KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup Food Processor Review

KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup is a medi­um-priced food proces­sor with a typ­i­cal for this price range func­tion­al­i­ty. As any oth­er KitchenAid small appli­ance, it has a great design and comes in many col­or options.

It is a recent­ly upgrad­ed very pop­u­lar KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor mod­el. The new mod­el keeps unchanged the old mod­el’s main para­me­ters but has a new exte­ri­or design and new stor­age system.

Read our hon­est review here to decide if this machine is worth adding to your kitchen counter.

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

Read More: 5 Best Food Proces­sors to Sat­is­fy All Budgets

Motor Power and Base Unit

KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor comes with a 500 watts, 120 V, 60 Hz motor. How­ev­er, it has plen­ty of pow­er to per­form a high-qual­i­ty job.

Although the food proces­sor base unit looks cast met­al, it is made main­ly from plas­tic. More­over, the plas­tic is of high qual­i­ty and will last many years.

Container and Capacity Size

Work Bowl: This machine comes with 13 cups / 3.1 L round shape work bowl made from BPA-free poly­car­bon­ate. The bowl is 7″ in diam­e­ter and 5 3/5″ tall out­side the bowl (and 4 3/4″ inside of the bowl). So, it is a sig­nif­i­cant work bowl that allows for big­ger batch­es while still work­ing well with small recipes.

It is equipped with an easy-grip han­dle, mea­sure­ment marks, and MAX line.

Bowl Cov­er: This food proces­sor comes with a clear plas­tic remov­able lid with an inbuilt feed­ing chute. The bowl cov­er is attached to the work bowl with a lid hinge and has a lid latch for a firm clos­ing. The work bowl cov­er is also equipped with a slic­ing knob that reg­u­lates the thick­ness of the slicing.

Feed Tube and Food Pushers

The Food proces­sor comes with a clever 3‑in‑1 nest­ed feed­ing tube design that makes one peace with the work bowl cov­er. Such an inno­v­a­tive 3‑in‑1 design allows easy pro­cess­ing of a large vari­ety of food ingredients.

The largest feed tube has an oval shape and is 2 1/2″ x 1 3/4″ in size; it is excel­lent for such food items as cheese. The largest tube is equipped with a spring, so it does not allow food to pop up or down dur­ing the pro­cess­ing. Besides, the large food tube comes with the cus­tom food push­er, which is designed with is medi­um round shaped food tube of 1 1/4″ in diameter.

So, the large food push­er acts as a large food push­er and a medi­um food tube. The medi­um food push­er also comes with a small mouth open­ing for driz­zling liq­uids such as oil, etc., into the food bowl and acts as a medi­um food push­er and small food tube. In fact, the feed tubes are pret­ty small and require feed­ing the food more often in small­er quantities.

The 3 in 1 food tube is also equipped with a safe­ty sys­tem, so the food proces­sor will not oper­ate if food is loaded in the large Feed Tube above the max fill line.

Accessories

KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup Food Proces­sor comes with the fol­low­ing accessories:

Mul­ti-Pur­pose blade or S‑blade: this is the most com­mon blade that comes with almost all food proces­sors.  This blade is worked for chop­ping, mix­ing, minc­ing, grind­ing, and puree­ing ingre­di­ents. They are designed to oper­ate on the LOW SPEED or PULSE function.

Adjustable Slic­ing Disc: It lets you slice var­i­ous food such as pota­toes, car­rots, beets, cucum­ber, zuc­chi­ni, and even cheese. This blade is designed to adjust six dif­fer­ent thick­ness slices from thin­ner to thick­er with the unique knob locat­ed on the work bowl cov­er. The adjustable disc is very con­ve­nient, and you do not need to reverse or change it for dif­fer­ent thicknesses.

Reversible Shred­ding Disc: It will shred or grate car­rot, cab­bage, oth­er veg­eta­bles, or cheese. The reversible disc is designed for two dif­fer­ent shred­ding sizes such as fine and medium.

Dough Blade: this blade has very sim­i­lar to S‑blade but made from plas­tic and has dull edges. How­ev­er, it is will eas­i­ly make all types of dough, includ­ing bread, piz­za, cook­ies, pas­try crust, or even pasta.

Dri­ve Adapter: it comes in two parts the Low­er Dri­ve Adapter and the Upper Dri­ve Adapter. This is the part that con­nects all the Food Proces­sor acces­sories to the motor drive.

Stor­age Cad­dy: it can fit two blades, three discs, and a dri­ve adapter—the stor­age cad­dy is com­pact­ly stored inside the work­ing bowl, sav­ing you a lot of stor­age space.

 This mod­el does not have the dic­ing disc; how­ev­er, anoth­er mod­el comes with the dic­ing disc, which is more expensive.

Control Panel

The KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup has a typ­i­cal food proces­sor straight­for­ward con­trol pan­el equipped with only three but­tons – LOW SPEED, HIGH SPEED, and OFF/PULSE. How­ev­er, it is usu­al­ly enough for all the func­tions it is designed to perform.

The machine is turned on by press­ing the Low or High-speed but­tons, and the Food Proces­sor will con­tin­u­ous­ly run with the glow­ing light indi­ca­tor. To stop the device, you have to press the Low or High speed again or the Off/Pulse button.

The PULSE func­tion is acti­vat­ed by press­ing the Off/Pulse but­ton. The Pulse func­tion oper­ates only at HIGH speed.  You have to press and release for short bursts or press and hold for long bursts. The machine will stop (when using the PULSE func­tion) once the OFF/PULSE but­ton is released.

Functionality

Chop: Mul­ti­pur­pose or S‑blade on LOW SPEED or PULSE is designed for chop­ping veg­eta­bles, fresh herbs, onion, cheese, tofu, nuts, choco­late, or fruits for a dessert recipe. It is also suit­able for chop­ping meat or chop­ping and mix­ing meat with oth­er ingredients.

Mince or Purée: Multipurpose/s‑blade on HIGH SPEED or PULSE can mince or puree veg­gies, cheese, herbs, nuts, beans, and oth­ers, it will puree per­fect­ly all nec­es­sary ingre­di­ents for pesto, dip, sauce, hum­mus, or oth­er recipes. It will also help mince­meat for mak­ing burg­ers or meat­balls.                                                                              

Mix: Besides, Multipurpose/S‑blade on LOW speed will do pas­ta sauce, sal­sa, sauces, sal­ad dress­ings, rel­ish, and dip.

Grind­ing: This machine has more than enough pow­er for grind­ing per­fect nut but­ter. For this pur­pose, you have to use Multipurpose/S‑blade on HIGH SPEED.

Slice (thin to thick): Exter­nal­ly Adjustable Slic­ing Disc on LOW SPEED can slice and soft (toma­toes, cucum­ber) veg­eta­bles and fruits. The same adjustable Slic­ing disc will slice cheese, firm veg­eta­bles (car­rots, beets, pota­toes), and fruits (apples) using the HIGH SPEED. The slice thick­ness is reg­u­lat­ed exter­nal­ly with the knob locat­ed on the top of the work­ing bowl cover.

Shred (fine to medi­um): The shred disc is reversible. One side is designed for fine shred­ding, and the oth­er is for medi­um-sized shred­ding; using LOW SPEED, you can shred pota­toes or soft veg­eta­bles. You can shred cab­bage, cheese, choco­late, firm fruits, and veg­eta­bles using a HIGH SPEED.

Knead: Dough blade on the LOW SPEED is designed to knead all types of dough, from yeast bread dough to cake batters.

Assembling and Cleaning

Assem­bling: The KitchenAid 13-Cup Food Proces­sor comes with 18 parts and acces­sories and seems cum­ber­some to assem­ble and use. It requires a learn­ing curve. How­ev­er, once you become famil­iar with the machine, assem­bling, clean­ing, and restor­ing all the parts, it will not be a com­pli­cat­ed task.

First, the user has to attach the work to the base by align­ing the han­dle with the but­ton on the right side of the food proces­sor base. You will hear a click once it is aligned in the prop­er posi­tion. Next, place the Upper Dri­ve Adapter onto the Dri­ve Pin inside of the Work Bowl. If you intend to use Multipurpose/S‑blade or Dough Blade, hand down the Low­er Dri­ve Adapter on the top of the Upper Dri­ve Adapter, then place the mul­ti­pur­pose or dough blade over the low­er dri­ve adapter.

If you plan to use the Slic­ing disc and Shred­ding disc, you do not need to attach the low­er dri­ve adapter, and you place the required disc on the top of the upper dri­ve adapter.

Final­ly, close the work bowl cov­er, and your Food proces­sor is ready to use.

If you plan to use the adjustable slic­ing disc, you can reg­u­late the desired thick­ness of slices by mov­ing the unique Knob on the top of the work bowl cov­er to the left for thin­ner slices and the right for thick­er slices. The excel­lent knob will work with the slic­ing disk only.

Stor­age: This machine comes with a very clever space-sav­ing stor­age cad­dy that nests all the attach­ments (Mul­ti-Pur­pose blade, Adjustable Slic­ing Disc, Reversible Shred­ding Disc, Dough Blade, Low, and Upper Dri­ve Adapters) inside the work bowl. The unit also comes with a plas­tic disc that shows exact­ly how every­thing fits together.

Clean­ing: The clean­ing food proces­sor part after use is not com­pli­cat­ed. All parts are dish­wash­er safe on a top rack and gen­tle, low-tem­per­a­ture dish­wash­ing cycles (such as Normal).

How­ev­er, clean­ing your food proces­sor man­u­al­ly is prefer­able because it will pro­long your machine’s life expectancy.

Warranty

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is equipped with ONLY a 1‑year Full War­ran­ty from the date of pur­chase. In addi­tion, the man­u­fac­tur­ers guar­an­tee has­sle-Free replace­ment parts, free repair, and free replace­ment if it is not repairable.

1–year Full war­ran­ty is applic­a­ble via an Autho­rized KitchenAid Ser­vice Cen­ter for 50 Unit­ed States, Dis­trict of Colum­bia, Puer­to Rico, and Canada.

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Set Includes

• Heavy-Duty Base
• 13-Cup (3.1 L) Work Bowl
• Work Bowl Cov­er with slic­ing knob and 3‑in‑1 Feed Tube
• 3‑in‑1 Food Pusher
• Dri­ve Adapter (upper and low)
• Mul­ti-pur­pose blade
• Adjustable slic­ing disc
• Reversible shred­ding disc
• Dough blade
• Stor­age caddy

Dimensions

KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is a large machine with a base mea­sur­ing 8 1/2″ in diam­e­ter and tall. While the foot­print of this machine is not large, the 17 1/2 ” height will not allow to fit it under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­nets unless you remove the lid with the 3‑in‑1 feed­ing tube. How­ev­er, a clever stor­age sys­tem that allows all the blades and attach­ments to fit inside the bowl makes the stor­age more accessible.

Besides, this machine has a net weight of 10 lbs and a gross weight of 12 kg.

Extra Attachments

There is no extra attach­ment avail­able to buy for this Food Proces­sor yet. How­ev­er, most KitchenAid will offer the Dic­ing Kit and French Fry Disc soon.

Special Features

Col­or: KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is avail­able in 5 col­ors — Con­tour Sil­ver, Empire Red, Onyx Black, and White.

Volt­age Sys­tem: The machine trad­ed in the USA and Cana­da comes with a stan­dard 110–120 Volt­age sys­tem. Cus­tomers from oth­er parts of the world with 220–240 volt­age sys­tems are rec­om­mend­ed to buy this machine from local retail­ers. Because using this machine via the volt­age trans­former will com­pro­mise your warranty

Noise

For­tu­nate­ly, this food proces­sor is a qui­et machine and gen­er­al­ly releas­es no more than 70 deci­bels. So you still can car­ry on a con­ver­sa­tion while the unit is oper­at­ing even at high speed.  It also will not dis­turb your neigh­bor or chil­dren in the next room.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is well designed and con­struct­ed and bril­liant­ly per­forms all the tasks;
• The machine comes with an adjustable slic­ing disc;
• I have a 3‑in11feeding tube that allows the pro­cess­ing of a vari­ety of ingredients;
• The device comes with a very clever stor­age sys­tem that will not require much stor­age space and will keep all parts in one place;
• KitchenAid KFP1333 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is quite a machine;

Cons:

• This Food Proces­sor is made in Chi­na even though The KitchenAid is pre­sent­ed as an Amer­i­can Company;
• It does not fit under the stan­dard kitchen cabinet;
• The base unit is made of plastic;
• It comes with many parts and requires a learn­ing curve to become famil­iar with the machine;
• It comes with rather a small feed­ing chute;

Price

KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is a pow­er­ful and ver­sa­tile machine from the most pop­u­lar food proces­sor price cat­e­go­ry. No doubt, it is a good val­ue-for-mon­ey KitchenAid food processor.

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Summary

Over­all, KitchenAid KFP1318 13-Cup Food Proces­sor is a very well-designed machine with a pow­er­ful motor that does all the tasks quick­ly and effec­tive­ly. It has many attach­ments, excel­lent capa­bil­i­ties, and a large work bowl. The adjustable slic­ing blade is an out­stand­ing fea­ture that allows sev­er­al thick­ness­es out of one blade with­out chang­ing or flip­ping the attach­ment. The nest­ing stor­age sys­tem is anoth­er valu­able fea­ture. It is a qui­et machine, and you can even keep a con­ver­sa­tion while the unit runs the icing on the cake.

So, if you are look­ing for a mid-priced qual­i­ty Food proces­sor with a large work bowl and do not mind that it may not fit under the kitchen cab­i­net, then this machine is a machine to consider.