My wife wanted a food processor and when we got an electric grill as a Christmas gift, we returned it to Sears and bought Cuisinart Pro Custom 11. It has five blades: plastic dough blade, metal dicing knives, thin and thick slicing blades and a shredder. It also has two lids, an extremely useful spatula and a very helpful video. We've used all of them and every one of them performed excellently. I tried the dough blade when I was making blini, a Russian kind of tortillas. It's usually quite tricky to make this liquid dough without clumps - a real pain for Russian housewives. The Cuisinart 11 made it in a minute without a single clump. I was truly amazed!

We've been using the food processor for almost a year virtually every day and haven't had any problems with it. It is extremely simple to use: just two buttons. My two year old son enjoys "helping" us by pushing the ON button when my wife asks him. There is also a safety feature which prevents the motor from turning on when the lid is not locked in place and blades are exposed.

I found that cleaning the blades may be an issue especially if you leave them dirty for a while. Small chunks of food get into the corners of round blades and it's hard to extract them. I suggest not to postpone dish washing after you finish cooking.

The loading hole is not large enough and you need to pre-cut a big tomato or a bunch of lettuce into two before loading. Small or long items like carrot or mushrooms are no problem. The processor cuts them in seconds.

I wish it had a blade that made thick slices. It's available from Cuisinart, but expensive. Also, Cuisinart started to make a 14 cup processor with larger loading port on the lid. If you can afford it for $500 I strongly recommend this larger one over the 11-cup model. For the same reason I strongly discourage from buying those small, sometimes manual processors that are advertised on TV sometimes.

The bottom line is: Cuisinart Pro Custom 11 does a great job and would make an excellent investment if it had been slightly bigger. So, I rate it "very good". If you have it, you don't need a blender. You may still need a mixer, however for some operations.




Recommended: Yes