rated each food processor on versatility, design, and how many useful attachments the set includes.

For more of WIRED's kitchen guides, check out our Best Stand Mixers, Best Blenders, Best Air Fryers, Best Electric Kettles, and the Best Gear for Small Kitchens.

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Photograph: Tanja Ivanova/Getty Images
What to Look for
Look for space-saving designs, which store neatly and are unobtrusive on the worktop when not in use. Bowl capacity matters, however, so think about how many people you need to cook for before you buy. Small food processors vary from 6- to 9-cup capacity, while medium food processors range from 10 to 13, and large designs go up to 16 cups. Smaller “food choppers” have a much smaller capacity of 3 to 5 cups.
Food choppers work well for basic tasks such as chopping nuts, mixing dips, and blitzing herbs, but they don’t tend to come with many accessories. Food processors have more discs and blade accessories to chop, slice, grate, puree, mix, knead dough, and mince meat, so you can perform a much wider range of tasks with ease. It’s worth checking whether the food processor offers additional attachments such as a whisk or citrus press so you can grow your set further down the line. Also, look for an ergonomically designed feeding chute that allows you to easily insert ingredients while in use.
Photograph: KitchenAid
Best All-Rounder
KitchenAid 9 Cup Food Processor
KitchenAid has been making classic countertop appliances since 1919, and you’ll no doubt be familiar with its stand mixer and blender models. This classic 9-cup food processor comes in four colors, including my favorite Empire Red finish—there are silver and black finishes too. I think the slim body and good capacity on this 9-cup model makes it the perfect size for a standard-sized kitchen and family of four. It's neatly designed with blades and discs that can be stored directly in the bowl when not in use and an integrated cord wrap that fits neatly in the base.
Onboard, it has a “multipurpose four-blade” that can tackle a range of tasks—mincing meat, chopping raw carrots, or blending salsa to your preferred texture—with pleasing results. There’s also a dough blade, slicing and julienne discs, and a whisk accessory. I enjoyed using this KitchenAid. It’s well thought-out, and everything lifts off and clicks back into place smoothly. A two-in-one feed tube on the hinged lid has a small opening for drizzling oil, which was particularly useful while making the hummus.
~~$210~~ $145 at Amazon
$120 at KitchenAid
$108 at Best Buy

Photograph: Cuisinart
Runner-Up
Cuisinart Evolution X Cordless Mini Chopper
What makes this Cuisinart 4-cup mini chopper stand out is the fact that it’s cordless. It’s surprisingly powerful for a design that can be recharged with a USB cord and takes around two hours to charge fully. While this may not appeal to everyone, it does give you a continuous cordless run time of 20 minutes, which is enough to chop nuts for your homemade granola or whiz up ingredients for guacamole. It performed well for me on both of these tasks, and I was able to whiz chickpeas up just enough to achieve a nice grainy texture. The flexibility of the cordless meant I could move it around freely from the main countertop to my kitchen island.
While the 4-cup capacity is small, it does provide enough space to cook decent portions for up to six. With two buttons—one for chopping and one for grinding—the controls are easy to use here too and its tempo was surprisingly even, until it ran out of power and needed a recharge. Note: The US and UK versions of this processor differ slightly in colorway and name, but performance is otherwise the same.
~~$80~~ $28 at Amazon
$80 at Cuisinart
$84 at Walmart
Photograph: Magimix
Simple Yet Effective Controls
Magimix 4200XL Food Processor
Magimix appliances have been handcrafted since 1971 in Burgundy, France—a region known for its gastronomy. Beautifully sober in its styling, with a body made from metalized plastic, BPA-free plastic, and stainless steel, this food processor looks good on the countertop and is wonderfully compact.
The 4200XL comes with three bowls (6 cups, 12 cups, and 14 cups) that conveniently stack inside one another. There’s also a separate storage compartment to house all its blade accessories so they don’t get lost in your cupboard. It comes with a good range of attachments and has a stainless steel Sabatier knife blade for chopping, crushing, mixing, and blending, as well as two slicing discs, two grating discs, an egg whisk, and a dough blade. That sounds like a lot, but I found it easy to switch between attachments.
The Magimix’s 950-watt motor really packed a punch, but it’s also one of the quieter models I’ve tried. Simple control buttons including Auto, Pulse, and Stop make operation simple, and the machine can automatically adjust the power to suit ingredients in the bowl. Carrots and zucchini sliced effortlessly inside, while the chickpeas whizzed up in seconds for hummus with a lovely silky texture.
$449 at NutriMill

Photograph: Breville
Stylish Stainless Steel Design
Breville The Kitchen Whizz 15 Pro
Going under the Breville brand in the States and using the Sage name in the UK, everything about The Kitchen Whizz 15 Pro is bold. It comes with the Breville/Sage signature brushed stainless steel finish that matches its attractive range of coffee makers, air fryers, bread makers, and other kitchen appliances. It’s a head-turner in terms of performance and size. While it is noisy, there’s a lot to admire about the design. It features a direct-drive, high-torque 2,000-watt motor that leaves no ingredients behind and can chop, mix, and blend raw ingredients in a matter of seconds.
You’ll need space to house this design, but the 2.5-cup bowl sits neatly inside the larger 10-cup bowl (2.5 liters). I found that the 2.5-cup bowl works well for smaller dishes such as nut butters, salsas, and dips, and the larger bowl was handy for slicing raw carrots, peppers, celery, zucchini, and the like. The Kitchen Whizz also has two chute sizes to feed ingredients through, which prevents items such as carrots and celery from tipping over when inserted. I love the look and functionality of its control panel, which has an LED display with a countdown timer. Like the Magimix food processor in this roundup, it also conveniently comes with a storage box for housing all its attachments and cleaning utensils.
$699 at Breville
Photograph: Ninja
A Versatile 3-in-1
Ninja Foodi Power Blender & Processor System
With a flexible design, the Ninja Foodi Power is so much more than a food processor, as you can easily interchange the cups and blades to make this work like an everyday blender for soups and smoothies. Just like the Ninja Professional Plus Kitchen System with Auto-iQ that came out top in our Best Blenders test, this model has a motor base that is satisfyingly sturdy on the worktop. This meant I didn’t have to worry about walking away and multitasking when I was waiting for it to process ingredients. At 1,200 watts, it’s powerful too and pulls the ingredients down effectively so there’s no need to shake the jug to get the last bits to process.
In terms of style, the design is refreshingly modern to suit both contemporary and classic schemes alike. You get a 2.1-liter jug in the set that works well with either the crushing and chopping blade or the dough blade, plus a 400-millileter bowl with a hybrid edge blade for smaller tasks. I found the blades highly effective but very sharp, so you need to take care when washing up. A simple rinse with warm water straight after use kept them fresh and shiny and ready for my next task.
$149 at Walmart
$200 at Best Buy

Emily Peck is a journalist with 20-plus years of experience writing about interiors, food, well-being, gardens, technology, and everything in between. She has held in-house positions at the BBC and Ideal Home magazine, and regularly contributes to WIRED, GQ, The Telegraph, Livingetc, Techradar and GoodtoKnow.

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