Whether you want to get rid of the hard work of chopping vegetables for salads or as a base for dishes like curries and stews, or you just want a feature-rich appliance to clear your kitchen counter frequently. gadgets, one of the best grocery processors can be the savior of the home kitchen.
Grocery processors can seem like a bit of an outdated device: In the UK, the number of households equipped with a grocery processor has dropped to XNUMX% from XNUMX% in XNUMX, according to Statista. As the ownership of smoothie makers and top juicers has increased over the same period.
The decline in popularity is not surprising, especially as the assembly itself can be a bewildering endeavor. If you have one of the best blenders or a stand mixer, for example, you might consider that a grocery processor can't add much to your kitchen or do more work than your current appliances. But when you discover what these multipurpose machines are capable of and how they work, you will wonder how you managed without them.
Read on to find out how grocery processors are doing, or if you want to get your hands on one of the best grocery processors now, check out these great deals for some of the best costs on the market.
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What is a grocery processor?
Food processors are electrical devices with a base that houses the motor and then a removable container that generally locks into place at the top. The bowl generally has a handle and a lid with a large nutrition chute to accommodate edibles such as grating and slicing carrots.
Inside the container is one of the many accessories that are generally included with a grocery processor, which perform different tasks. The precise quantity and type of accessories will depend on the model, as well as the cost, and the higher-end and more expensive models offer a myriad of different accessories.
The most common accessories are chopping blades, such as shredding and slicing discs. The sharp blades can be used to mince anything from vegetables to meat, thus mixing pancakes or cake batter. Shredding and Slicing Discs make it easy to slice vegetables and shred edibles like carrots and chocolate. They can rush through this often laborious work and create piles of shredded or sliced food in no time. Perfect when you need to create large bowls of coleslaw or barbecue salads or potlucks.
Other accessories may include a dough blade for mixing firm dough, such as bread dough, or a whisk for whipping egg whites or compacting cream. Certain grocery processors also come with a mixing jug, making them space-saving two-in-1 devices. Our article, Blenders vs Food Processors, offers a more in-depth look at the difference between the 2 devices.
So how does a grocery processor work?
All blades and discs are removable and also interchangeable. So when you have decided which accessory you want to use and assembled the grocery processor, the motor cranks the accessory at high speed. In the case of sharp chopping blades, these are generally found at the base of the bowl and chop food while turning, they are useful for all kinds of tasks such as chopping onions, herbs and cutting beef.
Grating and slicing accessories are usually large, round discs that are pulled together closer to the top of the bowl. The nutrition chute in the lid lets you safely feed groceries through the chute to the slicing and grating discs using a plastic pusher, meaning your fingers don't get too close to the dangerous, fast-rotating blades. When you push the food upside down through the feed chute, the high-speed disk either shreds it or slices it, and any sliced or grated foodstuffs fall into the container under the disk. Certain food processors come with more than one size shredding or slicing disc, giving you the option of creating thicker or thinner slices or choosing between a large or small shredder. Larger grating discs are great for grating carrots and cheese, but a smaller disc will give you fine grated chocolate.
The kneading blades are plastic blades that are not as sharp as the metal chopping blades, so instead of slicing them they mix and knead the dough as it turns, they are ideal for baking or baking bread dough. But food processors are not as capable of mixing large amounts of dough as a stand mixer. Whisk attachments also spin at high speed to whip the air into the cream or egg whites and are often disk-shaped or have a mesh design rather than looking more like a hand mixer.
At the very least, the grocery processor is going to have speed, like a pulse button for short bursts of speed, but it's not uncommon to see models with 2 or more processing speeds. Many food processors also come with more than one bowl, the smaller bowls are useful for chopping or mixing small amounts effectively, they are typically in the primary bowl and use smaller blades.
One of the great benefits of food processors is that they are generally designed with safety in mind. Most of it cannot be turned on until the cover is firmly locked in place. This helps to avoid dangerous situations, but it is also one of the main reasons why some people find it quite difficult to mount this device. The container may need to be locked in place and the lid on in sequence. And if it's not configured properly, the device won't start, which, if you don't have the manual handy, can be confusing and frustrating. However, when you know the sequence or the precise way your model will crash, it becomes second nature.
Due to the large pitcher-style bowl and sharp blades, you may be wondering if a blender can be used as a grocery processor or vice versa. Unfortunately, they cannot, partly because the lids of food processors are generally not waterproof, so it is not convenient to mix large amounts of liquid soups or smoothies in a food processor. The second reason is that the blender jars are large and designed to suck each and every ingredient into the blades, while the grocery processor bowls are wider and flatter and are better designed for chopping quantities. larger and also dry ingredients evenly. Of course, there are some tasks, such as mashing, in which you can use either of the 2 devices.