Awesome Mini-sized Food Processor

Hamilton Beach small food chopper works great for me as a mini-sized food processor. Not to mention the fact that is very inexpensive at about $10 compared to a food processor which is around $30 dollars and plus, but this product has a powerful tiny motor and can unbelievable do so many things!

It minces ground beef even further, helping you make meatballs, it chops up garlic and big chunks of ginger into a creamy paste with a little water, but I use it often to make a 1.5 cup curry paste or sauce for my ethnic chicken dishes. It's small size makes you want to go the extra step and make the fresh curry paste for your next meal rather then rely on a store-bought jar because putting it together and taking it apart for cleaning is so easy! Especially if you have a small sink it can easily fit in your sink with all the other washing utensils. Just remove the blade and the lid and the jar and wash it all and presto! Its all clean and ready to dry and be put away. The fact that it is so easy to put together and take a part and wash is one my favorite features about this product. It means less work for me in the end which is always great for those of you who have a family of your own.

Because it functions so well as a very small food processor blending ingredients together, grinding things so smoothly, it does not at all work well to "chop" foods like onions. My friend originally bought this for me because she knew I spent a lot of time chopping onions for dishes, but its actually terrible at it.

Why? Because first of all, you have to actually chop up the onion - which is already pretty small - for it to fit in the small 1.5 cup capacity of the machine. If I do that then I think I might as well go the extra and final step and just chop up the onion myself by hand because I don't think its worth cleaning the machine later for something I can easily do myself.

And second of all and finally and most importantly, the machine actually grinds the onion and mushes it up rather then "chopping" it finely. The pieces of onion are uneven, soggy, wet, and too blended to appear "finely" chopped. In additon, some larger pieces are stuck to the side of the cup while more minced pieces are towards the center adding to the dis-comformity of the onions even more. So I do not use it for chopping onions even though it lists that as one of its main features and has a picture of chopped up onions on the cover of my original box.

But for making curry sauces or tomato pesto sauce the machine is great! I use it as a mini-food processor for meals where I don't want to chug out the big expensive harder-to-clean "real" food processor. I use it for meals where I just need a small amount of paste or sauce for my dishes and do need the larger food processor to do the job. I use my small food processor for simple food processing jobs such as making sauces and pastes to add to foods or pureeing diced tomatoes and I use my large more expensive food processor for big complicated jobs like making a lot of meatballs for a relatively big dinner.