How I came to buy it

My daughter won a Hamilton Beach Food Processor at a company Christmas party when she was a fetus. (She has won things all her life--they gave me a bonus ticket for hauling my bulging self out on a cold night, and hers was definitely the winning one because I marked them!) Anyway, she is now a senior. So when the Hamilton Beach safety catch finally busted and I could not locate a replacement lid for a model that old, the family decision was made to shell out for a new processor.

Where I bought it and what I paid

The local "Happy Cooker" just happened to have the KitchenAid 11-cup on special for $179.

What I got in the deal

Mine came packaged with the following accessories:

1) a small bowl and blade to fit in it
2) a plastic blade
3) a regular blade + bowl + top
4) three chopping disks
5) a stiff plastic spatula
6) a storage case for the extra parts

Why I bought what I bought

I was attracted to it because of the easy clean feature of the base plus the reputation of the brand name, plus it was on special, and it's peer, the Cuisinart, was not. They had smaller processors of this brand, but I got the large size because of the size of my family. The old Hamilton Beach had a row of six speed buttons plus the on/off/pulse buttons and let me tell you: it got gunky. The only way to clean it was to basically stick a toothpick in the little slots. The kitchenaid promised much easier cleaning, with a smooth cover over the buttons (only three: On Off Pause. ) It has certainly delivered in that aspect.

Once I got it home...

I did not find it terribly difficult to assemble. You must not try to take the bowl off with the top still on or you can damage it. Sometimes it doesn't quite lock in and then it won't go. When I first got it home, I used it to make a batch of pumpkin gnocci. It was a messy prospect especially since I did not realize how sharp the blades are, and I sliced myself neatly, so my family got a little extra protein in their dinner. The second time I tried to use it, I could not get it to go on no matter what. Of course I took it back. The lady at the store was sure I was a mechanically inept dingchick (don't you just love to be stereotyped?) but when she couldn't get it to go either, she cheerfully replaced the bowl and I haven't had that problem since.

How I use it

I use the processor mainly for pureeing, not for slicing or dicing. I make better time on chopping veggies with my razor sharp traditional Asian cleavers. My family likes pureed vegetable soups, creamed curries and bean dip. My daughter is the smoothie wizard. It also speeds up cooking applesauce to puree the apples first. Ditto for plum jam. Ditto for tomato puree and salsa (skin 'em first, of course!) I also use it quite a bit to grind nuts. Then there's our annual pesto-rama. The food processor gets plenty of use.

What I like

It has a nice powerful motor and it generally purees quite well. I really like the E-Z clean base too. I like the small bowl for small jobs. I don't think the point of the small bowl is to avoid soiling the big one because that rarely happens--I think it is so that the product you are grinding has a better chance of contacting the blade in the smaller space.

What I don't like

One thing I really disklike is the main blade. For one thing the central plastic housing that holds the two blades together has yellowed and looks really dingy. But I could live with that.

Plastic chip smoothie

What I really hate is that early in this appliance's career I was serving smoothie to a dear friend, and I noticed her surreptitiously spitting little hard things on her saucer. How embarrassing! I fished around in the fp bowl and found numerous little plastic flakes. We figured out that the cover for the blade housing had come loose during processing, and had been ground up into not very nourishing, and potentially filling-wrecking chips. The motor is so strong, it ground up the plastic with nary a complaint. And now the blade housing has all sorts of holes for gunk to get in, so it is a huge pain to clean. The main bowl and lid seem a bit brittle, but they haven't broken yet.

Having stated the shortcomings, this machine is OK, but I would look real hard at the competition before buying another one of these.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 179 special