Designed in Italy, the Mini-Prep Plus is easy to clean as it is to look at, with a wipe-clean touch pad and dishwasher-safe removable parts. This mini food processor has a 4-cup capacity, which is a little less than half the size of your typical food processor. You’ll still get exactly what you need, like the cup, the S-shaped blade, a lid, and the motor base. While most hand choppers require you to push down to chop, this one uses a pulling action that spins the blades, like the pull-start on a lawnmower, but on a much smaller and easier scale. A nonskid ring on the bottom of the bowl keeps it from slipping, so you just rest a hand on top and pull the handle with the other hand. In testing, we also found it easy to hold the chopper at an angle when we needed to encourage small amounts of food to fall into the blades.
Ham has a great texture for easy chopping, with either a manual chopper or an electric one. Chopping cooked chicken breast to make chicken salad would be easy in many choppers. A medium rare steak would be more of a challenge and might not be possible in some choppers. This tool has two speeds for chopping, mixing, pureeing, and even whipping cream. It includes a multipurpose blade for chopping and blending, along with a whisking accessory.
A whipping blade is included, which stores easily in the mixer bowl so it won’t get lost in the gadget drawer. All of the parts that contact food are dishwasher safe for easy cleaning. This unit holds about two cups, so it’s plenty for making a bowl of salsa or prepping onions for a recipe. The lid lifts off easily, so emptying it and reloading with more vegetables is a breeze. The lid is not dishwasher safe, and should not be immersed in water when washing by hand.
Not only can it process more food at once, it’s also as easy to use as the push of a button, so there’s no need to crank or press down on anything to chop the food. No need for electricity, manual pushing, or cranking—this cordless electric chopper has a 5-cup capacity and can chop up to 40 onions on a single charge. A low-battery indicator warns when it’s time to recharge the battery, which takes about two hours for a full charge. But if you need just a bit more work done, and the battery is low, a 10-minute charge is enough to handle up to 11 more onions. The Mini-Prep Plus 24 Ounce Processor is the perfect little helper for small food preparation, from chopping herbs to finely grinding hard cheese. Its versatility lies in the special Auto Reversing Smart Blade™ making the Mini-Prep versatile, and it is easier to process both soft and hard foods in the 24 ounce work bowl.
These choppers are usually operated by a cutting grid, and the food is chopped into a plastic lid or container. They are ideal for cutting vegetables like onions, peppers, carrots, celery, and mushrooms. If the food item is on the bigger side, it will need to be cut down enough to fit in the chopper before it can be chopped.
We also made sauces and purees and considered the final texture of the results. The zigzag blade in this chopper performs more cuts per push than choppers with an X-blade, and the blade rotates with each push so food is chopped more evenly. We found that it did well with onions, carrots, mushrooms, and tomatoes, and a little less well with green peppers. This mini food processor won’t knead dough like a big food processor can, but it will make quick work of chopping everything from apples to nuts to zucchini.
If the blades become dull over time, replacements are available from the manufacturer. The 14-cup bowl—yep, that’s where the name comes from—is large enough to handle most home kitchen jobs, whether you’re whipping up a salsa, mixing a pizza dough, or shredding a big block of cheese. The bowl also has enough room to store the blade attachments when you’re not prepping ingredients (because you don’t want any of the super-sharp blades sitting loose in a drawer). Even better, there’s a cover for the cup, so foods can be prepped ahead and stored in the same container. A little spoon hangs on the side of the chopper, so you can use it to scoop out a little of the chopped item or to scrape all of it out and into your pot or bowl. Chopping onions is one of the most grueling kitchen tasks, particularly for people who tend to get watery eyes while chopping—not to mention the annoying scent that clings to fingers.
The blades are very sharp, so take care when handling them, but a plastic piece on top of the blade assembly provides a place to hold it safely. For the most part, food choppers—including their blades, bowls, and lids—are dishwasher safe. However, to cuisinart choppers maintain the sharpness and integrity of the blade, it is probably in your best interest to skip the dishwasher and hand-wash. Unfortunately, the blades on these choppers cannot be sharpened, so it’s important to take the best possible care of them.
The accessories can be stored inside the chopper, and a case is included to keep everything neat and clean in storage. Cut down on tedious food prep with the convenience of this Cuisinart stainless steel chopper. It turned out crisply cut vegetables and nuts and fluffy parsley. Its strong motor blended hummus and pesto with minimal scraping, and its small feeding tube cuisinart air fryer oven allowed us to slowly add oil for fantastic mayonnaise. Though easy to clean by hand, you can also pop the base, blade, and lid right into the dishwasher for a hands-off cleanup. Referring to the food processor’s history, Cuisinart’s Mary Rodgers said, “This style of product was done in several other model numbers with the same look and functionality” since 1995.