Best food processor 2024: Chop, blitz and puree with ease

The best food processor should be three things: affordable, robust and, most importantly, superb at chopping and slicing. If you cook a lot of meals that need plenty of prep, a food processor is an indispensable kitchen aid.

They are the perfect companion for the enthusiastic cook who likes to create their own sauces and loves using fresh ingredients. A good food processor ensures that you can say goodbye to time consuming chopping and say hello to super swift soups, sauces and dips. Prep will be less messy and there will be less washing up thanks to fewer bowls and the dishwasher-safe components, giving you more time to concentrate on your next culinary masterpiece.

Take a look through our guide to buying the best food processor below, followed by our mini reviews, and find your ideal processor.

Best food processors: At a glance

• Best budget food processor: Kenwood FDP301WH MultiPro Compact | £65
• Best food processor for most people: Ninja 3-in-1 with Auto-IQ | £200
• Best food processor for accessories: Kenwood MultiPro Compact+ | £140
• Most powerful food processor: Sage Kitchen Wizz Pro | £440

How to choose the best food processor for you

How much should I spend?

Food processors from big brands start from around £70 but, as with many products, you usually get what you pay for. That being said, you won’t need to spend too much more to get a substantial improvement in power and a more refined design. So if you are going to use your food processor regularly, it makes sense to spend the extra cash.

If you spend around £200+ you can get yourself a high-powered food processor with an array of accessories and multiple bowls and jugs in different sizes. Larger price tags sometimes come with a space-saving footprint too, leaving more of your kitchen surface free for other kitchen aids.

What size should I buy?

It depends on what jobs you are going to use the food processor for and how much space you have in your kitchen. A larger 3L+ processor will obviously chop more food without needing to be emptied. This is ideal if you cook in large batches, but if you’re limited for space you might want to consider one with 2L capacity maximum.

Typically, a 2L food processor or similar will be large enough for most prepping tasks, including pastry for pies and pizza dough.

Do I need a processor with variable speeds?

Most food processors worth their salt should provide variable speeds and a “pulse” button that gives ingredients a quick whizz.

You might wonder why this is important, but a variable speed setting is crucial, depending on what foods you want to whisk and how you want to prepare them.

A pulse setting, for example, is ideal for not overdoing it when you want to coarsely chop nuts or lightly beat eggs. Generally, the more speed settings a processor has, the better.

What other features should I look for?

It’s worth checking that the bowls are dishwasher-safe, as this can reduce the mountain of dishes growing in your kitchen sink and save precious time.

Food processors also typically come with a set of puréeing blades and reversible slicing and grating discs. Some of the latest models even have an adjustable slicing blade so you can change the thickness of slices at the push of a button.

Do I need a food processor with a powerful motor?

The wattage represents how powerful the motor is, but don’t automatically assume that more watts are better – a well-thought-out design makes a big difference.

For example, if you want to be able to crush ice for frozen drinks and smoothies, look for a model with a blender attachment that says it’s powerful enough for ice. A good attachment makes all the difference.

How we test food processors

Most food processors are designed to do one thing – chop your ingredients. But there’s plenty to consider when choosing one, which is why we put every model through a series of tests before giving them a top spot on our roundup. The most important of these is, unsurprisingly, the chop test. For both single and multi speed processors, we test and re-test using the same vegetables to ensure each one can chop an onion as well as it can blitz through a hardy squash.

We also test additional features and accessories that come with each model to determine whether they’re good additions or just space hogs. It’s not uncommon for food processors to have whisking and kneading attachments or come with additional bowls. Useability and size are also assessed, as food processors can be quite large and some are easier to use than others. We’re looking for simplicity as well as a good number of settings. Depending on your needs, sometimes less is more.

Finally, we consider value for money. If we’re recommending an expensive model, there’s a good reason for it. Sometimes spending more will get you some excellent premium features, which can be really useful if you use your food processor every day. Similarly, if you’re buying a budget processor, it should still be able to chop and blitz to your liking but it might just come with fewer settings.

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The best food processors you can buy in 2024

1. Kenwood FDP301WH Multipro Compact: Best budget food processor

Price when reviewed: £65 | Check price at AmazonIdeal for food processor newbies, the MultiPro Compact is small but perfectly formed. Rather than oodles of unnecessary attachments, it comes with a good set of dishwasher-safe basics – a decent-sized bowl and blender jug, knife blade and reversible slicing and shredding disc – that will get the job done.

This means all your chopping, grating, whisking and mixing can be accomplished in seconds using its fast or slow speeds or pulse.

Non-slip feet make it sturdy on the worktop during use, while it’s also compact enough to be stored easily in a cupboard. It’s a smart option for smaller kitchens, yet large and powerful enough that the performance won’t disappoint. It’s also available in silver.

Key specs – Capacity: 2.1l (food processor), 1.2l (blender); Power: 800W; Dimensions: 19 x 20 x 36.5cm (WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes

2. Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ – BN800UK: Best food processor for most people

Price when reviewed: £200 | Check price at NinjaThe Ninja 3-in-1 food processor makes quick work of both big and simple chopping tasks due to its powerful 1,200W motor and super-sharp blades. It comes with three interchangeable bowls: a 1.8-litre food processor bowl, a 2.1-litre blending jug and a 700ml personal blending cup. There’s also a dual-sided blade for slicing and grating in the box, as well as a dough blade and a spout lid for drinking smoothies on the go.

Alongside manual buttons for high, medium and low chopping, there are also a number of automatic Auto-IQ settings for blending, chopping, pureeing and mixing. In testing, the Ninja excelled in almost every area, leaving us with impressively uniform slices of pepper, carrot, cabbage and more. It also produced the smoothest results we’ve ever seen in a blending attachment, even when blitzing fibrous vegetables. Unfortunately, it’s not designed for prolonged kneading but it’s still one of the best premium food processors we’ve tested and worth every penny.

Read our full Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ – BN800UK review

Key specs – Capacity: 1.8l (food processor), 2.1l (large blending jug), 700ml (personal blending cup); Power: 1,200W; Dimensions: 19 x 23 x 20cm (WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes

Check price at Ninja

3. Kenwood FDM312SS Multipro Compact+: Best food processor for accessories

Price when reviewed: £140 | Check price at Amazon

Kenwood is well known for its innovative kitchen appliances, and its latest food processor doesn’t disappoint in this area. Not only is it a standard processor, but it also has integrated weighing, so you can weigh directly into the bowl as you prep, or use the base as an independent set of scales. What’s more, the FDM312SS model comes with an army of extras. Alongside the 2.1-litre processor bowl, you also get two “on-the-go” blender bottles, a small glass mill attachment for grinding herbs and spices, and a separate blender jug. Despite all these extras, the processor is still impressively affordable at under £150.

There isn’t a swish digital touchscreen and it’s not the slickest appliance you’ll ever buy, but what’s most important is that it’s highly functional. This processor had no trouble getting through most fruits and veggies, but you may need to cut up hardier items such as squash and pumpkin into reasonable-sized pieces first. The scales are accurate, the mill produced relatively even pieces of ground black pepper from whole peppercorns and the blender had no trouble whipping up a smoothie in little more than a minute.

Key specs – Capacity: 2.1l; Power: 800W; Dimensions: ‎23 x 20 x 36.5 cm (WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes

4. Sage Kitchen Wizz Pro 3.7L: Most powerful food processor

Price when reviewed: £440 | Check price at Lakeland

You can always rely on kitchen electricals from Sage to do something a bit different; something that makes them stand out if you’re a keen cook. This is no different. It comes with all mod cons and a storage box for attachments. But what really sets it out from the crowd is its “why didn’t I think of that?” adjustable slicing blade.

You can cut thicknesses ranging from 0.3mm to 8mm so it can take the place of a mandolin. Plus the width of the feed chute is 14cm, which is wide enough to throw a potato in whole – ideal for making chunky chips. And instead of a two-blade attachment for soups and purees, it comes with a quad blade that blitzes things even faster. A final clever detail is an LCD display that shows the time left to process food so you can coordinate the rest of your recipe as you cook.

Key specs – Capacity: 3.7l; Power: 2,000W; Dimensions: ‎22 x 27 x 45 cm (WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes

Check price at Lakeland

5. Cuisinart Mini Prep Pro: Best food processor for small kitchens

Price when reviewed: £60 | Check price at John Lewis

For small jobs or compact kitchens, this food processor from Cuisinart is a good buy. It weighs 1.26kg and is less than 23cm high so it doesn’t take up much space on crowded worktops and is easy to store.

The pint-sized product features a 900ml bowl and a stainless steel blade with a reversible action for thorough chopping and grinding. All the parts are dishwasher safe and it comes with a spatula for spooning out your mixtures. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles that some of the other food processors on this list possess, but it’s great for fuss-free functionality if space is at a premium.

Key specs – Capacity: 0.9l; Power: 250W;Dimensions: ‎‎18 x 14 x 23.5cm(WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes

Check price at John Lewis

6. KitchenAid Food Chopper: The best cordless food processor

Price when reviewed: £130 | Check price at John Lewis

The big benefit of this food processor is the fact that it’s cordless, obviously. It brings with it convenience and portability, allowing you to simply pick it up and take it to wherever you need to be in the kitchen. As you would expect, it comes with its very own charger and the lithium ion battery is fully charged in a couple of hours. Once the battery is at full capacity (there is an indicator light that tells you when it needs recharging) you should get at least a week or two worth of use out of it. But obviously, how long it lasts depends very much on how often you use it.

The KitchenAid has a capacity of 1.18l – around five cups – so it’s relatively small capacity-wise. Despite this, it powers its way through vegetables, fruit, herbs, meat and can tackle eggs, nuts and more with its two speed settings. Choose to chop or puree with its chopping blade or introduce the whipping accessory to stiffen up cream, both of which do their job well. It might seem a tad costly given its capacity and features, but you really can’t put a price on the convenience of cordless.

Key specs – Capacity: 1.18l; Power: Rechargeable Li-Ion battery; Dimensions: 14 x 16.8 x 26.4cm (WDH); Dishwasher-safe parts: Yes