Vitamix 12-Cup Food Processor Attachment Review

Albeit the Vita­mix blenders are designed to per­form a few food pro­cess­ing tasks, in Sep­tem­ber 2020, Vita­mix released the Food proces­sor Attach­ment. This attach­ment extend­ed the func­tion­al­i­ty of the stan­dard Vita­mix blender and trans­formed it into the most ver­sa­tile chef machine on the mar­ket that can per­form all blend­ing and food pro­cess­ing tasks. Addi­tion­al­ly, the attach­ment is more com­pact than a stand­alone Food proces­sor and will save you a lot of stor­age space.

Read our hon­est review to find out if this attach­ment is worth to be added to your kitchen counter.

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Read More: Vita­mix Ven­tur­ist V1200 Blender Review

Compatibility

The Vita­mix 12 Cup Food Proces­sor Attach­ment IS COMPATIBLE ONLY with the SELF-DETECT Vita­mix line of blenders, includ­ing the Ascent A2300, Ascent A2500, and Ascent A3300, Ascent A3500, and Ven­tur­ist V1200 mod­els that are pur­chased in the Unit­ed States and Cana­da.

The attach­ment WILL NOT WORK on Lega­cy mod­els (no mat­ter pur­chased in the USA and Cana­da or oth­er regions) due to the safe­ty func­tions inbuilt into the self-detect base that require wire­less fea­tures. It is also CURRENTLY NOT COMPATIBLE with SELF-DETECT Vita­mix blenders pur­chased in Europe, Aus­tralia, and Asia since it has not passed safe­ty reg­u­la­tions in those markets.

Motor Power and Base Unit

The Food Proces­sor Attach­ment does not come with its own motor base unit; instead, it works on the Vita­mix Ascent blender’s base unit. The Attach­ment com­pris­es the SELF-DETECT gear base that is con­nect­ed to the blender motor base, con­tain­er, lid, and food pushers.

The Self-Detect gear base is also equipped with the “PRESS” but­ton that allows for easy detach­ment of the con­tain­er with one press.

The unique fea­ture of this attach­ment is that, unlike the typ­i­cal stand­alone food proces­sors, this attach­ment gear base comes with the all-met­al long dri­ve shaft with the met­al gear on the top where all the acces­sories are con­nect­ed. While the typ­i­cal food proces­sor avail­able on the mar­ket will have a plas­tic stalk to con­nect the acces­sories (s‑blades, shred­ding discs, and others).

The food proces­sor gear base is made of very strong ABS and Poly­car­bon­ate mate­r­i­al with inbuilt wire­less SELF-DETECT tech­nol­o­gy that auto­mat­i­cal­ly shut off the sys­tem if the food proces­sor parts are not safe­ly assembled.

Container and Capacity Size

The Vita­mix Food Proces­sor is equipped with a 96 ounces (12 cups) dry capac­i­ty and 64 ounces (8 cups) liq­uid capac­i­ty work bowl. It is made of BPA-free, stress-resis­tant East­man Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al that can with­stand high tem­per­a­tures up to 212 deg F (100 deg C). The work bowl has clear­ly print­ed mea­sur­ing marks in ounces and cups on one side and ml on the oth­er side of the bowl.

The work bowl comes with a Tri­tan copoly­ester see-through Snap-on lid with mouth open­ings for feed­ing food and a sil­i­con bor­der that ensures firm con­tact with the bowl dur­ing processing.

It also comes with a small food push­er for pro­cess­ing small­er ingre­di­ents and a large food push­er for push­ing ingre­di­ents into the slicing/shredding disc. Both food push­ers are made from very strong and almost unbreak­able Tri­tan copoly­ester material.

The con­tain­er can be eas­i­ly removed from the gear base with easy to remove con­tain­er “PRESS” lever, mak­ing it eas­i­er to pop off the bowl for easy pour­ing, adding ingre­di­ents, or emp­ty­ing the container.

Warn­ing! Even though the con­tain­er is made from sol­id Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al the grind­ing of cer­tain herbs and spices, some herbs may include unsta­ble oils that will retain on the work bowls or cause per­ma­nent discoloration.

Food Tube Size/ Mouth Opening

This food proces­sor comes with two mouth open­ings for feed­ing ingre­di­ents — a wide mouth opening/food chute of 2 ½” by 6” and a small cir­cu­lar open­ing of 2 ½” in diam­e­ter. These two food feed­ers can han­dle almost any type of ingredient.

When using the mul­ti-pur­pose blade, the ingre­di­ents could also be fed through a food bowl open­ing that is 7 ½” in diameter.

Vitamix Food Processor Accessories

The food proces­sor comes with one mul­ti-use blade (known as an S‑blade) and two dou­ble-sided shred slice discs which mean five blades per­form dif­fer­ent func­tions in total. All blades are very sharp, sol­id, and from high-qual­i­ty stain­less steel, which will last forever.

Mul­ti-Use Blade – it is also known as the mul­ti­pur­pose S‑blade and is labeled as #1. Although this type of blade is very com­mon (a work­horse blade)with most food proces­sors and is intend­ed for fine chop­ping, minc­ing, blend­ing, and mix­ing ingre­di­ents, it is also designed for knead­ing dough. It comes with micro-ser­rat­ed stain­less steel blades and a glass-filled nylon body.

Small reversible Shred/Thin Slice Disc – the disc is designed for fine shred­ding (labeled as #3) and cre­at­ing thin slices (labeled #2). It is dou­ble-sided, where one side is intend­ed for shred­ding and the oth­er for slic­ing ingredients.

Large reversible Shred/Thick Slice Disc – this disk is sim­i­lar to oth­er discs intend­ed for shred­ding (labeled as #5 and slic­ing food (labeled as #4); instead, it is designed for coarse shred­ding cre­at­ing thick slices of ingredients.

Disc Stor­age Case is intend­ed to store two reversible discs made from ABS plas­tic material.

This food proces­sor does not include any dic­ing attachment.

Control Panel

Although the Food Proces­sor attach­ment uses the Ascent blender SELF-DETECT base with a prop­er con­trol pan­el, it uti­lizes the major­i­ty of food proces­sors only ON/OFF and PULSE functions.

So, to acti­vate Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment, you must press the START/STOP but­ton on the blender base that starts ON/OFF func­tions. If you set up your machine right (it will not turn on if the lid and large food push­er are not prop­er­ly assem­bled), the Food Proces­sor will start to oper­ate on one sin­gle con­tin­u­ous speed (approx. sev­en (7) times low­er than the low­est blender speed). The blender base unit con­trol pan­el speed adjust­ment will not work if you try to reg­u­late it while con­nect­ed to the food processor.

Once you have fin­ished pro­cess­ing, press the START/STOP but­ton again. How­ev­er, the Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment is pre-set for a max­i­mum of 2 min­utes and 30 sec­onds of con­tin­u­ous-time oper­at­ing; hence it will shut off auto­mat­i­cal­ly at the end of the max­i­mum oper­at­ing time cycle.

Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use the PULSE but­ton instead of the START/STOP but­ton for food pro­cess­ing; you have to keep press­ing PULSE until the recipe is done. If the machine has a timer, you can set a timer for the required time and press the START/STOP but­ton to start the process.

Please note that the Series A2300, A2500, and Ven­tur­ist V1200 blenders dial-up must be locat­ed with­in the 1–10 vari­able speed range; it will not oper­ate if the knob is set to one of the Pro­gram set­tings or Stand­by modes.

Functionality

Using the MULTI-USE/”S” BLADES, you can chop, mince, knead, grind, and mix ingredients.

Nut but­ter: The Mul­ti-Use/S blade will chop or grind per­fect­ly creamy nut but­ter from any nuts in 2 min­utes – 2 min­utes 30 seconds.

 Knead: It will only take 10–30 sec­onds to make a per­fect dough. You may use con­tin­u­ous speed or Pulse func­tion for this purpose.

Chop­ping fruits and veg­eta­bles: You can chop from coarse to fine any firm veg­gies like zuc­chi­ni, car­rot, cucum­ber, pota­to, apple, and others.

 Shav­ing Ice: In the recipe book offers a recipe that includes shav­ing ice.

 Frozen ingre­di­ents:  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the food proces­sor is not designed for pro­cess­ing frozen meat, meat with bones, frozen fruit or veg­eta­bles, or very hard fruit or veg­eta­bles with the chop­ping blade.

 Mince: S‑blade will chop meat cubes or oth­er ingre­di­ents from coarse­ly chopped to minced. You can make per­fect mince­meat in less than a minute. For exam­ple, you can fine­ly mix and mince a few ingre­di­ents for mak­ing falafel or meatballs.

Mix: This blade can be used to puree pota­toes, cook veg­gies, or mix chick­pea and tahi­ni for hum­mus or make any oth­er deep. It is also per­fect for mix­ing thick and sticky recipes like ener­gy balls.

Grind: t is per­fect­ly suit­able for grind­ing my cau­li­flower rice or almond flour.

With SMALL AND LARGE DISCS, you will be able to slice and shred your favorite ingredients:

 Slice: It will slice all firm and soft­er ingre­di­ents like zuc­chi­ni, cucum­ber, cab­bage, cel­ery, apple, straw­ber­ry, and oth­ers into the fine per­fect thin or thick slices (depend­ing on the slicer/shredder disc you use). How­ev­er, you are advised to chill a few soft ingre­di­ents to just firm it before slic­ing or shredding.

 Shred: Slicing/shredding discs are per­fect for pro­cess­ing car­rots, pota­toes, any type of cheese, and even mozzarella.

Many recipes will employ both blender and food proces­sor, for exam­ple, shred­ding and slic­ing veg­gies for sal­ad in a food proces­sor and prepar­ing sal­ad dress­ing in a blender for it.

Assembling and Cleaning

Assem­bling: The Vita­mix food proces­sor assem­bling process is very straight­for­ward. The same as with any Vita­mix con­tain­er, you sim­ply have to mount the work bowl onto the self-detect base in any ori­en­ta­tion around the base sock­et. When you hear a click, it means it is locked into the right way. Next, select the acces­sories you need — the mul­ti-use blade or one of the slice/shred discs.

The mul­ti-use/s‑­type blades are placed over the cen­ter shaft in the bowl. The user usu­al­ly pre-loads the ingre­di­ents with the S blade before plac­ing the lid and feed­ing chutes.

To assem­ble one of the slicing/shredding discs, use the required dis­cov­er the dri­ve gear and the snap-on lid to the work bowl (you must hear two audi­ble “clicks”). Next, you have to set the large food push­er pin into the lid open­ing and push it down until it stops. Then, place the small food push­er in the large food pusher.

The Food Proces­sor will not oper­ate if any food proces­sor parts were not safe­ly assembled.

Clean­ing: All food proces­sor parts except the attach­ment gear base are dish­wash­er-safe on the top shelf. How­ev­er, it is bet­ter if you clean it man­u­al­ly in warm soapy water and rinse it under run­ning water.

If you have the base unit with the clean pro­gram, you can fill the work bowl with warm water and a few drops of dish soap and run the Clean pro­gram. How­ev­er, the Food proces­sor blades may require some extra man­u­al cleaning.

Warranty

The Food Proces­sor Attach­ment comes with a 3‑year Full War­ran­ty on the Food Proces­sor Self-Detect Base, Bowl, Lid, Push­ers, and a 1‑year war­ran­ty on the blade and discs.

Vita­mix also will ful­ly refund mon­ey (no ques­tion asked) if your return the Food proces­sor attach­ment with­in 30 days of the purchase.

Set Includes

• SELF-DETECT Base;
• 12-Cup Work Bowl;
• Work Bowl Snap-On Lid;
• 2 Food Push­ers – small and large;
• 2 Reversible slice/shred discs;
• 1 Multi-Use/”S” blade
• Disc Stor­age Case
• Recipe book with wel­come pamphlet;
• Instruc­tion manual.

Dimensions

Although the Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment has a big foot­print of 11.75 12.75 inch­es, it has a mod­est pro­file of x 8.5 inch­es, weighs only 6.17 lbs, and could be con­vert­ed into a com­pact, self-con­tained stor­age mode that takes less space than most stand­alone food processors.

Stor­age: The mul­ti-pur­pose blade must be placed in the work bowl over the gear stem, food push­ers in an upside-down posi­tion go inside the bowl with a snap-on lid on the top, and the stor­age case snapped onto the bot­tom of the bot­tom the snap-on lid.

Extra Accessories

There are the fol­low­ing extra acces­sories avail­able to buy to expand Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment functions:

• Juli­enne Disc is designed to cut long and thin juli­enne match­sticks from beet­roots, car­rots, zuc­chi­ni, and more.
  
• Reversible Fine Shred & Ultra-Thin Slice Disc — this is the reversible slice and shred disc sim­i­lar to the one includ­ed in the Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment pack­age but has a small­er and thin­ner shred­ding and slic­ing size capacity.
  
• Food Proces­sor Attach­ment Veg­gie Stick Disc - this disc will slice the veg­gie sticks with a shape per­fect for French fries; it suits for slic­ing pota­toes, sweet pota­toes, and oth­er firm roots.
  
• Com­pact Lid — this is an extra lid that will turn your food proces­sor work bowl into a stor­age con­tain­er; this lid also will work with mul­ti-use/s‑blades and will fit under the stan­dard kitchen cab­i­nets; how­ev­er, for using the food proces­sor attach­ment with discs and feed chute, you should use a stan­dard lid that is includ­ed in the food proces­sor package.
• Stack and Store Disc Case — the stor­age case is designed to store the extra attach­ments you may buy to expand your food proces­sor capac­i­ty in a com­pact way. This addi­tion­al case is con­nect­ed to the stan­dard stor­age case to declut­ter the stor­age as much as possible.
  

Special Features

Col­or: This Vita­mix Food proces­sor attach­ment is avail­able only in one col­or the black base and clear work bowl, clear Snap-On lid, and feed­ing chutes.

Volt­age Sys­tem: The Food Proces­sor Attach­ment is com­pat­i­ble only with a 110–120 V Ascent Series Blender base unit sold in the USA and Cana­da. This attach­ment is not com­pat­i­ble with 220–240 V self-detect blender base units avail­able in Europe, Aus­tralia, and Asia.

Noise

The Vita­mix food Proces­sor Attach­ment releas­es a sim­i­lar noise as the Vita­mix blender or slight­ly high­er (because of the larg­er and remov­able fid­dly blades) that is approx­i­mate­ly 90dB ‑100dB depend­ing on the ingre­di­ents you are processing.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• A well-built, excel­lent qual­i­ty food proces­sor like all the Vita­mix products;
• It is com­pact and makes the mul­ti­pur­pose machine with­out the need for much stor­age, sav­ing space and omes with the disc stor­age case;
• Easy to clean with all parts dish­wash­er safe;
• Very easy to use with a sim­ple and fast learn­ing curve
• High-qual­i­ty blades;
• Large work bowl suit­able for medi­um and large households;

Cons:

• It is com­pat­i­ble only with Ascent series Vita­mix blenders;
• Need more attach­ments like dic­ing, spi­ral­iz­ing or French fries;
• It is not com­pat­i­ble with Euro­pean and Aus­tralian Ascent blenders’ bases yet.
• The lid may need some mus­cle to fit;
• The only Vita­mix prod­uct pro­duced in China.

Vitamix Food Processor Attachment Price

The Vita­mix Food Proces­sor Attach­ment has approx­i­mate­ly the same price as most of the prop­er stand­alone Food proces­sors cur­rent­ly avail­able on the mar­ket. How­ev­er, it is well made pre­mi­um prod­uct with pre­mi­um sup­port and will last for many years, so all these fac­tors ful­ly jus­ti­fy the price tag.

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Summary

The Vita­mix 12 cups Food Proces­sor Attach­ment has an excel­lent design.  So if you need a prop­er food proces­sor, you should feel con­fi­dent buy­ing it. It is per­form­ing well and will declut­ter your counter space and the kitchen from an extra appli­ance. In addi­tion, since it comes in the form of attach­ment, it does not have as many parts as a stan­dard stand­alone food proces­sor has.

More­over, as with any Vita­mix prod­uct, the Food Proces­sor Attach­ment is sol­id and well built. How­ev­er, unlike the com­pet­ing food proces­sor brands, the bowl and lid are made of unbreak­able Tri­tan copoly­ester mate­r­i­al and an all-met­al gear dri­ve that ensures its long life span. So if you buy this attach­ment, you will sure­ly own one of the most impres­sive high-qual­i­ty Food Proces­sors avail­able on the market.