Food Processor Vs. Blender

Everyone wants to have the perfect kitchen. Well-equipped with the best cookware, ready to cook anything that comes to your mind. So a pertinent question which might come into your mind would be about the difference between a food processor and a blender. Now, to the untrained eye, they look pretty much the same and seem to perform almost the same function, so the debate may have arisen in your mind about choosing either one. So to help you with this little debate, here's some information about the uses and importance of each.

The Food Processor Against the Blender

Well let's get a couple of things straightened out here. The food processor and the blender are two very different kitchen appliances and really in no way complimentary to each other. Unless, of course, your food processor comes with a blending function. Let us look at both these contraptions one by one.

The food processor is a mish-mash of it all. It can do everything to your food, which you would otherwise have to by hand. It mixes, it grinds, it shreds, grates, slices, and sometimes even blends. The way it works (at least the way mine works) is that there is this mechanical thing with a rotating shaft in it. You put a blade in it, depending on what you want the blade to do, put the food in it, and give it a spin. It does anything you want, depending on the type of blades which come along with it. So if you have the blade for grating, your processor will grate. If you have a slicing blade, it will slice. And so on.

And if it has a blending blade, it will blend too! So basically, the food processor is a pretty multipurpose device. It can do whatever you want with the food, as long as it has the functionality and the blades to support it.

The blender, on the contrary, is more of a liquid blending device. You'll use it when you have to mix a couple of drinks together, great for making cocktails. All you have to do is throw in a couple of drinks in the blender which you feel will go with each other and give it a spin. It also works fairly well with a semi-liquid food product such as yogurt. So you can use the blender to make a smoothie as well. A lot of them come with slightly stronger blades and juicing mechanism enabling them to double up as juicers, which will help you extract juices from fruits like oranges, watermelons and the like. And in order to give the blender a wider usability, the makers have also started coming up with tougher blades to help you cut more solid food items.

Conclusion

So on the outset, this debate seems to lean favorably towards the food processor, for the versatility it shows in the cooking process and the interchangeability of functions. The blender on the other hand seems quite a bit restricted in its value proposition to the user.

But I firmly believe that, your budget allowing, it is a better bet to have both in your kitchen. Because each perform their own job best and have a few failing points where the other one's job is concerned. So this debate ends on a slightly diplomatic note. Buy both!