Cuisinart cordless food chopper review

Adding a food processor to your kitchen can give you a lot of flexibility. It makes chopping and mincing easy, and can cut your 20-minute prep time down to mere seconds. While full-sized food processors can be big and bulky, however, this Cuisinart Cordless Food Chopper from the Evolution X line is compact and perfect for small spaces. It has all the power you need for your food prep tasks, but you can use it out by the grill or on the kitchen island. And, when you’re done, its dishwasher-safe cleanup takes no time at all.

What’s in the box of the Cuisinart cordless food chopper?

In the box of the Cuisinart Evolution X Cordless Food Chopper, you’ll find the chopper base with a three-bar LED battery display, removable 4-cup plastic bowl, removable two-sided stainless steel chopper blades, and a bowl cover.

This chopper’s cordless design makes it easy to fit a small food processor into your kitchen—even if it’s not something you’re going to use every day. I know that I sometimes struggle with finding a close enough wall outlet for my appliances (especially hand mixers, for some reason), so I love that I never have to worry about finding an outlet in front of some clear countertop space with the Cuisinart Evolution X.

The Cuisinart cordless food chopper’s top features

• Dishwasher-safe bowl, blade, and lid
• 20 minute runtime on a 2 hour full charge
• 25 second runtime on a 15 minute quick charge. (That’s enough time to chop up some nuts, mince garlic, or make a sauce or salsa!)
• 39″ micro USB charging cable

What exactly is a food chopper?

The question of “what exactly is a food chopper” stumped me for a while. I’ve had food processors and I’ve had blenders. I’ve even had hand-powered choppers for items like onions and mushrooms. But… A powered food chopper?

A little research led me to the conclusion that there are actually two kinds of food choppers. One kind—the kind I’ve had in the past—is manual. Those ones are great for helping you slice and dice single items. Some of these have specific slicing bars; others have a super sharp blade and a pull-cord that lets you easily (and quietly) chop produce in the kitchen.

The other is powered, and that’s what Cuisinart’s Cordless Food Chopper is. The powered food choppers on the market are kind of like little sized-down food processors. They’re powerful and great for finely mincing items, but they’re a lot smaller, which makes them perfect for occasional use or small kitchens. This one has two super sharp blades, and it’s ideal for chopping and mincing smaller items like onions, nuts, tomatoes, and crackers.

What can the Cuisinart cordless food chopper do?

I like to think of the Cuisinart Cordless Food chopper as being great for small tasks. The included instruction manual has some great examples of where it excels: mincing herbs, leeks, and horseradish; chopping or puréeing meats; chopping onions and shallots with quick pulses.

No, you can’t make a whole soup in here, but you can chop up all of your soup ingredients before they go into the pot. You can also quickly chop the herbs and savouries that you’ll need for a fresh pasta sauce, or crush dry crackers or cookies for crusts and toppings. The 4-cup bowl size is ideal for making sauces and pestos, as the blades reach every inch of a smaller recipe.

The Cuisinart Cordless Food Chopper works best with fresh and thawed ingredients that have been pre-chopped into 1/2″-1″ pieces.

My experience with this Cuisinart food chopper

I’ll be frank with you: my first few times using the Cuisinart Cordless Food Chopper did not go great. I’ve never used a chopper this size, and it stumped me a few times! It was too small to comfortably chop my cucumber quarters (I wanted to make a Chinese appetizer with some roasted chilli flakes, sesame seed oil, and black vinegar) and minced them instead, leaving enormous chunks behind no matter how many times I pulsed them. Then, because it didn’t have a lid opening for continuous light pouring, it broke my mayonnaise, so I ended up with a runny, eggy liquid.

After those two consecutive failures, I took a minute to step back and reset. This food chopper is made to be small. It’s has a four cup capacity (a far cry from the 10 cup slicers and food processors that I grew up with) and is delightfully apartment-sized. A couple of bumps in the road could be expected.

Luckily, my partner came upstairs at exactly that moment with a day-saving request: could I pretty please make some of my Caesar salad dressing?

It was an easy choice. I flipped through Cuisinart’s instruction manual and recipe book to make sure a dressing was food chopper-friendly, pulled out my favourite recipe, and got to work.

Five-minute Caesar salad dressing

My Caesar salad dressing is, if I might be allowed a slight brag, the stuff of legend. (Okay, that’s maybe more than a slight brag.) It’s creamy and rich, and I make it with extra lemon, extra pepper, and garlic powder instead of garlic cloves. The result is a dressing that tastes both refreshing and indulgent. The lemon keeps things light, the pepper grounds the flavours, and the garlic powder gives it that classic Caesar flavour without leaving you with inescapable garlic breath.

This dressing was so easy to make in this food chopper. I measured out all of my ingredients, scooped them into the chopper, and as you can see in the video, I was finished! I blended the dressing on “grind” for about 10 seconds and it was perfectly mixed. The chopper’s lid meant that I didn’t have to worry about dressing flying around the kitchen, and it kept my house from smelling like garlic until I could do the dishes after dinner.

Zesty Caesar Salad Dressing recipe

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (you can grate/chop this in your Cuisinart Food Chopper if you have a chunk of it! Tip: I recommend freezing and thawing it first if you want those crumbly circles instead of flakes.)
• 1 tsp anchovy paste
• 1/2 tsp Worchestershire sauce
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp lemon juice (real or fake; the garlic powder really covers it up)
• 1 tsp white vinegar
• Garlic powder, to taste (or 1 clove garlic)
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste

Then pulse the blender a couple of times on either setting, scoop out your dressing, dress the salads if desired (try shredded cheese, bacon bits, fresh pepper, and fresh croutons for a hearty salad) and you’re ready to go. I find that this makes enough for about 4 large salads and the blender could easily fit a double recipe, so if you estimate a generous 30 seconds to blend every bowl of dressing… That’s 16 salads per minute, or 320 Caesar salads per full charge.

Guess you better start that dinner party seating plan now!

Who this cordless chopper is best for

I love this chopper for a single person or small family, and I’ll tell you why: its small size means that the blades can reach every ingredient in a small recipe. If you’re making a recipe that’s only has 1 cup of ingredients, a standard 10 cup food processor or blender will struggle to get it thoroughly blended.

Similarly, if you’re a summer gardener and you want to chop up a handful of your fresh, beautiful garden basil, you’ll be hard-pressed to get it finely minced in a full sized food processor. Instead, this mini size is great for small families and small tasks. The fact that Cuisinart made this model cordless is just the cherry on top!

Shop the Cuisinart Cordless Food Chopper online at Best Buy.