KitchenAid KSM1FPA Food Processor, standard, White

First let me say that I own a very nice food processor with a dicing feature. It is great. Then I saw this KitchenAid Stand Mixer Attachment, Food Processor with Commercial Dicing Kit demonstrated and knew right away that I needed one. I am a farmer and every spring, summer, and fall; I spend days processing the summer harvest for the pantry. It takes long hours to prep all of the vegetables and fruit for freezing, dehydrating, canning and freeze-drying, so anything that can shorten the time spent processing is a bonus in my kitchen. This attachment is a game changer. Because it is attached to the KitchenAid Stand Mixer, you can adjust the speed easier (from 1 - 10) than your standard food processor with only high, low and pulse settings. This way you can adapt your speed to the produce you are prepping. Next you can easily adjust the depth of the cuts with a handy slide knob. This slices from very thick to very thin in seconds. But last, but the very biggest benefit, is that you are NOT limited to the size of the food processor bowl to catch your food. No more cutting, stopping to disassemble the cutting bowl, dump the bowl and then reassembling the food processor to finish your cutting. Just place a large or even Extra-Large bowl under the Attachment discharge and cut away. I actually diced a full bushel of zucchini in 20 minutes using this method. And that included washing, cutting the zucchini into chunks that will fit the input tube, and running them through the dicing setup. It was so fast, I was amazed. Now before you think that I am looking at this attachment with rose colored glasses, I will tell you about one 'small' downside to this unit. That downside is that this makes small size dice cubes. These dice cubes are about 1/4 size smaller than my standard food processor makes. I would like to see KitchenAid offer an additional dicing blade with larger size dice cubes. That is my wish - You hear me KitchenAid? Anyway - cleanup is a breeze as the parts, except for the base, is all machine washable. I can't do that with my free-standing food processor either. All parts of that are hand washable. This is a great attachment to have. I am extremely happy with this purchase. Will I give up my other food processor? Nope. See the note on the size of the dicing cubes. Plus, this does not chop like a standard food processor, and it does not make pie crust either. But this works better on the other slicing, shredding and dicing. There is room in my kitchen for both.

I had an opportunity to purchase the KitchenAid Food Processor Attachment using some rebates that I'd gotten from an earlier KitchenAid promotion and when i saw a sale for this i decided to give it a try. I'd been looking at it for some time because it was the only item on the market that would dice and not just slice items like my Cuisinart. I'd been looking at the various videos that KitchenAid had on-line as well as independent reviewers and had seen some really impressive results and listened to some very negative comments. It appeared that individuals that bought or reviewed the attachment either found it very helpful or totally hated it. Being an engineer i was curious to see the construction and worried about the mechanism's quality. So when i received the attachment I had to run it through some tests.The first thing I noticed was how heavy the attachment was. It's not a lightweight piece of equipment! So my first concern was about the stress the weight would place on the mixer. I'm still worried about that after several hours of use. Like any of the KitchenAid attachments it's a little noisy when running and there is some vibration. I attribute that to the causing what some reviewers said about the attachment 'falling off' the mixer. I don't believe that's an issue if one keeps in mind that vibration in any piece of equipment tends to loosen fasteners over time, particuarly friction secured fasteners like KitchenAid uses to hold their attachments to the mixers. My advice? Check the fastener for any sign of loosening if you're going to use it for a lengthy period of time.So on to the tests. First was a twenty pound bag of russet potatoes, peeled and sliced to fit the hopper. I found varying advice on the speed setting. What i discovered was that in general the harder the item to be sliced and diced the faster you want to set the speed. Potatoes took about a seven to eight setting while larger carrots I set to ten. Apples worked fine at lower settings. Tomatoes (I used Roma) worked well and seemed to do better at a medium speed. That surprised me at first, I was expecting them to do better at a lower speed because of their firmness, but I think it's because of the skin. I did not try any skinless tomatoes - that might be a test for another time. Cucumbers were best at a low setting (Note: I peeled the cucumbers in my testing and the softer they were the worse the results - English cucumbers worked the best for dicing). Another thing that I found interesting was that i got the best results when dicing if I DID NOT use the pusher to force the vegetables into the hopper - letting their own weight and the angled blade pull them in worked just fine. A big WARNING - don't try to use the attachment to dice meat - that was a disaster! I have not tried cheese yet and if (when) I do I'll add to this review.So the dicing aspects of the attachment worked better than i anticipated. Since that was my primary reason for purchasing it I was very happy.I moved on to the slicing blades and was interested to note the adjustable thickness setting on the slicing blade (KitchenAid calls it their ExactSlice System). That's an interesting touch and i wonder how long that's going to last. Endurance is just as important to me as functionality since I tend to keep my technology until it expires! I would have preferred a metal mechanism, but that would have necessitated a price increase that probably would have made the overall cost a nonstarter. It worked fine as did the shredding and julienne discs. I typically prefer my Cuisinart for those functions (so many more blades and options) but if I'm going to do dicing as well as slicing and julienne cuts the KitchenAid is my tool of choice.Next was cleanup. How labor intensive was that going to be? I found that cleanup was actually easier than for my Cuisinart. I should note that i clean my tools immediately after use, no matter which brand or device. I've learned my lesson from letting debris dry in hard-to-reach places! The KitchenAid came apart as easily as it went together. Most of the pieces came clean in just a spray of warm water and a quick dip into a soapy bath and rinse. A nice scrub brush gets almost anything off easily and KitchenAid has thoughtfully provided a small tool for clearing any food stuck in the dicing grid so you don't end up with bloody fingers. I also like that there is an insert that lifts out to protect the mechanism from any food particles or fluids that go around with the blades. That was a feature I hadn't really considered important until it came to cleanup - then that made things a breeze.The included storage case is nice, but I have two concerns. The first one is a little picky, but I had a difficult time in getting the blades back into the case so it would close properly. Turns out that the adjustable thickness slicing has to be in placed into the storage case with what I'll call the plastic sweeping tab rotated so it's located to the right of the case or it interferes with the closure. A picky concern, true, but I was beginning to think I'd lost my mind when the case wouldn't close the first time. Second, the location of the hinge for the case means that in the open position it does not rest on the surface, but is slightly elevated. I've seen the same design on other cases and the failure mechanism is when left in that position for too long or if there's an impact it damages the hinges. A very small design change would have alleviated the possibility with zero additional cost in either materials or fabrication.Overall I think this one's a winner!Concerns? Well, like all bladed kitchen tools how sharp they are tends to make a huge difference. I am concerned about how well the dicing grid retains its edge since there's really no way to resharpen it. I didn't look into the cost of replacement, but i suspect it's not cheap! The other blades? Well, they seem to be the same quality as the Cuisinart's, and I've used those blades for at least ten years without issue.

I've been using this food processor for a couple of weeks now, maybe 2-4 times a week, and I am very happy with the product. The slicing attachments work well, although even the thickest setting does not really slice very thick. The grating discs work almost as good as the grating attachment, but this is a bit easier to clean.I really like the storage case that all of the discs come packaged in, but there is one disc that need to be in the perfect position in order for the lid to close, which is really irritating. The processor itself seems to be really well designed and built, and is very easy to clean since it uses a plastic liner that protects the attachment itself from touching any of the food.Overall, I would recommend buying this only if you find it on sale. I do not think it is really worth 250$, when most of the functions can be performed in a similar fashion with other mixer attachments. for 150$ though, I think it is a great addition to our kitchen.

I make a lot of soups during the winter months and cutting up all the veggies is time consuming. I tried the chopper attachment and it worked great. and saved me so much time. I am looking forward using the other attachments as Easter approaches.

It works great for dicing carrots and potatoes. I used it for canning big batches of soup. The dice is a little small for something like stew and there’s not a bigger dice piece option. It couldn’t handle ham, I guess it was too soft. And it couldn’t handle raw sweet potato, it was too hard. A big piece of food is left in the top when you finish and when you put in the next thing it gets pushed through. So if you switch ingredients be aware you will get some of the last thing or you have to open it and clean it. It worked for broccoli stalks too.