KitchenAid’s® ProLine® 16-Cup Food Processor with Commercial-Style Dicing. Is it Worth It? [Review]

[noskimlinks]
Cooking and entertaining for friends and family at home is a labor of love–one most of us foodies fantasize about while flipping through the latest cooking mag or cookbook. “What will I cook next?” But let’s face it, cooking takes a lot of work between the shopping and the prep work that goes into a meal. Anything you can do to shave off some prep time helps make a happy and relaxed hostess. When KitchenAid gave me the opportunity to review their latest food processor, the 16-Quart Pro Line Food Processor complete with their new dicing kit, I was on board.

I love throwing large parties with friends and family and I had a few coming up, so this gave me the perfect opportunity to test out the new 16-quart food processor. It comes with an impressive accessory kit with what seems like an endless amount of blades and tools to make prep work in the kitchen a breeze. No more loose blades and tools floating around in the kitchen cupboards or drawers (thank you!).
The first time I used the food processor, I made coleslaw for 20, sliced a half dozen onions to pickle, and sliced another half dozen homegrown cucumbers into perfect rounds for my cucumber salad. Granted coleslaw is fairly easy to make, but once you start doubling and tripling a recipe, your prep work can increase exponentially. The KitchenAid ProLine food processor effortlessly shredded three heads of cabbage, carrots, onions and bell peppers to make pulling my coleslaw together a breeze. Slicing my garden grown cucumbers into perfect rounds, for my husband’s birthday party? Done. Slicing onions to make my favorite quick pickled onions? Done. And better yet, no tears. The onions are encapsulated in the large bowl to prevent an unending stream of tears.
I also put to the test, the ‘ExactSlice ™’ system that allows you to adjust the thickness of your slices from thin to thick. This feature is super useful, particularly if you pickle veggies or make things like sweet potato chips or scalloped potatoes. If you own a mandoline, you may not need it anymore. If you don’t have a mandoline and you have this kitchen appliance, you won’t need to buy one.
With three blades, one for the mini bowl, a dough blade and multipurpose blade, an externally adjusting slicing disc, that allows you to cut thin to thick slices (love that!), a reversible shredding disc (which is fabulous for grating large quantities of cheese or cabbage), and a dicing kit that cuts food into perfect 8mm brunoise dice (love that too!), pulling together mirepoix for soups, dicing onions and potatoes for your favorite hash, chopped salads, salsas is suddenly easy. You no longer have to spend extra time chopping your veggies to get that “perfect cut.” This machine does it for you–and fast.
This food processor also comes with multiple capacity work bowls, a 4-cup mini bowl, a 10-cup prep bowl and the 16-cup bowl, which allows you to use it in your everyday cooking in addition to large parties. You can use this kit to prep veggies for the week so you have them ready to go for weeknight cooking. The plastic bowls are BPA-free, so no worries about yucky chemicals leaching into your fresh foods.

The real test came when my hubby and I tested out the dicing kit to make sweet potato hash with baked eggs. This feature is a first in the KitchenAid Pro Line series, and I wondered if it could live up to its name. Initially we made the mistake of forgetting to add the dicing kit lid, and it backed up the dicer. So remember to add the lid. With the lid, the dicing kit works quite nicely. When dicing harder veggies like carrots and sweet potatoes, some backup may happen and you may have to stop a time or two and use the dicing kit clean out tool to clean the blades. Dicing softer foods like onions is super easy and fast. Overall, the dicing blade rocks! It makes things like hash super easy and gives you the perfect cut. When it comes to cleaning the dicing kit, it does require a little extra elbow grease, but it’s well worth it.

Bottom line, this is a tool that makes life in the kitchen easier and more inspired. I love that I can do onions in bulk when cooking for a party, which saves me at least 30 minutes of chopping. I love the different size bowls, but I still need my super small food processor, the 4-cup bowl would not chop 3/4 cup crackers and sliced almonds for my kale and spinach ball appetizer.
If you do a lot of cooking and love throwing large dinner parties, KitchenAid’s 16-Quart Pro Line Food Processor may be for you. It’s made life in the kitchen for me deliciously easy. I like pushing the easy button.
Want your very own? We’re giving one away. To enter our sweepstakes, all you need to do is sign up for our newsletter here. Sweepstakes ends December 22, 2013.
Related on Organic Authority: