Do you regularly find yourself reaching for a knife to prepare pan sauces, hummus or mayo? If you do then the Cuisinart Mini-Prep is the perfect addition to your kitchen. Keep reading to find out why…
The Cuisinart Mini-Prep has a 3-cup capacity work bowl placing it firmly in the “small food processor” category. It’s perfect for making sauces, dips, pesto, chopped mixes and even baby food. If you want to make pizza dough, ratatouille or cakes you will need a larger food processor than the Mini-Prep.
The 250 watt motor is well matched to the bowl size and will chop herbs, onions, garlic and hard cheese, purée baby foods and blend mayonnaise and flavoured butters with ease. It’s quite surprising what this compact food processor can actually do!
There are no speed options on this appliance, it can either chop or grind your ingredients, though it is possible to “pulse” the chop function by touching the button on and off repeatedly which gives you a little more control.
The “chop” function is a little misleading because pressing that button will actually allow you to chop, puree or mix depending on the ingredients you throw in the bowl. It’s good for chopping onions, garlic, celery and cheeses, pureeing cooked vegetables (perfect for baby food) or for mixing a salad dressing or even making mayonnaise.
If you want to chop hard ingredients like peppercorns, seeds, chocolate or nuts you need to use the grind function. You can also grind spices.
The Mini-Prep comes with the SmartPower blade and that is all you need to chop and grind to your heart’s content. Assembling this unit is as simple as putting the work bowl on the base unit, carefully dropping the blade onto the stem, throwing in your ingredients, putting on the cover and pressing chop or grind!
Controlling this appliance is super simple. Either press the grind button and wait until your ingredients have been chopped to your liking. Or use the chop button pulsing it a few times until you get the results you wanted.
Doesn’t get much simpler than that right?
The Cuisinart Mini-Prep is made from plastic, with any elements that come into contact with food being BPA free.
The Mini-Prep is a compact and light weight machine that is easy to lift and store away in a cabinet. It doesn’t take up much space on the countertop though so you might choose to just leave it out ready for use. You can even store the cord away under the base so that it doesn’t get in the way.
You can wash the bowl, blade and lid on the top rack of your dishwasher or in hot, soapy water. Whichever way you choose to clean it you can make the task easier by rinsing the bowl, lid and blade immediately after use so that the food doesn’t dry and stick to the parts.
The Cuisinart Mini-Prep comes with a three year warranty which is pretty impressive since one year seems to be standard.
The Mini-Prep measures 9.8 by 8.2 by 5.6 inches and weighs just three pounds.
There are no additional accessories for the Cuisinart, though you will want a to use with your machine.
Compact and easy to store Powerful Reasonably quiet Great for making hummus and pan sauces Good for pureeing baby food
Can chop inconsistently if you don’t follow the instructions and pulse the chop button
More than 2200 people have taken the time to share their thoughts about the Mini Prep over on Amazon and 82% of them are positive.
This is very much a favoured kitchen appliance, especially if you make a lot of pan sauces. Peel some garlic and coarse chop an onion before throwing it in the mini prep and within seconds they’re ready to be sautéed in the pan. A quick rinse of the lid, blade and bowl is all that’s needed before storing away for the next evening.
A top tip from users is to “pulse” the chop button so you have a little bit more control over the ingredients you are chopping and less likely to end up with mush. It does tell you this in the manual so definitely take time to read it through. The complaints that I read seemed to be caused by people using the appliance inappropriately.
When compared side by side with the Hamilton Beach Bowl Scraper with it’s 10-cup capacity and 450 watt motor the Mini Prep appears a bit expensive – at the time of writing the Hamilton Beach 70730 was being sold on Amazon for 10 dollars less.
Of course the reasons for choosing a small food processor relate to what you want to make with it so buying the larger model just because it’s cheaper may not suit your needs.
At less than 40 bucks (at the time of writing) it’s a reasonable investment for the amount of time it will save you in the kitchen.
If you regularly find yourself reaching for a knife to prepare pan sauces, hummus or mayo then the Cuisinart Mini-Prep would be perfect the perfect addition to your kitchen.
If you want a food processor that can also make pizza dough, ratatouille or cake batter then you will need to look at a larger model.
Today the Cuisinart costs the same at as it does at but it’s always worth double checking so I’ll include the current prices below. Amazon does stock a range of colours so to see if you can save money just by choosing a different colour option!
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