Blenders, juicers and food processors perform relatively similar functions. Should you buy a food processor, blender or juicer? That really depends on what kinds of things you want to make. A juicer makes homemade fresh fruit and vegetable juices without any pulp, whereas a blender makes smoothies, silky smooth soups, nut butters, dips and icy cocktails. If you’d prefer a fantastic kitchen all-rounder go for a food processor—it grates, slices and chops up hard ingredients like onions, carrots and other veggies, as well as herbs and soft ingredients like tomatoes, avocados and breadcrumbs to save you precious time. Some food processors can also make dough for bread, pizza and pasta, whisks eggs, whip cream and blend homemade dessert, soup and dip ingredients, so you have the benefits of a food processor and a blender in a single appliance.

Food Processor Features

When considering which food processor to buy, you will need to choose the features that best suit your needs. Do you bake a lot? Perhaps you make a lot of soups or would like the ease of chopping and dicing vegetables quickly. Maybe you’ll want an all-round food processor that does everything. Here are a few of the most common features on a food processor:

• Chopping
• Slicing
• Mixing
• Whisking
• Pureeing
• Blending
• Whipping
• Kneading dough
• Grating
• Shredding

While some food processors will include all of the above features, some food processors will have only a select few – so ask yourself which features or functions you’ll primarily be using on the food processor.

Food Processor Settings

Most food processors will have three settings: on, off and ‘pulse’. The ‘on’ function makes the processor run continuously, while the pulse setting causes it to blend in short bursts for additional control. More advanced blenders may have different speed settings within the pulse feature (high or low), but a single pulse features is usually adequate for most households.

Food Processor Accessories

To get the most out of your food processor, you will need to have a number of accessories to perform different tasks. Some of these will come with the unit itself, although you may need to pay more for specialised accessories.

• Knife blades – common to all food processors
• Dough hook for kneading recipes
• Grating blade
• Potato rasp
• Citrus press or juicer
• Whisk
• Jug blender
• Spatula