Food Processor
Admit it, sometimes it just easier to use a machine instead of a knife. If you have more than one band-aid on your fingers, than that’s probably a good sign that you need a food processor for ALL your knife-work. Still, even the most dextrous cooks among us need some extra power at times. If only because cooking takes a lot of work - and if you’re not doing this for money, you really want to minimize that.
Anyway, especially for grating, shredding, slicing or even mixing large quantities of food, a good food processor is indispensible. Up until recently, I used one of those bulky, white Moulinex thingies. It worked quite well, but at some point bits of the plastic started to break off. Also, it proved to be a bit less powerful than expected. Lastly, it was just plain ugly, so I had to hide it on one of the top shelves.
I figured it was high time to switch to something more modern, both sleaker and more powerful. Something that does the job without moaning and that I can leave on the kitchen-top. Something like this little baby.
It looks alright and it has all the bits and bobs I need. It’s also powerful enough to shred dozens of carrots without overheating. In short, it’s the daddy of all semi-pro food processors.
So why not give your tatty old food processor to charity? A needy student might still have use for it. Then go for something that’ll bring a smile to your face every time you use it.
For me, it is not ‘machine vs knife’, but ‘knife vs hands’. If you tear the greenery (lettuce, other grass-type stuff) with hands, it’ll produce lots of juice, which is more tasty, than chopped stuff.
Then again, chopping is much faster and easier (and less messy), so using knife is a good option.
Do you think using a chopper (processor) turns cooking into a chore from something useful? Cooking used to be a ritual of sorts, with all measuring, adding, mixing, etc, now it can be done in seconds by some machine. What do you think?