Cuisinart 14-Cup Food Processor Review

Cuisi­nart is a name well known for the qual­i­ty and ele­gant design of a num­ber of var­i­ous types of kitchen appli­ances. More­over, it has a few Food Proces­sor prod­uct lines from which the Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14-Cup is one of the most pop­u­lar food proces­sors. Although it comes with a lim­it­ed num­ber of attach­ments, it has been a best­selling food proces­sor for the last few years.

Here we will review this gad­get, so you will know if this is anoth­er kitchen appli­ance worth adding to your kitchen counter.

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Read More: Instant Pot Ace Nova Cook­ing Blender Review 

Motor Power

The Cuisi­nart 14 Cup Cus­tom Food Proces­sor base unit has a mod­ern, sleek square base design. Although the base is made up of plas­tic most­ly and stain­less steel on the out­side sur­face, the con­struc­tion qual­i­ty is excel­lent. In addi­tion, the heavy base with suc­tion cups ensures the stur­di­ness of the unit on most sur­faces so that it can han­dle even chal­leng­ing tasks easily.

The base also hous­es a 720-watt pow­er­ful motor (near­ly 1 HP), which is 120V, 60Hz, 6.0 Amp, with a stan­dard two-prong North Amer­i­can plug. With this unit’s high-effi­cien­cy brush­less direct-dri­ve motor and induc­tion con­struc­tion, it will not make a sound when you run even the tough­est process­es like chop­ping through fibrous veg­gies or minc­ing meat.

Control Panel

The Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14 Cup Food Proces­sor comes with a sim­ple and ele­gant con­trol pan­el with two large ON and OFF/PULSE but­tons which are easy to use even when hands are wet and slip­pery. The ON but­ton ini­ti­ates a con­tin­u­ous speed that keeps the machine run­ning until you turn it off by press­ing PULSE/OFF. The Pulse func­tion starts up the engine work­ing in rep­e­ti­tion mode by press­ing the PULSE/OFF but­ton on and off for few times (it will work as long as pres­sure is applied).

If you are unfa­mil­iar with using Food Proces­sor, such a sim­ple con­trol pan­el is prefer­able to start with. Although you bet­ter oper­ate most­ly with the Pulse func­tion, it will allow you to feel bet­ter when pro­cess­ing the food, so you are unlike­ly to over-process your ingredients.

Working Bowl and Capacity Size

The Cuisi­nart 14-cups Food Proces­sor fea­tures a large work­ing bowl and Bowl Cover.

 Work Bowl: It comes with a BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate 14 cups work­ing bowl with a han­dle that mea­sures 7 inch­es in diam­e­ter (10 inch­es at the widest, includ­ing the han­dle) and 6 inch­es high. The work­ing bowl has a capac­i­ty of hold­ing up to 14 cups of dry and approx­i­mate­ly 2.5 cups of liq­uids ingre­di­ents; thus, it can process up to 2 ½ pounds of meat, poul­try, or seafood, knead 2 ½ pounds of bread dough, mix 3 ½ pounds cook­ie bat­ter and 4 pounds of cake batter.

Although it comes with only one large bowl, it process­es small­er por­tions of dry ingre­di­ents with­out effort and process­es the small batch­es as just as well as large. For exam­ple, it works very well with a cou­ple of gar­lic cloves or a sin­gle onion. At the same time, it requires larg­er batch­es of the liq­uid to process them well, so it needs a min­i­mum of 2–3 eggs to mix the omelet.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the poly­car­bon­ate bowl will quick­ly become cloudy due to scratch­es and stains. But, Cuisi­nart sells sep­a­rate­ly high-qual­i­ty scratch and tem­per­a­ture-resis­tant and almost unbreak­able Tri­tan East­man co-poly­ester con­tain­ers, which should be con­sid­ered if you will use your gad­get often.

Bowl Cov­er: The cov­er is designed with an irre­mov­able large feed chute, and when it is set on the bowl, the bowls with a cov­er mea­sure 9.5 inch­es high.

The cov­er has two safe­ty fea­tures; the first allows the machine to run only when the tam­per goes to a cer­tain lev­el inside the feed­er. The sec­ond safe­ty fea­ture pre­vents a user from remov­ing the con­tain­er from the base of the lid and is locked onto the con­tain­er; the cov­er has a small rod that is pushed down into the bot­tom and trig­gers a but­ton that allows the motor to run.

Feed Chute Size

The food proces­sor has a large oval shape of 4.5 inch­es by 3 inch­es feed chute and a large push­er, which acts as a sec­ond small round-shaped of 2 inch­es diam­e­ter feed open­ing. The large feed chute (4.5” X 3”) is large enough to pass through the whole medi­um apple, onion, and pota­to for shred­ding, slic­ing, and chop­ping. So, you do not need to pre-cut large veg­gies and fruits before pro­cess­ing, which allows you to work quick­ly and effi­cient­ly. With less effort, a small feed tube (2” in diam­e­ter) is suit­able for pro­cess­ing car­rots, zuc­chi­ni, cucum­bers, and sim­i­lar veggies.

In addi­tion, the push­er for a small round-shaped feed­er also has a hole in the bot­tom, which is designed for easy and less messy adding of liq­uids such as oil or flour and oth­er pow­dery ingre­di­ents allow­ing an even and unin­ter­rupt­ed stream dur­ing n pro­cess­ing. So, the Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY Food Proces­sor has a con­ve­nient 3‑in‑1 feed­ing system.

The feed­er comes with a safe­ty sys­tem and requires inset­ting the push­er in the feed tube and press­ing slight­ly for the food ingre­di­ent to con­tact the blade to start processing.

Attachments

The Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14 Cup Food Proces­sor comes with a lim­it­ed set of attach­ments; nonethe­less, all blades are good qual­i­ty and sharp, and all the plas­tic assem­bly parts are also very dense and hefty they do an out­stand­ing job for most tasks.

The attach­ment set includes:

• Stain­less Steel Chopping/Mixing or S‑Blades that is designed to do the chop­ping, mix­ing, puree­ing, grind­ing, or knead­ing tasks;

• Stain­less Steel Stan­dard Slic­ing Disc (4mm) for slic­ing veg­gies, fruits, and cheese;
• Medi­um Stain­less Steel Shred­ding Disc for grat­ing and shred­ding job;
• Detach­able Disc Stem, which con­nects Slic­ing and Shred­ding Discs to the bot­tom of the container;
• Spat­u­la for help­ing to scrape off ingre­di­ents from the work­ing bowl walls;

The set does not include a Dough Blade or a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent size Slic­ing or Shred­ding discs. How­ev­er, the S‑Blade could per­form all knead­ing tasks. Yet, Cuisi­nart offers to buy a few addi­tion­al attach­ments sep­a­rate­ly if you wish.

Functionality

Chop­ping: The food proces­sor S‑blade is designed for chop­ping uni­form­ly most firm and soft raw and cooked fruits and veg­gies, includ­ing onion, cab­bage, toma­toes, pota­toes, and cucum­ber. You just have to ensure not to over­load the con­tain­er with large pieces of food. It can also chop soft and hard cheese, nuts, and herbs. This machine effi­cient­ly chops even small batch­es of ingre­di­ents such as herbs or 2–3 cloves of gar­lic. You are advised to use the Pulse func­tion for any chop­ping task.

Grind­ing Meat: The Cuisi­nart food proces­sor with S‑blade can quick­ly chop raw and cooked meat and fish for var­i­ous recipes, includ­ing meat­balls, lasagne, baby food, or burg­ers. You can achieve the coarse to almost pureed con­sis­ten­cy with raw meat, depend­ing on how long you pulse it. You can also freeze raw meat before chop­ping it, and then you can get almost per se ham­burg­er grind meat.

Nut But­ter: Like most food proces­sors, the Cuisi­nart can eas­i­ly turn the nuts into a fine nut but­ter paste, but it comes out not as silky smooth as my Vitamix.

Puree­ing: You can puree using S‑blade any raw or cooked veg­gies for soup and deeps and fruits for pies and jams with this food proces­sor with­out any effort. For this pur­pose, you use the Pulse func­tion or con­tin­u­ous speed. It is also excel­lent for puree­ing any baby food recipes giv­ing you the per­fect silky smooth puree.

Mix­ing: Cuisi­nart is excel­lent at mix­ing or puree­ing all kinds of deeps, sal­sas, and sauces such as hum­mus, pesto, and even may­on­naise in large and small capac­i­ties. Dur­ing pro­cess­ing, it may require occa­sion­al scrap­ing help and not accu­mu­late any build-up under the blade. More­over, the same S‑blades can make per­fect beat­en egg whites and whipped cream.

Slic­ing: The device slic­ing disk han­dles slic­ing tasks effort­less­ly; it slices a whole pota­to, car­rots, toma­toes, bell pep­per, cab­bage, zuc­chi­ni, and oth­er firm and soft veg­gies and fruits in sec­onds, cre­at­ing nice and even pieces and food with­out torn edges. Some­times, the device gets left with unprocessed pieces on the disc.

This food proces­sor is also excel­lent at slic­ing semi-hard cheese such as ched­dar, Gou­da, Edam, and oth­ers in chilled con­di­tion. It can also slice a chilled or semi-freeze (depend­ing on the hard­ness of the food) piece of sausages, sala­mi, meat, and poul­try well.

Shred­ding: This food proces­sor’s 4 mm Shred­ding Disc also gives great results for shred­ding and grat­ing veg­gies, fruits, cheese, and meat. It can even­ly shred hard veg­eta­bles like zuc­chi­ni and pota­toes or soft slice cab­bage for coleslaw (how­ev­er, an option­al 2 mm shred­ding disc is bet­ter suit­ed for coleslaw making).

Grat­ing Cheese: Cuisi­nart 4mm Shred­ding Disc is also designed to grate well soft, semi-hard, and hard cheese types; how­ev­er, the soft cheese is bet­ter shred­ded if chilled or frozen before shredding.

Knead­ing Dough: The food proces­sor set does not include dough hooks; how­ev­er, its S‑blade can knead all types of dough, from bread or piz­za dough to bis­cuit and scone dough. The S‑blade is also excel­lent at cut­ting but­ter into flour for cook­ie dough; not all stand mix­ers per­form this task as well as this food proces­sor S‑blades.

I would not rec­om­mend pro­cess­ing ice or grind­ing spices in this device because the con­tain­er may get cloudy and scratched.

Assembling, Disassembling, and Cleaning

Assem­bly: Although the Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14 Cup Food Proces­sor has a few lock­ing sys­tems, it is straight­for­ward to assem­ble. Set the work bowl on the base unit with the han­dle slight­ly off the cen­ter and turn it to lock.

Next, place the S‑blade (it does not have a snap­ping lock) and put the cov­er with the feed chute set­ting it slight­ly left off the cen­ter, then turn the cov­er to lock. To assem­ble Slic­ing or Shred­ding Discs, line the disc stem with arrows on the discs, press slight­ly, and turn to lock into the place. Slide the stem with disc into the work pole to con­nect and secure the cov­er with the feed chute the same way as for the S‑blade. The machine will not run until you fit the push­er into the feed­ing chute.

Clean­ing: The machine’s remov­able parts are dish­wash­er safe for easy clean­ing. How­ev­er, hand-clean­ing is the best prac­tice for most small kitchen appli­ances. It is also prefer­able to wash it imme­di­ate­ly after use every sin­gle time, pre­vent­ing food from dry­ing in the bowl.

Although this food proces­sor is nice­ly designed, and the con­tain­er and cov­er have no nasty nooks and cran­nies, the food can get stuck in the oth­er parts. The Slic­ing and Shred­ding disks have deep grooves that could accu­mu­late unwant­ed buildups, so they must be cleaned imme­di­ate­ly with run­ning water. The push­ers also have holes where food can be stuck, which you can remove with a bot­tle brush and run­ning water.

The main thing to remem­ber is that the blade is very sharp and should be han­dled with great care.

Warranty

This food proces­sor comes with a 5‑year Full War­ran­ty for the Motor and 3‑year Lim­it­ed War­ran­ty on the entire unit. It is much more like­ly that the bowl will crack or the lid will wear out its latch. It must be men­tioned that there is lit­tle chance the motor will break; the bowl will like­ly crack, or the cov­er will wear out its latch.

 The Cuisi­nart cus­tomer ser­vice is not the best in the indus­try; how­ev­er, it is get­ting bet­ter and tends to solve the cus­tomer’s problems.

Extra Accessories and Replacement

All replace­ment parts, such as the pro­cess­ing bowl (stan­dard and Tri­tan co-poly­ester), S‑blades, and both discs, cov­er with feed chute and food push­ers, are avail­able at a rea­son­able price from the Cuisi­nart web­site or oth­er retailers.

Besides, there are some extra acces­sors also avail­able to buy sep­a­rate­ly, including:

• Stor­age con­tain­er for discs;
• Dough Blade;
• Fine Grater Disc;
• 6x6 French Fry-Cut Disc;
• 2 mm Thin Slic­ing Disc
• 6mm Thick Slic­ing Disc
• 8mm Extra-Thick Slic­ing Disc.

Dimensions

Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14-Cup Food Proces­sor has a rea­son­ably com­pact foot­print for such a large capac­i­ty and pow­er­ful device com­pared to its com­peti­tors; it mea­sures 11.00 x 7.90 inch­es. In addi­tion, the pro­file of 14.80 inch­es allows it eas­i­ly fit under any kitchen cabinet.

How­ev­er, this food proces­sor is heavy and weighs 17.30lb; you will need some strength to move it around. Yet, it will not move over the counter dur­ing the operation.

Set Includes

• Base unit with 720 Watts motor;
• 14 Cup BPA Free Work Bowl;
• Work Bowl Cov­er with Extra Large Feed Tube and Small Feed Tube;
• Push­er;
• Chopping/Mixing S‑Blade;
• Stan­dard Slic­ing Disc (4mm);
• Medi­um Stain­less Steel Shred­ding Disc
• Detach­able Disc Stem for using with slic­ing and shred­ding discs;
• Spat­u­la;
• Instruction/Recipe Book.

Noise

Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14-Cup is prob­a­bly the qui­etest Food Proces­sor avail­able on the mar­ket with such a pow­er­ful 720-watt motor. This device has a direct-dri­ve brush­less (with­out gear­box) motor and releas­es around 62–66dBA depend­ing on your ingredients.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• It holds a large capac­i­ty for food;
• Process equal­ly well large and small batch­es of ingredients;
• Has two large and small feed tubes for easy ingre­di­ents feeding;
• Few addi­tion­al attach­ments are avail­able to buy sep­a­rate­ly for this processor;
• It has a styl­ish look so that you can place it on the counter
• The motor is pow­er­ful and quiet;
• Shows top-qual­i­ty per­for­mance for most food proces­sor tasks;
• Well-built and sturdy;
• The proces­sor is easy to clean, and all the attach­ments are dish­wash­er safe;
• Priced very reasonably;

Cons

• The assem­bling is a lit­tle bit tricky for some people;
• It comes with a lim­it­ed set of attach­ments, only one size shed­ding, and slic­ing discs;
• The dough blade does not come with the package.

Price

Con­sumers who have pre­vi­ous­ly bought the Cuisi­nart DFP-14CGRY 14 Cup Food Proces­sor rate this prod­uct very high­ly, and the major­i­ty award it the stel­lar reviews. No won­der it offers excel­lent func­tion­al­i­ty and is avail­able at a rea­son­able price.

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Summary

The Cuisi­nart 14 Cup Food Proces­sor is an excel­lent option for every home cook who does a lot of mix­ing, shred­ding, and slic­ing for medi­um to large fam­i­lies. Although the appli­ance does not include many dif­fer­ent attach­ments in a set, it shows top-qual­i­ty per­for­mance for most typ­i­cal food pro­cess­ing tasks.

Nonethe­less, it is equipped with a pow­er­ful motor and a large 14-cup work bowl with a han­dle. The work bowl cov­er of the proces­sor has an extra-large feed tube and an addi­tion­al small feed tube and push­er to quick­ly add all types of ingre­di­ents into the bowl. The gad­get is nice­ly designed, very easy to assem­ble, and clean. There is an instruc­tion­al man­u­al and recipes for dif­fer­ent dish­es that you can make with the help of a proces­sor. In addi­tion, it is one of the qui­etest food proces­sors on the mar­ket, and it is avail­able at an afford­able price for such a pow­er­ful, large capac­i­ty, and func­tion­al device.