Verdict

Pros

• Low cost
• Compact
• Good blades

Cons

• Shakes a lot
• Limited accessories
• Can leak a little

What is the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro?

Clearly designed with the more casual cook in mind, the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro is a neat food processor that will take up only a small amount of room and do the basic functions well. It’s a good machine for those buying their first food processor as it’s not expensive and will squeeze into even the smallest kitchen.

Related: Best hand blenders

Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro – Design and features

Don’t pay any attention to the word ‘pro’ in its name, because this is not designed for professional cooks, and that’s fine. Instead, this is a good, simple food processor for everyday use. It’s going to be most suited to people who aren’t preparing for a large family as its main bowl is under two litres, which is pretty small by food processor standards.

The Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro doesn’t have the most exciting design, with a simple silver and black look that is neither exciting nor offensive. It has a modest footprint for a food processor. Essentially, this food processor appears to be designed so that it doesn’t stand out.

The build quality is ok. I found the Easy Prep Pro very light and its buttons need a good firm push to stay down. A feature that I found quite strange is that the jug won’t unlock from the base unless you remove the lid first. This isn’t a particularly significant issue, but if you want to carry the jug when it contains liquid, you can’t just keep the lid on. I couldn’t work out the benefit of this feature.

The processor comes with 1.9-litre and 0.7-litre bowls and discs for fine/medium grating, and 2mm and 4mm slicing. The Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro Food has two speeds.

Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro – What’s it like to use?

Although the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro is often available for less than £100, you get some very good performance for your money.

The chopping blade performed perfectly. The Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro has only two speed settings, and I found the lower setting fine for most tasks. An onion thrown into the main bowl was very finely diced in just a few seconds.

Making Thai red curry paste and soup, the food processor dealt with both smoothly and quickly, though with a small amount of leakage when blending the maximum amount. When using the smaller bowl to blend the curry paste I found that I had to place a hand firmly on the lid or the bowl would tend to spin. This appeared to be because the bowl wasn’t locked firmly in place. There’s a rubber rim, which should keep the bowl from moving, but it wasn’t doing its job.

The two included discs give you 2mm and 4mm slicing, and medium and fine grating. All four functions worked just as you’d hope. The slicing discs gave even slices of both onion and carrot, leaving nothing behind on the upper side of the disc. The grating discs performed equally well, happily shredding carrots and cheese.

When it came to crushing ice, the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro can do it, but it shook violently at first and had to be held firmly in place. As long as you hold on to it, you’ll get finely crushed ice very quickly.

There’s no dedicated dough blade, but you can use the main blade. However, I found the chopping blade a bit brutal for doughs and wouldn’t recommend it.

Any machine should only be judged on what it promises and the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro’s promise is modest. It doesn’t have any kind of egg whisking attachment or a proper dough blade or a very large capacity.

What it does offer is a solid, entry-level machine that will do everything required by the occasional cook. If you only need to use a food processor every now and again, and want something that won’t take up too much room in your cupboard or announce itself too strongly on your worktop, then this is a sensible choice. You’ll likely eventually graduate beyond it, if you have any cooking ambitions, and it certainly doesn’t feel built for decades of service, but it does the job well for the money.

Why buy the Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro?

If you’ll use a food processor infrequently and expect it to spend more time in the cupboard than in use, then it makes sense to not throw too much money at it. The Cuisinart Easy Prep Pro performs its short list of basic functions admirably. It’s not a pretty, exciting or gimmicky food processor; it just gets the job done.

Verdict

There’s nothing exciting about this basic food processor, but it does everything expected of it well.

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