Blender vs Food Processor – Which One to Choose for Your Kitchen?

It is unde­bat­able that both a food proces­sor and a blender are inte­gral kitchen appli­ances that assist us in car­ry­ing out most culi­nary tasks. Both of them have many sim­i­lar­i­ties that make many peo­ple think they are made to per­form sim­i­lar roles.

For instance, both have a base motor, rotat­ing blades, and a clear body. How­ev­er, culi­nary arts pro­fes­sion­als have proved that these two kitchen devices dif­fer large­ly and don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly sub­sti­tute each oth­er. There­fore, the user must cor­rect­ly decide the cas­es where each of these two devices is used.

Read More: The Four Kitchen Knives You Need for Home Cooking

Though the two kitchen appli­ances seem equal­ly ver­sa­tile, a food proces­sor comes with mul­ti­ple attach­ments and can per­form a wider range of food prep activ­i­ties. A food proces­sor is the best option for mak­ing pie crust. Sim­i­lar­ly, it is a pow­er­ful tool when it comes to the prepa­ra­tion of baby food. More­over, it can quick­ly puree large batch­es of veg­eta­bles and fruits.

On the oth­er hand, a blender usu­al­ly comes with only one jug and excels in mak­ing smooth­ies from soft and hard ingre­di­ents; it is also per­fect for mak­ing greens smooth­ies like kale, spinach, and oth­er leafy greens. Also, it can quick­ly whirl food ingre­di­ents to come up with the ici­est drinks. So here, we will go into a deep­er com­par­i­son between the two kitchen essentials.

Dis­clo­sure: As an Ama­zon Asso­ciate, we may earn an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion for pur­chas­es you make when using the links on this page.

Food Processor Functionality

A food proces­sor allows you to pre­pare dif­fer­ent vari­eties of dry and firm food with­in a short time, which you would rather take a longer time to pre­pare man­u­al­ly. There­fore, we can term this machine a mas­ter time saver. In gen­er­al, a food proces­sor will do the following:

• A quick chop­ping of veg­eta­bles, nuts, or herbs. Its blades spin high speed to turn the food ingre­di­ents into suit­able sizes. The size of the food items is deter­mined by the time one takes to chop.
• The food proces­sor will eas­i­ly chop nuts and mix them into the per­fect home­made nut butter.
• Fur­ther­more, a food proces­sor is reli­able for slic­ing food items like cucum­ber, car­rots, egg­plant, zuc­chi­ni, and greens. Also, one can slice fruits to make desserts.
• Besides, this kitchen tool is quite effi­cient for grat­ing food items like car­rots, cheese, or potatoes.
• This kitchen appli­ance is actu­al­ly a bonus when mix­ing things like chunky sal­sa snack bars and pesto.
• With this appli­ance, you will puree food ingre­di­ents like lumpy soups and chick­peas with ease. Above all, most of them have the abil­i­ty to knead con­sis­tent bread dough. With­in a span of time, the machine com­bines the dough com­po­nents to achieve a stur­dy texture.

It is worth not­ing that there is a mini food proces­sor, which is a com­pact mod­el for min­i­mal food prep activities.

 

Food Processor Attachments

Main­ly, every food proces­sor comes with s‑blades, grat­ing discs, and slic­ing discs which do the slic­ing, mix­ing, chop­ping, minc­ing, and many oth­er activ­i­ties. Oth­er attach­ments (whisk­ing disc, dough beat­er, peel­ing disc, etc.) make this machine more versatile.

First, an S‑blade, also known as the Sabati­er blade, oper­ates in the food proces­sor at the bot­tom part of the bowl. It is a ver­sa­tile blade that helps the machine grind, slice, chop, grate veg­gies and fruits, and churns some food ingre­di­ents like nut but­ter and pesto. Also, this blade is great for mix­ing to come up with per­fect hum­mus and sal­sa. More­over, when it is in a con­tin­u­ous pulse set­ting, it can turn a par­tic­u­lar food item into a puree.

Addi­tion­al­ly, a shred­ding or grat­ing disc is found at the bowl’s top part, and it comes in vary­ing sizes. The disc grates food ingre­di­ents like car­rots, cheese, and cabbage.

A slic­ing disc is close­ly sim­i­lar to the shred­ding disc at the bowl’s top part. In par­tic­u­lar, this disc will make thin flat strips from apples, pota­toes, zuc­chi­ni, and oth­er food items. Again, to get even and fine slices, ensure that you slow­ly add the food items.

Apart from the three basic blades (S‑blade, slic­ing disc, and shred­ding disc), some food proces­sors come with an addi­tion­al blade known as a dough blade/kneading pad­dle. It is less curved than the S‑blade and usu­al­ly made from plas­tic. This blade ensures that your food proces­sor has a speed reg­u­la­tor to pre­vent heat buildup on the dough. Besides, there is a whisk or egg whip blade with two straight arms. This blade enables the food proces­sor to whip creams and egg white. More­over, many stan­dard food proces­sors have a juli­enne disc. The user can deploy this disc to make match­sticks from food ingredients.

Pros

• Has a large capacity;
• Quick to chop, slice or grate food;
• Can blend and puree food ingredients;
• Knead dough, grate, chop, and slice food items;
• Pro­tect your fam­i­ly from using sharp items;

 Cons

• Requires clean­ing and set up, which can be time-consuming;
• Some are expen­sive to purchase;
• Larg­er mod­els can take up a lot of coun­ter­top space.

Blender Functionality

A blender is a mul­ti-func­tion­al kitchen appli­ance that is applic­a­ble in the prep of most food items. Blenders come in the form of full-size blenders, per­son­al blenders, and immer­sion blenders. Full-size blenders are meant for mak­ing large quan­ti­ties of smooth­ies, soups, iced drinks, or home­made food items like spreads and sauces. A per­son­al blender is a small­er blender mod­el that can hold lit­tle food ingre­di­ents, espe­cial­ly for one or two indi­vid­u­als. On the oth­er hand, an immer­sion blender is a hand blender that works by press­ing its rotat­ing blades into a con­tain­er with food ingre­di­ents. It is designed to per­form light kitchen tasks and make sim­ple smoothies.

Gen­er­al­ly, blenders are great kitchen appli­ances for car­ry­ing out a wide range of liq­uidiz­ing and mix­ing wet food ingre­di­ents. These activ­i­ties include:

• Liq­uidiz­ing smooth­ies and milk­shakes;
• Addi­tion­al­ly, they are per­fect for shav­ing and crush­ing ice;
• If you need to whip cream, blend the soup or make mayo and sauces, this machine will do it for you;
• Also, you can use the blender to puree baby food and heat liquids;
• With this kitchen device, you can grind cof­fee and spices, make nut but­ter, and mill grain flour with ease;
• Above all, high-end blender mod­els have the abil­i­ty to knead the dough.

Blender Attachments

The Full-size and per­son­al blenders usu­al­ly have only a jug with inbuilt or remov­able blades; some may include food pro­cess­ing attach­ment for light tasks. The jug with the sin­gle blade type can car­ry out a wide range of kitchen tasks such as mak­ing smooth­ies, liq­uidiz­ing soup, crush­ing ice, and prepar­ing a vari­ety of sources, dips, and sal­ad dressings.

On the oth­er hand, an immer­sion blender fea­tures sev­er­al acces­sories. For instance, an S‑blade will per­form a range of tasks sim­i­lar to full-size and per­son­al blenders. They may have a whisk head that can whip creams or make light cake mix­es. They also some­times include a froth­ing blade to mix muffins and froth milk. Some immer­sion blenders come with a mash­er put in the blade unit to mash boiled potatoes.

Pros 

• Great for liq­uid blends;
• Puree and blend food ingre­di­ents with ease;
• Easy to store due to its com­pat­i­ble size;
• Some, like the hand blenders, can mix food in any container;
• Can blend vary­ing quan­ti­ties of food ingredients;

Cons

• Most of them are noisy while blending;
• They have lim­it­ed run­ning time;
• Some lack kneads, chop, whisk, and slice options.

Blender vs. Food Processor

Though a blender and a food proces­sor share some sim­i­lar­i­ties, they dif­fer to some extent. Their dif­fer­ence can be based on fac­tors like size, func­tions, num­ber of acces­sories, and prod­uct qual­i­ty. For exam­ple, a blender works best on wet food ingre­di­ents, while a food proces­sor effi­cient­ly works on both dry and wet food items. Fur­ther­more, a food proces­sor has the abil­i­ty to knead a con­sis­tent dough, while most blenders lack such a blade option. Hence they are known to have lim­it­ed ver­sa­til­i­ty when in use.

Fur­ther­more, blenders are the best option when mak­ings smooth­ies, pro­tein shakes, cock­tails, dips, soups, sauces, and crush­ing ice.  On the oth­er hand, a food proces­sor is best for chop­ping onions, knead­ing dough, and minc­ing herbs. In fact, food proces­sors are expen­sive com­pared to coun­ter­top blenders. It is worth not­ing that the cost of blenders and food proces­sors may vary from one brand to anoth­er. Plus, blenders are known to have a com­pact size and hence can only occu­py a small coun­ter­top space. Con­verse­ly, food proces­sors can occu­py a good kitchen coun­ter­top space. If you have to buy a food proces­sor that occu­pies a small­er counter space, you can go for a mini food chopper.

Addi­tion­al­ly, both of these kitchen appli­ances dif­fer in that blenders can pro­duce vary­ing food tex­tures with bet­ter con­sis­ten­cy. How­ev­er, food proces­sors deliv­er con­sis­tent food qual­i­ty depend­ing on the func­tion. A food proces­sor will do it uni­form­ly, whether you are slic­ing, dic­ing, slic­ing, or kneading.

Summary

In a nut­shell, a food proces­sor and a blender have sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences that make them work dif­fer­ent­ly in a kitchen. None of these two can ful­ly replace the oth­er since their fea­tures and func­tions are dif­fer­ent. How­ev­er, each of them is spe­cial and func­tions best in its field. For exam­ple, a blender will always do it for you if you are a liq­uid food enthu­si­ast. Sim­i­lar­ly, it is the best option for the prepa­ra­tion of baby food, smooth­ies, and purees.  In cas­es where you are work­ing on dry food items, a food proces­sor is equal to the task. Most­ly a good num­ber of attach­ments accom­pa­ny a food proces­sor. These attach­ments include dough blades, slicers, and graters. Such attach­ments are a bonus to the usabil­i­ty of this kitchen tool.

Con­verse­ly, blenders lack most of these attach­ments hence mak­ing them less ver­sa­tile. Although both food proces­sors seem to be more ver­sa­tile than a blender, they are equal­ly impor­tant. They are func­tion­al­ly inde­pen­dent, and each of them per­forms well in its field.