Best electric food preparation equipment
Blenders | Choppers and graters | Food mixers | Food processors
Do I really need all of these?
Most kitchen equipment has very specific functions for example, a small hand blender is great for whizzing up small portions of soup but a large food processor can make crumble topping in seconds.
We'll look at the electric food prep equipment we use every week (not toasters and kettles) and look at what they do best!
So let's take a look at our favorite electric food prep equipment...
Blenders
A hand blender is probably the most used piece of equipment - except for scales!
You can:
- blend soups, sauces, baby food, purees, dips, smoothies
- chop nuts and herbs
- whisk eggs and cake mixes
- some models have a potato masher attachment
We thoroughly recommend a Braun hand blender and wouldn't hesitate to replace ours with the same, if we ever have to!
For bigger jobs, such a large batch of soup, crushing ice, making smoothies from frozen fruit or making cashew cream or peanut butter, we love the Tefal PerfectMix.
This is a stunning piece of equipment - it has a large 2litre glass jug (this is heavy) and super sharp blades (take care) and a useful Pulse function.
Choppers and graters
We've included a selection of choppers and graters here so that you can choose to match the task you need to do.
Let's start with a grater..
The Tefal Fresh Express is especially great for anyone with hand dexterity or strength issues - it has 5 slicing and grating attachments, which store in a holder and fit easily in to the appliance. It makes really quick work of apples, carrots, courgettes, potatoes etc but it isn't good with softer produce such as onions.
Our favourite mini chopper is the Kenwood Mini Chopper.
It's size belies it's usefulness - it can make salsa, dressings, mayonnaise, baby food, breadcrumbs, ground soft nuts and the bowl and blade are dishwasher safe.
Great for someone cooking for one, just be aware that this is a small appliance, so it won't mix a whole batch of burgers, for example.
If you need something larger, the Russell Hobbs Mini Chopper is a great choice. It has a 1 litre glass bowl, one touch operation and it's dishwasher safe.
This works well with chopping harder and softer veg and herbs - you will have to cut the veg up to fit in the bowl. You can blend, pause, blend until the ingredients are the size and texture that you want.
Great for anyone with hand dexterity or strength issues or who has trouble cutting ingredients.
Food mixers
If you love baking, you know how hard hand whisking and beating is and that you really do need an electric whisk or a food mixer - here's our favourites!
We love our basic electric whisk - it's going strong after 30+ years and we wouldn't hesitate to replace it with a Kenwood electric whisk. Nothing fancy, not too heavy and just gets on with the job..
If you're a baker, you know that softened butter gives better results. We don't know about you, but we usually forget to take the butter out of the fridge before we need it.
This Breville HeatSoft electric mixer sorts that out for you! It has a heating function which softens the butter as you beat it - brilliant. You can switch this function off when you don't need it and there's beaters, a whisk, dough hooks and a storage case included. A great piece of kit!
If you're batch baking, you can't beat a stand mixer and our favourite has to be the iconic Kenwood KMix - what a stunning thing of beauty this is!
There's lots of variations of the Kenwood mixer but this one has a large 5 litre glass bowl, a K-beater, a dough hook and a whisk. You can also purchase extra attachments such as a pasta maker and food grinder.
Food processors
So... we move on to the 'big kit' - food processors.
There's a food processor for most budgets but the best advice would be to go for the very best that you can afford. This will be doing the 'heavy lifting' in the kitchen and it isn't something you want to replace after a couple of years.
The time saving made by using a processor is unbelievable - fruit and veg chopped in minutes and crumble topping made in seconds!
Also consider looking at processors with a large feed tube - some of these can be quite narrow and you need to cut items quite small before putting them in the feed tube.
For these reasons, we love our Magimix 4200XL food processor. It is a 'considered purchase' and we saved for this item - birthday money, Christmas vouchers..we saved them all.
The 'XL' refers to the extra large feed tube, so bear this in mind when looking at Magimix food processors - they aren't all 'XL'.
This is a stunning and sturdy piece of kit - there's a choice of colours and finishes (satin, black, cream, red) and you can include other attachments such as a spiralizer or blender.
With your food processor, you receive 3 bowls, 2 blades, 2 grating discs, 2 slicing discs, dough blade and an egg whisk. The blades are super sharp and our kit included a storage case for these blades.
These attachments mean that the Magimix can slice, grate, whisk, knead, blend and chop. You can leave this running or use the Pulse button to be in control of your processing.
There is a larger version of this, the Magimix 5200XL which is suitable for larger families but we chose the Magimix 4200XL food processor and it's perfectly suitable for a small family. There's also a smaller Magimix 3200XL.
Looking at more compact food processors, there's the Kenwood Multipro compact food processor. You do get a lot with this processor - slicing and grating discs, a whisk, glass jug and spice mill. Kenwood do have a very good range of processors to fit most budgets and family sizes - well worth a look.
We hope these short reviews have helped you - we'll add more items as we try them - please let us know what else you'd like to see.
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