A Cook's Best Uses for a Food Processor

A food processor is great tool to cut downtime in the kitchen. Instead of painstakingly chopping food trying to get the texture just right or grating a block of cheese for hours, you can just throw your food in there, and the machine does the work for you. They're just like personal robot assistants that do the job you don't want to do, and they have so many helpful uses.

Fruit Sorbets

Turns out you don't always need an ice cream maker to make delicious frozen desserts. You can break down frozen fruits like bananas and raspberries in your food robots until they turn into a sorbet-like paste. It tastes great, and it's healthy, too!

Pasta Sauce

How do you achieve the perfect, smooth, creamy spaghetti sauce? Mix your ingredients in a food processor. Diced tomatoes, delicious Italian seasonings, and Ricotta cheese are a simple recipe to get the full flavors of a classic marinara sauce.

Grinding Meat

Grinding meat is not something a lot of people choose to do, but it can dictate the freshness, quality, and cut for the meat. Small batches are simple to do in a food processor. To speed up the process, cut the meat into small cubes and freeze them. Also, freeze the food processor blade to enhance its sharpness and remember to only fill the machine halfway to protect from overloading it.

Pizza Dough

These handy machines can crank out pizza dough in a fraction of the time. With all the right ingredients added to the processor, the appliance does the kneading for you. Make sure you add the water slowly into the batch and don't over-knead the dough. Otherwise, the crust won't come out quite right. Homemade pizza will be on your table in less than an hour with this method.

Butter

While it sounds odd, you can make butter in a food processor! After you pour unpasteurized cream into the processor, turn the appliance on for four to seven minutes. While churning, you'll notice little chunks forming. This is the buttermilk. Once you've poured out the buttermilk, you then rinse the butter and flavor it with a couple of dashes of salt. Homemade butter is definitely a task, but it's impressive and tasty when you have the time to make it.

Hummus

Food processors are great for getting the perfect texture for dips like hummus. Using de-skinned chickpeas, garlic, olive oil, water, and salt, you can make your new favorite snack in less than 30 minutes. Appliances like this make the smoothest and best-tasting dips.

Chopping Nuts

It is so time-consuming to put nuts on a cutting board and chop them up until they're in tiny pieces. Not only does the food processor makes it easier, but it also makes the task a lot safer. No one wants to spend so much energy chopping nuts, and the processor does the work so you don't have to.

Which Food Processor to Choose?

There are lots of different processors on the market, and they're all useful in their own ways. Smaller food processors are more convenient when you want to only chop something smaller, like an onion or a few tomatoes. These tiny appliances are less expensive and useful for feeding only one or two people. Mini food processors are convenient for people who cook in different places and need something easy to transport. Larger food processors are perfect for bigger jobs, like dip, pesto, hummus, and other recipes that require a lot of ingredients and mixing.

Your perfect appliance depends on your individual needs and preferences, so take yourself into consideration when selecting your kitchen's new best friend.