What does a food processor do

Hire a maid that cooks and cleans for you. Problem solved.

It’s not petty shit, it’s just laziness and human nature. It’s also nice to have a night off, when the kitchen is entirely not-my-problem.

If one of you does most of the cooking, sure, the other should do more cleaning. But we share the cooking pretty evenly. We have a schedule, so we each know when to defrost, soak, etc. the ingredients we want to use. And I honestly think there’s just less total cleanup if we clean as we cook.

I do all of the cooking and most of the kitchen clean up. It is much easier to keep my kitchen in the order I want it when I put everything away. Otherwise I’m always asking where XYZ thing is and why the hell did you put it with ABC? Also, my spouse never puts anything in the same spot twice. I also try to fold all my laundry so everything gets put back in the right spot but I’m not usually quick enough on that.

It slices! It dices!

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If I’m cutting more than one onion, or an onion plus a bunch of other stuff that’s going the same place such that I don’t need to wash in between then I use the slicing disc.

I also use the slicing disc to shred lettuce for taco night. If I didn’t buy pre-shredded anyway.

It slices much faster than me but the food processor is a PITA to clean. So the volume of slicing has to be there to make it worthwhile.

I used to use the shredding disc all the time to shred cheese. But now that you can buy pre-shredded for the same price I just do that. I haven’t used the shredding disc in ages. I actually have two: the one that comes with it and also a fine shredding disc. But now I don’t use either one.

I’d love to date an OCD person for this reason. If they want to clean, let them. I hate cleaning.

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Now I’m wondering where the average indifference (between slicing/shredding by hand versus using the food processor) amount is…
Guessing everyone has one (an indifference point, I mean). To me, I think any more than a pound of cheese is going to get food-processed, though I have hand-shredded half a pound, so somewhere in between those amounts.

It may also matter where you keep the food processor. Ours is in a cupboard, so we also have to lift it out and onto the counter to use it, and then put it back away in the cupboard. Of course, it doesn’t rate counter space because we don’t use it very often, but we’d probably use it more often if it were on the counter.

The toaster oven, instant pot, and bread maker have good counter space. The mixer has counter space, but is tucked in a corner, so we need to drag it out to use it. The food processor, blender, and coffee pot are in cupboards, and the food processor is heavy enough that getting it in and out of the cupboard is a nuisance.

those kitchen gadgets cumulatively take up a ton of space, which is mostly why I don’t have them

It’ll be terrible once they identify you as the cause of getting things dirty. Like when you get abused just because you touched the doorknob in the wrong place when opening the door.

I fought kitchen gadgets for years. My wife has a few that I think take up too much space for how often they are used, but it’s fine.

I think the Instant Pot, air fryer, and sous vide things are worth the space. And the pasta machine, it doesn’t get used a ton but takes up very little space.

We also have a somewhat large ice cream machine. My wife is allergic to lactose so this lets us make really good ice cream she can eat. So it gets a free pass, we don’t use it much but it’s staying.

I dislike shredding cheese by hand. My threshold is much lower… probably between a quarter and a half a pound. But I’m a better slicer than a shredder (or perhaps my knives are better quality than my cheese grater).

I use the food processor if I need a lot of grated parmesan. Or if we are grating a million potatoes for latkes. Or…that may be about it. Trying to think what else we might have used it for, and I’m coming up blank.

The instant pot and the toaster get used most weeks. They definitely deserve the space. The bread maker is so heavy we would never use it if it didn’t live on the counter. We dusted it off during the pandemic, and have been eating a lot of fresh bread lately. Maybe not every week, but twice this week. The mixer also gets used often enough to be worth being tucked into that awkward corner behind the toaster oven. :wink:

I have an immersion blender that has a food processor attachment.

Gotta say, I’ve never used either.

LOL

Shredded or sliced carrots for soup, which usually also means cutting onions and if I’m getting the food processor out anyway then I’ll at least slice them in the food processor and run the cutting disc through the onions for a second or two. Then do the rest by hand.

I usually skip celery in recipes, but if I ever don’t then that gets sliced in the food processor.

Back before I discovered Costco’s pesto, I did pesto in the food processor. But I like Costco’s better than mine, and it’s cheaper than buying or growing all that basil, so I no longer bother.

I have a bread recipe where you knead the dough in the Cusinart. I don’t make it that often though.

I got an immersion blender recently. It’s awesome for black bean soup and similar. But it’s small and light, and it’s easy to pull out of a drawer. I might give it a try next time I make an Indian marinade (start with blending raw onion, garlic, ginger, then add a bunch of spices and mix well.) We’ve been using the stand blender, but if the immersion blender works well enough, it would be simpler.

I tried using the food processor attachment last time I needed to grate parmesan, and it wasn’t powerful enough. I may never try using it again.

Hmm, I chop onions and carrots all the time (and routinely chop celery for soup, too.) It’s never occurred to me to try the food processor. That’s the sort of thing I might try if it lived on the counter, instead of under the counter, I suppose. But there’s no way it’s worth it given that I have to lug the thing out.

Which attachment did you use? I’ve never shredded Parmesan… I’d be concerned about what that would do to the shredding disc.

But I’ve used the blade to grate Parmesan many times and it works great. You do have to cut the cheese into like 1” chunks first.

Need one of them little ones. They hold maybe 20 oz which works for almost everything I ever need.

I have observed this as well. And I definitely clean as I go too. Not 100% or anything. But I tend to rinse dishes and put them straight into the dishwasher as I go, and start it when it fills. Or if it was clean & full when I started then I empty it as I go. Something needs to be sautéed for 5 minutes, stirring constantly? Meh, I’ll stop stirring for 10 seconds and put two clean glasses from the dishwasher away, then stir for 30 seconds, then put another two glasses away. That sort of thing.

If it’s a lot of cooking I end up getting a lot done.