The Sleek KitchenAid Food Processor You Should Actually Avoid, According To Reviews

The right food processor is indispensable for the home cook. On our list of mistakes you might make when cooking pasta salad, slicing and chopping veggies by hand wasn't mentioned ... but maybe it should be! Your time is too precious to be processing ingredients by hand every single time, whether it's shredding cheese, puréeing baby food, or even grinding meat for burgers. When a Foodie feature writer tackled a rundown of the best and worst food processors on the market, a familiar name made us do a double-take — suffice it to say, we were floored by one of the "worst" machines.

KitchenAid stand mixers are something of a home kitchen status symbol, showing up on hopeful wedding and housewarming registries from coast to coast. The many potential attachments to these majestic machines are pricey and nearly all sold separately, inspiring many a DIY Julia Child to covet the whole set. One attachment that you should leave on the shelf with its inflated price tag is the KitchenAid KSM1FPA Food Processor, which is the stand mixer's official food processor attachment. At nearly $180 (as of this writing), it's a lot more expensive than many standalone appliances on our reviewer's list and, to boot? It's just not extraordinary at doing anything but looking cool. Amazon has labeled it with the ominous "Frequently Returned Item" tag, a testament to its lackluster performance.

On KitchenAid's own web store, only two-thirds of buyers said that they recommended the KSM1FPA food processor attachment, which comes with three disc-shaped blades. Poor reviews generally complained about the machine's limited functionality and lack of power. "Onions can't get diced at all, potatoes have to be cut in narrow pieces. Generally it doesn't help prep at all," one commenter complained. Another dissatisfied buyer expressed disappointment that all the machine did was cut: it couldn't mix or puree, making her aspirations of homemade mayo or aioli fruitless. An additional oft-cited quibble was that the attachment was large and unwieldy, making it hard to use.

Over on the dedicated KitchenAid Reddit page, users seemed to feel just "meh" about their attachments. "I highly recommend skipping the attachment and getting a standalone," one poster stated flatly. Another went into more detail about the uselessness of this expensive add-on: "[I]t seems kind of limited [...] it doesn't have a normal food processor blade. That means no hummus, no fine mincing, no mayonnaise, no cutting butter into flour for pastry, which are 90% of what I use my food processor for." "It's awful," echoed a third user, really piling on the criticism. "I used [it] a few times and then sold it on eBay." Considering that there were perfectly useful food processors on our reviewer's list for a fraction of the price, it seems there is no good reason to shell out for this KitchenAid albatross.