Forum: cooking.stackexchange.com
Tags: <equipment>
Title: What foods *require* a food processor?
Question: I've got an immersion blender, a normal blender, and will eventually be getting a stand mixer.  Are there any foods I absolutely have to have a food processor to make, where I can't use one of those?    I know I can do purees and mixing with the stick blender, and supposedly pesto too... but I'm trying to figure out if I need to plan on buying a food processor long-term. Thanks!

Answers:
sents: text: For starters, you'll almost certainly need a food processor for anything you need to mix dry , unless you've also got a heavy duty coffee grinder that you don't mind cleaning inside-out thoroughly and frequently.
text: Conventional stationary blenders, at least in my experience, are terrible at this task, and immersion blenders aren't designed to be run dry
text: (in fact, most of the good models come with stern warnings never to do this).
text: Examples of this are: Nut butters, fresh herb purées, meat purées, and homemade bread crumbs and flours.
text: Pesto sauce also sounds like a long shot, but maybe there are customized recipes.
text: I've also never had any luck making cheese sauces, cheese dips, or other cheese preparations in a blender, and haven't had much better luck with my admittedly cheap stick blender.
text: It's difficult enough with a food processor, but usually with them
text: it's just a matter of scraping down the sides a few times.
text: Whenever I've tried to make a manicotti filling, a mayonnaise-based tonnato sauce, a blue cheese dip or a goat cheese mousse with a blender, I've been totally unable to get a vortex going and have had to resort to the food processor to thin it out (after which I might transfer it back to the blender, but I usually don't bother).
text: It's an issue of viscosity, I think.
text: Too viscous, and conventional/stick blenders are practically useless.
text: Now a lot of this might be possible with very high-end equipment.
text: A Vita-Mix or Blendtec can blend just about anything, and usually comes with a tamper so you can force dry or viscous food down into the blades without risking life and limb.
text: Also, some very high-end immersion blenders - and when I say "high end", I mean that they are labeled as "power mixers" rather than "immersion blenders" - can be run continuously and possibly even dry.
text: But I would not want to try this on a consumer-grade stick.
text: I've also heard that you can do some of these things with a Magic Bullet.
text: For those not familiar with the product or infomercials, it's basically a really tiny blender that you can pick up and shake around while it's running - ergo, much easier to do dry preparations.
text: But the effort required is still much higher than that of a food processor.
text: I think that pretty much covers it.
text: If you need to purée anything solid or even semi-solid, you'll likely regret not having a food processor.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/41/Aaronut
score: 11
sents: text: Anything that you want to pulse, so you're not completely liquifying it like in a blender pretty much requires a food processor.
text: Which conveniently, happen to be some of the things that Aaronut already mentioned: bread crumbs meat purées (or even a quick grind for making chili)
text: vegetables (when I'm making large batches of meatloaf, tomato sauce, etc.)
text: It works rather well for mixing some types of dough (pasta, brioche, pie crusts), which don't come out quite as well
text: (in my opinion) in a stand mixer.
text: But for the 'can't live without it' feature of the food processor -- grating stuff up.
text: Semi-firm cheese (eg, cheddar), carrots, potatoes, etc.
text: Faster, and less potential injury than breaking out the box grater if you're doing any significant amounts.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/67/Joe
score: 11
sents: text: You might also give some thought to getting a mini food processor before a full size one.
text: They are less expensive, of course, but they can also do some things a larger one can't.
text: Specifically, they are much better at making small batches of things like pesto, chimichurri or chermoula.
text: In a large food processor, a small batch of those things won't even reach the blades.
text: I used this model for years with great success.
text: (Now I bought a high end stick blender that also has a mini-food processor attachment.
text: This kicks butt but you already have a stick blender.)
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/1393/Michael Natkin
score: 5
sents: text: None.
text: No food prep requires a food processor.
text: It makes a number of things easier–but I haven't owned one (or needed one) in 20 years of home and restaurant cooking.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/201/Bruce Alderson
score: 5
sents: text: I am with Bruce on this one.
text: Food processors are notorius for time-consuming clean up -- often you will exchange the time that you saved on food prep for time at the sink washing the various parts.
text: Minimalists can get by with quick knife skills, and a good blender .
text: (Note: to get chunky results from your blender: do the prep in small batches, and remove each amount as soon as it is partially blended -- just a few quick seconds at low speed is sufficient).
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/6365/Kati
score: 1
sents: text: I drag my Cuisinart out mostly for grating and shredding.
text: Coleslaw, for example, requires me to shred most of a cabbage, and two carrots.
text: It takes just seconds with the food processor.
text: A hand grater and a mandoline could probably cover a lot of this ground, but it would take longer.
text: One thing's for sure: your blender isn't going to help you grate cheese or shred cabbage.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/304/Kate Gregory
score: 1
sents: text: None.
text: The food processor is something to have if you don't have a stick blender, grinder, mandoline, etc.
text: It's a sporkish machine designed to do the jobs of 5 other tools, badly.
text: I just recently got rid of my food processor after acquiring a Preethi Food grinder.
text: With that, a mandoline, an immersion blender, and a good box grater, I find I haven't used my FP in a year.
text: All that being said, FPs are bizarrely effective for pie crust, quick pizza crust and other low-gluten doughs.
text: Personally, I prefer to make these by hand-mixing, but if you do a lot of pie, I could see keeping an FP around.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/7180/FuzzyChef
score: 0
sents: text: Some recipes for no-egg and/or non-dairy mayonnaise are very easy with a food processor with an emulsifying disk and very unreliable or difficult with other tools.
answer_details: author: cooking.stackexchange.com/users/35312/rackandboneman
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
Food processors are good for dry ingredients as well as grating and shredding, although some of the same tasks can be performed with a coffee grinder, blender or mandoline. Many people can cope well without a food processor, and they are notorious for being time-consuming to clean.
Food processors are useful for grating, shredding and dry foods but are not essential.