Food Processor - What you really use it for?

meritaten

one of the reasons I ummed and arrred was because I wondered whether I would really use one a lot or would it join the other 'useless gadgets' in the utility room?
so, any tips on making the FP a really usefull tool would be appreciated. I think I made a good start today - I had quite a bit of stale bread - so turned it into breadcrumbs. then changed to grater disc and grated half a block of cheese. Both those went in freezer - then realised I had a pack of 'Traffic Light' peppers in fridge - so blades went back on and I chopped up the peppers. took me ten minutes in all! I was delighted!
no room in freezer now - so what can I do with it next I wonder?

suki1964

meritaten wrote: »

one of the reasons I ummed and arrred was because I wondered whether I would really use one a lot or would it join the other 'useless gadgets' in the utility room?
so, any tips on making the FP a really usefull tool would be appreciated. I think I made a good start today - I had quite a bit of stale bread - so turned it into breadcrumbs. then changed to grater disc and grated half a block of cheese. Both those went in freezer - then realised I had a pack of 'Traffic Light' peppers in fridge - so blades went back on and I chopped up the peppers. took me ten minutes in all! I was delighted!
no room in freezer now - so what can I do with it next I wonder?

How big is your imagination?

Soups. All veg I use for soups get sliced in the fp. Keeps cooking times down

Pastry. I make all my pastry in mine in seconds

Salads. Crunchy veg- slice or grate in seconds

Scones. Easy peasy

Curries. Great for slicing the piles of onions needed for the sauces, great for slicing/dicing veggies for pakoras and bahjees

Sunday dinner. Stuffings and yorkies. Slicing carrorts etc

Lyonnaise or dauphinois potatoes

Crisps

Basically any menus where chopping, slicing,dicing,whisking, mixing is required, use the fp. The only not good result I have had is with bread. But then I prefer to handle bread dough

meritaten

suki1964 wrote: »

How big is your imagination?

Soups. All veg I use for soups get sliced in the fp. Keeps cooking times down

Pastry. I make all my pastry in mine in seconds

Salads. Crunchy veg- slice or grate in seconds

Scones. Easy peasy

Curries. Great for slicing the piles of onions needed for the sauces, great for slicing/dicing veggies for pakoras and bahjees

Sunday dinner. Stuffings and yorkies. Slicing carrorts etc

Lyonnaise or dauphinois potatoes

Crisps

Basically any menus where chopping, slicing,dicing,whisking, mixing is required, use the fp. The only not good result I have had is with bread. But then I prefer to handle bread dough

THANK YOU Suki!
I can see me using it a lot - its a doddle to clean up - far better than I expected.
and Dauphinous and Potato Gratin is a huge fave with OH - and I resist making it because of the thinly slicing the spuds! I bet the grandkids will love making crisps with it too! oh my! beetroot crisps! just thought of that - I love them and they are sooooo expensive if you can find them!

now all I need is to find where to store it! my kitchen cupboards are all full! and I don't want to sacrifice any more worktop space.............and the utility room is the graveyard for 'used once a year appliances' like the food slicer and ice cream maker.............

zippychick

Congrats Meritaten Ive merged this with our existing thread which has loads of other ideas on how to use your processor


here's a lemon drizzle recipe , specifically to be made in a FP


http://www.waterstones.com/wat/images/special/pdf/hairy_bikers_drizzle.pdf


Zip

meritaten

Thanks zippy, I shall browse this thread for tips - and the recipe sounds really nice!

culpepper

I use mine when marmalading which should be coming around again quite soon.
The juicer thing lets me empty out the shells. It acts like a giant lemon squeezer and you have to push the half fruits and hold them till they are just a shell.
Then I pick out all the pips which collect in a sort of sieve thing..
The juice and most of the orangey pulp go in the pan. The peel then gets chopped up with the blade and added in.
It is a sticky job but much much quicker than doing it all with a lemon squeezer and a knife and grater.

suki1964

culpepper wrote: »

I use mine when marmalading which should be coming around again quite soon.
The juicer thing lets me empty out the shells. It acts like a giant lemon squeezer and you have to push the half fruits and hold them till they are just a shell.
Then I pick out all the pips which collect in a sort of sieve thing..
The juice and most of the orangey pulp go in the pan. The peel then gets chopped up with the blade and added in.
It is a sticky job but much much quicker than doing it all with a lemon squeezer and a knife and grater.

I forgot mine has a juicer. I use that as well for the manky oranges, get loads of juice out of them for drinking

miss-scrimpy

A food processor is brilliant I find for grating cheese and making pastry HOWEVER the same thought goes with the cheese sandwich/toastie maker......the ultimate question

IS IT WORTH IT DUE TO WASHING IT UP?

I have to admit that I chucked my sandwich maker away early last year because I SO could not be bothered to clean it! It was very old anyway but terrible to admit on MSE just because I couldn't be dealing with washing it up - haha

marleyboy

I have a food processor on top of my kitchen cupboard. Its been there for a few Years now as I have never found a reason to use it.

Goldiegirl

miss-scrimpy wrote: »

A food processor is brilliant I find for grating cheese and making pastry HOWEVER the same thought goes with the cheese sandwich/toastie maker......the ultimate question

IS IT WORTH IT DUE TO WASHING IT UP?

I have to admit that I chucked my sandwich maker away early last year because I SO could not be bothered to clean it! It was very old anyway but terrible to admit on MSE just because I couldn't be dealing with washing it up - haha

I have a food processer, which I bought in the mid 80's, so it's getting on for 30 years old.


At first I used it to grate carrot ( I liked grated carrot with salads) and to make cakes and pastry.


But I loathed washing it up - seemed to take ages.


I've lived in this house 25 years in May, and can't recall using the food processor once in this house.


I nearly eBayed it, but decided not to as the white plastic is now quite yellowed.


I'm now starting to do much more old styling, so I'm going to get it out again and see if I use it.


But, I tend to think I'd rather do the chopping and cake mixing manually, and not have so much bother with the washing up, rather than saving time on the preparation and spending more time washing up