Cooking For Engineers

[erica]

I'm looking into buying my first food processor (!) and I'm trying to decide what size to buy. I originally planned to buy a 7-cup to save money and because I'm not cooking for a large group, but I saw that Tuesday Morning will be selling an 11-cup model for the same price I was going to pay for the smaller version. Should I go bigger just for the sake of going big or should I stay with the 7-cup? My primary uses will be for regular cooking and I would like to use it for bread and pastry dough - but not double batches. . .

Thanks!

[Michael Chu]

Hi Erica,

I find the 11-cup food processor more useful than the 7-cup. It turns out that when using a food processor, you need more space than you think. For example, you wouldn't want to chop up more than 2 cups worth of veggies in a 5-cup processor because the food needs room to move around in order to be processed evenly.

I found the 11-cup to be the most useful size when preparing such things as a casserole. If I'm working with a small amount of veggies, then it's faster just to use a knife (and easier to clean up).

For breads and pastry dough, the 11-cup seems to be just the rights size for me. I haven't tried dough in a 7-cup, though.

Michael

[GaryProtein]

Defintely get the 11 cup processor. You can't chop more than half a container full anyway. For fine chopping very small amounts, use one of the Black and Decker 1 or 1 1/2 cup processors. They are about $14-15, small, easy to clean and store. They are great if you want to puree or finely chop a small amount or material as a sauce additive or such.