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Cuisinart Food Processor - DLC-2011
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Cat's Review
Cuisinart's Chopping Monster
not the primary cook in the family, a gadget geek, always short on kitchen space
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JUN
10
2007
Cuisinart Food Processor - DLC-2011 —
Right before my husband and I were about to move we found two gift cards for a local Sur la Table that we had received as wedding presents. I wanted to spend them in the store rather than buying something online, and since there were no Sur la Tables where we were going, we took the night off from packing for our trip and went to the local mall to spend our gift cards. I told my husband that since he did almost all of the cooking in the house he could pick out whatever he wanted with them. He ended up choosing the Cuisinart DLC-2011 PowerPrep Plus 11-cup Food Processor.About the Cuisinart and their PowerPrep Plus 11-cup Food Processor
Cuisinart makes an enormous line of kitchen supplies, from breadmakers to bread pans, blenders to food processors. If you use it in the kitchen, chances are good Cuisinart makes it. We had originally registered for the Cuisinart SmartPower Duet Blender/Food Processor for our wedding, and we had received it. We love the combination blender/food processor but my husband's main complaint was that he couldn't fit enough food into the food processor and frequently he had to process things in many small batches. The 11 cup PowerPrep Plus certainly seemed like it would take care of that issue.
Cuisinart sells this food processor in red, blue, black and white. We own the white one.
Features:
Cuisinart's PowerPrep Plus food processor has a motor that works on alternating speeds for mixing and it also features Cuisinart's patent-pending "Dough Control Technology". This means that the motor can adjust its speed automatically to ensure proper dough consistency. The PowerPrep Plus also includes the "Supreme Wide Mouth Feed Tube" for easier feeding of items into the processor.
Cuisinart lists the following features for this product at their website:
- 11-Cup Lexan Work Bowl with Handle
- Touchpad Dough Control
- Work Bowl Cover with One-piece Supreme Wide Mouth Feed Tube
- Large and Small Pushers
- Powerful Induction Motor for Heavy Dough
- Touchpad Controls
- Stainless Steel Standard Slicing Disc (4mm) and Medium Shredding Disc
- Stainless Steel Chopping/Mixing Blade and PowerPrep Dough Blade
- Detachable Disc Stem and Spatula
- How-to Video and Instruction/Recipe Book
- Full 10-year Motor Warranty
- Limited 3-year Warranty on Entire Unit
Out of the Box
Our Cuisinart came in a large box. Inside we found the base of the unit, the Lexan heat-resistant, shatter-resistant bowl, the lid, two shredding discs, the chopping/mixing blade, the dough blade, the disc stem and spatula. Also included was a VHS how-to video. We don't own a VHS VCR anymore, so that's never been used. Finally, a small instruction/recipe book was included.
The food processor has a touch pad with buttons for On, Off, Pulse and Dough. The touch pad is easy to clean and keeps the base of the unit looking streamlined. A four foot power cord provides ample room for setting the food processor down wherever it's most convenient.
Using the Power Prep Plus 11-cup Food Processor
One thing you never have to worry about with this food processor is not having enough room in the bowl to process a certain amount of food. This means that the food processor is quite large and bulky, however. Our new home has an enormous kitchen with six large roll out storage drawers, so we can store our Cuisinart food processor in there and pull it out only when we need it. In my old home, which had a twenty year old "average" sized kitchen, I never would have had enough room for this item.
To set up the food processor you plug in the base, snap the bowl onto it and either attach the blade stem to the disc that you want to use, or insert one of the other blades directly into the processor. Snap on the lid and pull out the top of the feed tube, turn it on and get ready to rumble.
What's that? Your food processor isn't turning on? Wait - Before tossing it aside and cursing it, make sure that everything is locked into place: the bowl, the lid, everything. This is a safety feature of the device.
Even though the feed tube is extremely wide, there is still some processing of food, usually just shortening the length of it, to get it into the feed tube with the little feed pusher in behind it. One thing that my husband found surprising was how little prepping of food needed to be done with this food processor. I saw him cutting up food into small chunks and placing it in the feed tube. I took the whole thing and said, "Why don't you try this?" And just shoved it down with the food pusher behind it.
My husband said with a dubious look on his face, "That's not going to work you know" but looked shocked when not only did it work, but the resulting shreds that I got were more uniform than the ones he had achieved. "Hey, what do you know? That actually works better," he said, sounding surprised. It's rare that he's wrong and I'm right about something in the kitchen.
What It Does
Yes it slices, it dices, it shreds, it practically purees, it kneads. It does it all.
The chopping blade is great for chopping up small items, making bread crumbs, doing whatever you might normally use a chopping blade for in any of the smaller food processors. The shredding and slicing discs do just what they say they will do. You have to first insert the little disc stem into the base of the disc and affix it into the bowl of the food processor. From there it's just a matter of pushing food through the food tube to get sliced and shredded vegetables or cheese in minutes.
One tip that I've learned just through experience is to lightly coat the bowl with a small amount of cornstarch when shredding anything but hard cheeses. You'll want to pre-freeze the cheese just a little bit (unless it's a hard cheese) and the cornstarch will keep the cheese shreds from sticking together. I've also used the shredding disc to shred vegetables such as squash and cabbage.
Cleaning
This is the part of using a food processor that I hate the most. All of the parts of the Cuisinart PowerPrep Plus are dishwasher safe, except the base which can easily be wiped down. However, the food processor is just so huge that it takes up a lot of real estate in the dishwasher and washing it by hand is even less fun. I hate the bulkiness of this item the most when it comes to cleaning.
Warranties and Customer Service
Cuisinart provides a ten year warranty on the food processor motor and a three year limited warranty against manufacturer's defects on the rest of the food processor. Warranty service should be handled through Cuisinart directly. Registering your product for warranty service is easy at Cuisinart's website.
Cat's Bottom Line
I really like using this food processor in spite of its extreme bulkiness. It gets the job done and in record time. My husband especially loves using it because I am the one who ends up cleaning it when he's done. We use this food processor several times a week and we both really love it.
Cuisinart Food Processor - DLC-2011 is recommended by Cat
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