Food processors 101: Five easy ways to use them

A food processor is one of the hardest working kitchen appliances you’ll ever own and once you've used one, you'll wonder how you ever coped without it! It makes light work of everyday food preparation tasks, completing them in half the time and includes interchangeable attachments that can slice, dice, chop, whisk, grate, knead and shred, plus a lid with a feeding chute that enables you to continually add ingredients as you go.

Watch our quick video demonstrating five different ways to use a food processor, featuring the KitchenAid Food Processor 9 Cup. This particular model can process light and heavy ingredients and includes a work bowl, a lid with 2-in-1 feed tube, a multi-purpose four blade, a reversible slicing/shredding disc, a whisk accessory, a refrigerator lid and a dough blade and a handy refrigerator lid so you can store freshly processed ingredients in the bowl.

Chop, blend and blitz with the multipurpose blade

The s-shaped, multipurpose blade, also known as a Sabatier blade, is the attachment you'll use the most. It chops, mixes and purees ingredients and can be used for many different tasks, including turning oats into oat flour, opening up a world of possibilities and saving you money, by enabling you to make your own flour, breadcrumbs, dips, hummus, butters, salsas and more. A handy tip - when the machine is on Pulse, the blade will mix and chop, when it's on the number one or two continuous setting, it will blend and puree.

Dough blade makes kneading easy

Making authentic, homemade pizza, pastries or bread is easier than ever using the plastic dough blade. Simply add your wet and dry ingredients to the bowl with the dough blade attachment inserted and the machine set to continuous, and watch as your ball of dough forms, ready for you to roll out, cook or bake!

Whisking disc for blending and emulsifying

Whip up light and fluffy cream for fresh scones, emulsify oil and eggs for a delicious creamy mayonnaise, or whisk perfectly stiff-peaked egg whites for meringues or pavlova using the whisk attachment. It aerates ingredients faster and more effectively than hand whisking and it also requires a lot less elbow grease!

Slicing disc, for grating cheese and vegetables

Experience precision slicing in seconds with the help of the reversible slicing and shredding disc. The KitchenAid Food Processor 9 Cup slicing disc reverses so you can choose different sizes and thicknesses for your ingredients. Push cheese or vegetables through the feeding tube where they will hit the disc, which consistently slices them to your chosen thickness so you'll never have to buy a bag of grated cheese again!

This is a great option when you want to quickly shred, grate or slice ingredients like carrots, cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower. Not only does it create uniform pieces, it also catches everything in the bowl, which means there's less mess involved than using a standard box grater or mandoline.

Self-cleans, so you don't have to

Probably one of the best parts of this kitchen genius is that when you've finished using it, simply fill it halfway with a bit of warm water and detergent, then set it to run continuously to clean both the bowl and the blade! The bowl and attachments are also all safe to use in the dishwasher, so whichever you choose, you're not wasting precious time trying to remove sticky ingredients.