Hamilton Beach 10-Cup Review

The Hamilton Beach 10-Cup is an affordable option if you need to outfit your kitchen with a basic, decent-performing food processor.

Performance Comparison

Chopping

The Hamilton Beach 10-Cup did very well in our chopping metric, earning a high score for its solid performance at chopping onions, carrots, and almonds. It performed on par with some of our higher scoring models, which is notable.

In addition to the food chopping tests, we timed how long the blade would remain spinning when the “Pulse” button was released to see how much control you had over the amount of chopping. This model earned extra points by stopping immediately. The Hamilton Beach did an alright job chopping onions.

It did an excellent job chopping carrots, creating a uniform mixture of carrots with only a few larger pieces remaining. This model did average chopping almonds, requiring about ten more pulses than the top model to get a workable product. Unfortunately, it pulverized a decent amount of almonds into almond dust.

Mixing

This model didn't do the best in our mixing metric. We mixed up a batch of pizza dough, pie crust dough, and mayonnaise in this food processor and compared the results to its peers to come up with scores.

Despite lacking a dough blade, it quickly mixed the pizza dough, but the motor sounded like it was having a tough time mixing. It did a little worse with the pie crust dough, shaking violently while mixing and shooting flour out of the top. There was also a copious amount of flour that would become stuck on the lip of the lid, creating a huge mess when the lid was removed. However, this machine still made acceptable pie crust dough despite its shortcomings. Unfortunately, it leaked everywhere when we tried to make mayonnaise, severely dropping its score.

Pureeing

The Hamilton Beach earns a high score for its superior pureeing performance, tying for one of the top scores. We made hummus, tomato sauce, nut butter, and applesauce in each machine and had a panel compare the quality of the final product. We also conducted a leak test to see if water leaked when we filled the food processor to the maximum fill line and the motor engaged.

This leak test did not go well for this model, as it leaked water everywhere.

In direct contrast to that terrible performance, the Hamilton Beach made some of the best hummus of any food processor we tested, with a unanimous decision by our panel of tasters. It also made excellent nut butter, on par with the Breville, though the top wobbled like crazy while it was grinding. This food processor continued its stellar performance in our tomato sauce test, creating the ideal consistency sauce after 30 seconds of pureeing, the exact amount called for in the recipe. It also made decent applesauce.

Shredding

Our shredding test consisted of grading the quality of shredded cheese, potatoes, and carrots produced by each machine and comparing the level of shredding adjustability present on the blade of each machine.

We needed to trim our peeled potatoes to fit in the feed tube, but the quality of the shredded potatoes was very high. Two smaller chunks became trapped above the blade, dropping this model's score slightly.

The shredded carrots were a little on the wet side, not nearly as crisp as the Cuisinart Custom 14, but the shred size was decently even. Once again, two small pieces remained un-shredded.

The two-pound block of cheese did require trimming to fit in the feed tube, but the shredded cheese produced was slightly above average, with nice-looking cheese strands and a good cheese strand to crumble ratio. This model only had a medium shred setting.

Slicing

We sliced potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini to determine scores for this metric, looking for slices of even thickness and a consistent performance by each machine.

There is no way to adjust slice thickness with this device, so you get what you get. Unfortunately, it basically destroyed our tomatoes rather than slicing them. The entire inside of the tomato was flung against the bowl, leaving only a shell behind. We had to cut the tomatoes to fit them into the feed tube, and it appeared this severely impacted slice quality.

It sliced potatoes effectively, but the slices were a bit rough and had lots of taper. It did substantially better with zucchini, creating slices on par with the Cuisinart Elemental 13-Cup, but the cuts weren't quite as clean as we would have liked.

Cleaning

The final aspect of our testing echoed that of actually cooking: dishes and cleanup. We rated these products on how much of a pain they were to clean after being used, something we had lots of experience with after all of the previous tests. The Hamilton Beach wasn't the easiest to clean, but it didn't give us much grief, either.

The bowl, blades, discs, and lid are all safe to clean in the dishwasher, though suitable for the top shelf only. The blade was in the middle in length, but it was much slipperier to hold with its smooth plastic finish. The bowl didn't have any problematic places to clean, but its small size made it a little harder than many other models. All in all, the lid wasn't too bad to clean, with only a tiny gap around the feed tube that would catch food.

Should You Buy the Hamilton Beach 10-Cup?

The Hamilton Beach 10-Cup is one of the best food processors in its price class. If you've got less than a hundred bucks to shell out for a food processor, we think this is your best bet. While it had some significant drawbacks, it should do a great job for most food prep tasks — just as long as it's not something that can leak out.

What Other Food Processors Should You Consider?

For the price, this model is hard to beat. However, you can get a slight upgrade at a reasonable price in the Ninja Professional Food Processor. If you own a Vitamix blender, you might love the idea of having an attachment that fits onto your current Vitamix motor, saving cabinet space. If you want the best food processor in the test, that's the Breville Sous Chef 16 Pro. Though quite pricey, it excels in nearly every test metric and was our overall favorite model.