Food processors

A processor is a bowl with interchangeable blades. The chopping blade, the dough blade and the slicing disc are not substitutes for each other.

The chopping blade minces onion, nuts and raw meat. Pulse it. If you hold the button down, onion goes from dice to water. The dough blade is blunter and is meant to knead. Using the sharp blade on a heavy bread dough knocks the dough around the bowl and strains the hub.

The Kitchen Wizz style of machine is the large-bowl processor in this range: a feed tube for the disc, and a bowl you fill by the litre mark printed inside it, not by eye. A bowl that looks half empty can still be over the line once flour hydrates. Stop when the dough climbs the spindle.

Do not pour hot stock into a cold bowl and expect the seal to stay put. Let soup cool, or blend it with a stick blender in the pot. The feed tube also has a maximum width. A whole potato that does not fit is cut in half, not forced.

Wash the blade hub. Food packs under the plastic and smells like the last thing you chopped, which is often onion, even after the bowl looks clean.

If the job is only soup, look at immersion blenders. If it is a loaf from start to finish, look at bread makers. Stand mixers are under mixers.