The Nin­ja Pro­fes­sion­al Plus is an excel­lent mid-priced food proces­sor machine pop­u­lar among con­sumers. Apart from per­form­ing well, typ­i­cal food proces­sor func­tions such as chop­ping veg­gies, shred­ding cheese, mak­ing smooth­ies and sauces, puree­ing ingre­di­ents, and knead­ing dough, also fea­tures a stray of oth­er excel­lent attributes.

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Read More: The Braun MQ7035X Mul­ti­quick Immer­sion Blender | Excep­tion­al Ver­sa­til­i­ty and Reli­able Built 

 Motor Power and Base Unit

Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus is equipped with a pow­er­ful 1000 Peak Watts and 750 Watts off-peak motor that quick­ly allows the process of even very tough ingre­di­ents. In addi­tion, the machine has a safe­ty sys­tem that auto­mat­i­cal­ly shuts off the food proces­sor in case of over­load­ing will and pre­vents motor and dri­ves sys­tem dam­age. The unit comes with a well-built and sol­id sil­ver-col­ored plas­tic body. The base unit suc­tion caps keep it sta­ble on the coun­ter­top dur­ing processing.

Container and Capacity Size

The machine comes with the 9‑Cup/2100 ml/72 oz. Bowl, bowl cov­er, and a push­er. The bowl is made from BPA-free, good-qual­i­ty plas­tic, and easy-to-read mea­sur­ing marks in cups, ounces, and ml. The 9‑cup capac­i­ty bowl is designed to process small to medi­um batch­es of food. Its shape and size allow man­ag­ing well an entire bowl­ful of ingre­di­ents and a few cloves of garlic.

The bowl is equipped with a see-through cov­er with a sil­i­cone ring that allows a firm con­nec­tion with the container.

The clear push­er is designed to push ingre­di­ents into the feed­ing chute. How­ev­er, the push­er does not have any spikes to hold the veg­etable, so the push­er design is not per­fect and requires improvement.

Attachments

This machine comes with a pret­ty stan­dard set of attach­ments for the mid prices food proces­sor that includes:

• Quad Chop­ping Blade Assem­bly is designed with two lev­els of the blender-like blade and is intend­ed for chop­ping, mix­ing, blend­ing, and puree­ing food. The blade will make soup, pesto, sal­sa, baby food, chop veg­gies, etc.;
• Dough Blade Assem­bly makes dough for cook­ies, piz­za, and bread. The attach­ment is designed to han­dle 2 pounds of dough;
• Reversible Slic­ing & Shred­ding Disc and sep­a­rate disc spin­dle. It is designed for slic­ing, shred­ding, grat­ing, and crin­kling veg­gies, cheese, or mak­ing bread crumbs.

There are a few extra attach­ments avail­able to buy separately.

Food Tube Size

The Food Proces­sor comes with a round­ed food feed­er tube 2“x 3” wide. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, get­ting through medi­um-large pieces of veg­gies is quite nar­row, and you have to cut most of them down to fit. For exam­ple, the reg­u­lar car­rot will go into it with­out prob­lem; the pota­to needs to be cut in half or quarters.

Control Panel

Unlike typ­i­cal food proces­sors, Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus comes with a prop­er con­trol pan­el that includes the ON/OFF but­ton and four (4) pro­gram but­tons (CHOP, PUREE, DOUGH, DISC),  2 speed set­tings (low and high), and PULSE func­tion. In addi­tion, the but­tons are of good qual­i­ty, durable, respon­sive, and well-sealed with no hard-to-reach crevices.

The ON/OFF but­ton is used for turn­ing the unit pow­er on and off.

The CHOP, PUREE, DOUGH, and DISC pre-set­tings com­bine run­ning and paus­ing pat­terns and last from a few sec­onds up to a minute. All of the pro­grams auto­mat­i­cal­ly stop when pro­cess­ing is com­plete. If you want to stop pro­cess­ing before the end of a pro­gram, just press the action but­ton again.

Low and High-speed but­tons run con­tin­u­ous­ly for 60 sec­onds and stop auto­mat­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, they are not designed to work in com­bi­na­tion with any pre-set programs.

PULSE func­tion — works only when pressed and designed for quick food prep tasks.

CHOP – com­bines puls­es and paus­es and is designed for chop­ping veg­gies and fruits. It will need to run it once if you need coarse chop, twice if you need fine chop, and three times for the minc­ing result.

DOUGH — make per­fect dough for pie, piz­za, cook­ies, and oth­er doughs. If you add lat­er some adding to your dough, such as choco­late chips or raisins, you have to run PULSE after the dough pro­gram has been completed.

PUREE – is designed for prepar­ing silky-smooth sauces, hum­mus, dips, and others.

DISC – the set­ting will slice or shred such ingre­di­ents as firm veg­eta­bles, cheeses, and others

Addi­tion­al low and high-speed and PULSE func­tions will allow you more exper­i­ments with your recipes.

 Func­tion­al­i­ty

Chop­ping: Using chop­ping blades, the “CHOP” pre-set pro­gram, or use the “PULSE” func­tion, the food proces­sor will eas­i­ly chop firm veg­gies like car­rots, cel­ery, beets, and oth­ers. How­ev­er, some soft veg­gies like onion and toma­toes will not come to you in per­fect pieces but still will do a good job. It will also chop meat or nuts.

Puree: “PUREE” pre-set with chop­ping blades will per­fect­ly smash cooked veg­gies like pota­toes, car­rots, onions, or beet­root for soup. It can make the per­fect mash pota­to if you have a lit­tle liq­uid to it. Using the Pulse func­tion will also allow you to make deli­cious home­made dips, sal­sas, sauces, dress­ings, pesto, or hum­mus. It also will mix in the but­ter with extra ingre­di­ents to deliv­er herb, gar­lic, or oth­er types of butter.

Smooth­ies: It can make smooth­ies from a vari­ety of fruits or veg­gies; how­ev­er, it can­not process it to a per­fect­ly homo­ge­neous con­sis­ten­cy and will leave a lot of chunks no mat­ter if you process soft or hard ingredients.

Ice pro­cess­ing: It is also not very good at pro­cess­ing ice, and you rather use a good blender for this purpose.

Nut but­ter: It is a chal­leng­ing task to make nut but­ter for this food proces­sor; how­ev­er, you will be able to make it with some effort using chop­ping blades and a “HIGH” speed set­ting. How­ev­er, you have to stop the machine many times, scrub the walls from sticky ingre­di­ents, and allow the machine to cool down for a few min­utes while pro­cess­ing the nut butter.

Shred­ding: This food proces­sor will shred cab­bage for coleslaw, pep­per, and cucum­ber for sal­ads, car­rots, and oth­er firm veg­gies. It will also per­fect­ly shred any hard cheese for your favorite recipes. Shred­ding disc actu­al­ly beau­ti­ful­ly grates veg­gies such as zuc­chi­ni and oth­ers with shred­ding & slic­ing disc.

Slic­ing: it comes with a slicer and will slice the pota­to, car­rot, zuc­chi­ni, egg­plant, or cucum­ber for baked veg­gies, sal­ads, and oth­er recipes. Although cucum­ber slices can come out very thin depend­ing on the firm­ness of the cucum­ber, firmer ones deliv­er the per­fect result. The firmer veg­gies are much bet­ter qual­i­ty slices than the soft­er ones.

Mak­ing dough: Using dough blades and pre-set pro­gram, this machine is designed to make up to 2 lbs of per­fect dough for bread, piz­za, cook­ies, and a vari­ety of bak­ing recipes.

Assembling and Cleaning

The food proces­sor set­up is fair­ly intu­itive and easy.

Assem­bly: The machine comes with a safe­ty fea­ture, so if it is not assem­bled prop­er­ly, you will not be able to lock the lid in posi­tion. So for prop­er assem­bling, place the bowl onto the motor base and rotate clock­wise until it clicks into place.

Then place the Chop­ping Blade Assem­bly onto the dri­ve gear inside the bowl. Note that the Chop­ping Blade Assem­bly will fit loose­ly on the dri­ve gear. The same pro­ce­dure car­ries on for the dough assembly.

When assem­bling the reversible Slicing/Shredding Disc, you must remem­ber using the side labeled “Slicer” for slic­ing and “Shred­der” for shred­ding. The same disc works for both func­tions; you just need to flip it over to use it for anoth­er func­tion. Use only the DISC pro­gram or LOW set­ting when using the Slicing/Shredding Disc. First, place the disc spin­dle onto the dri­ve gear inside the bowl. Then, use the fin­ger holes to grasp the reversible slicing/shredding disc and place it over the spin­dle, with the side you would like to use fac­ing up.

After you assem­ble the attach­ment, place the feed chute lid on the bowl and turn clock­wise until you hear a click, indi­cat­ing the lid is locked in place. Next, press the Pow­er but­ton to turn it on. Next, select the pro­gram that best suits your recipe using an Auto-IQ program.

It has been a bit of a learn­ing curve at first. It per­forms beautifully.

Clean: The Food Process could be washed man­u­al­ly or in a dish­wash­er; all parts of the machine are dish­wash­er safe. For man­u­al wash­ing, just add 1–2 drops of dish soap and half full of warm water and pulse to clean the bowl and blades. You have to han­dle blade assem­blies with care as they are very sharp and may be dan­ger­ous to han­dle. How­ev­er, the bowl bot­tom spin­ner is per­ma­nent­ly fixed and can­not dis­sem­ble, so it may cause some has­sle to clean it prop­er­ly. Like­wise, the quad chop­ping blade is very sharp and should be han­dled with great care.

When wash­ing the parts in the dish­wash­er, place the bowl, lid, disc, and blade assem­blies on the top rack of the dish­wash­er ONLY. How­ev­er, be aware that the bowl han­dle has a hol­low two-part con­struc­tion with an open­ing on each side, so it is bet­ter to hand wash it as it can be built into a mold inside when wash­ing in the dishwasher.

Warranty

Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Food Proces­sor is equipped with the one (1) year lim­it­ed war­ran­ty that is not trans­ferrable and only applies to the orig­i­nal pur­chas­er and if you buy it from an autho­rized retail­er. The own­er also can Return and get Refunds with­in 60 days of pur­chase (less stock­ing, ship­ping, and han­dling fee).

Since the item comes with a short war­ran­ty, you are advised to buy the extend­ed war­ran­ty from Amazon.

Set Includes

• Food Proces­sor unit base with 1000 watts motor and Auto-iQ Con­trol Panel;
• 9‑Cup Bowl, Lid, and Food Pusher;
• Quad Chop­ping Blade;
• Dough Blade;
• Reversible Slic­ing & Shred­ding Disc;
• Disc Adapter;
• Inspi­ra­tion Guide that includes 20 cre­ative recipes;
• User Man­u­al and Quick Start Guide.

Dimensions

The Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus is a com­pact food proces­sor and has a mod­er­ate foot­print of 7.32″ L x 9.88″ W, so it will not occu­py much of your kitchen counter space or take a lot of stor­age space. The x 15.55″ pro­file will eas­i­ly fit under most of the kitchen cabinets.

It also comes with a 2.5 ft. cord length.

Extra Attachments

In addi­tion to the chop­ping blade, dough blade, and reversible slicing/shredding disc, the man­u­fac­tur­er offers a set of fol­low­ing attach­ments that you can buy separately:

Grat­ing Disc is designed to grate every­thing from firm veg­gies like car­rots and hard cheeses to gin­ger and onion.

Crin­kle-Cut Disc – it can be used to cut veg­eta­bles into fun shapes for sal­ads or cut pota­toes for home­made chips.

Disc Stor­age Case – it will keep up to three discs for easy stor­age and organization.

 Spe­cial Features

Col­ors: The man­u­fac­tur­ers offer this food proces­sor in 5 col­ors – stain­less steel fin­ish, sil­ver, black, cin­na­mon, and white. How­ev­er, the col­or options are rarely avail­able from most retail­ers.  The most com­mon is the stain­less steel finish.

Volt­age: Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Food Proces­sor avail­able in USA and Cana­da come with 110–120 volt­age sys­tem. How­ev­er, these machines could be used via volt­age trans­former in the regions with 110–120 volt­ages sys­tem but not rec­om­mend­ed. Thus should be pur­chased via local retailers.

Noise

The machine comes with a 1000 Watts motor, which is quite loud. On aver­age, it releas­es 80–110 dBs while oper­at­ed. How­ev­er, it is a fast machine, so the sound does not last for a long time.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• It comes with pow­er­ful 1000 watts motor that allows pro­cess­ing ingre­di­ents fast;
• Equipped with prop­er Con­trol panel;
• Avail­able at a rea­son­able price;
• Stur­dy and well-built machine;
• Extra attach­ment avail­able, which expands the food proces­sor functions;

Cons:

• Very nar­row feed chute;
• Loud;
• Not easy to clean (sim­i­lar to most food processors).

Price

Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus Food proces­sor is a val­ue for mon­ey machine; it is avail­able at a very rea­son­able price from most retailers.

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Summary

Nin­ja BN601 Pro­fes­sion­al Plus is a good val­ue-for-mon­ey food proces­sor. It is well made, pow­er­ful, and func­tion­al. It can prep many ingre­di­ents such as chop­ping, slic­ing, shred­ding, grat­ing, mix­ing, blend­ing, and so on for cook­ing a large vari­ety of recipes. Addi­tion­al­ly, it is designed to process dough with one-touch using the dough blade quickly.

Unlike most food proces­sors on the mar­ket, it has a prop­er con­trol pan­el with dif­fer­ent speed options that make the food prepa­ra­tion process easy. Over­all, it is an excel­lent food proces­sor and would be an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the small-medi­um house­hold kitchen.