Customer Reviews

Cuisinart DLC-2011BCN Prep 11 Plus Food Processor

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

My husband bought me this item for Christmas to replace my old small cuisinart that I've had for years. Unfortunately, the new one doesn't measure up to the old one at ALL. It went back in the box after one use and returned to the store. I started by grating some potatoes for my potato pancakes. What a MESS! I hate the new design where nothing can be taller than the food shoot, because the unit will not power up until the top is engaged. My old machine did not do this. So I would be unable to slice celery, cucumber, carrot, potato, without first cutting it all in to hunks shorter than the food tube. Unacceptable. If I have to go to all that trouble, I may as well just slice the food up myself! Also, the shredding feature was horrible. I had an entire slice of potato left that wouldn't shred because the food pusher wouldn't go down far enough. So after shredding 4 potatoes, I was left with 4 good sized slices of potato that wouldn't go through. In addition to that, there is too much space between the shredding disc and the sides of the bowl, and that allowed large chunks of potato to go sliding down in to the bowl without even being shredded! The same happened when I tried to shred my onion. Entire slices of onion were in the bowl, not shredded at all. After all this, I got out my old cuisinart, shredded up the rest of my onion with NO trouble at all, put the new one back in the box, and my husband returned it. I cannot recommend this new model AT ALL. I'm going to look in to the Kitchenaid, as I need a larger food processor, but it won't be this Cuisinart!

Having spent 20+ years in busy restaurant kitchens, I know the value of a well-made piece of equipment. I have always found that Cuisinart was a great choice for our home kitchen. In this case, the DLC-2011 has performed well at every task, but the materials have failed over time. The first to go was the shaft for the shredder plate. Next was the handle on the bowl. Now we lost the shroud around the safety latch on the cover. If we buy this replacement piece, I will have paid about 75% of the price for a brand new unit. This is quite simply material failure over time to a degree that is unacceptable. The pieces all failed along seams or other places where one piece joined another. I should note that the plastic covering the buttons is starting to crack around the underlying switch. The motor still runs like a champ!

We take very good care of all our kitchen equipment, and do not exceed the capacity of any given appliance. We tend to invest in pieces that will be around for many years. (Our KichenAid stand mixer is one example. Still cranking it out after 25 years!) This item is definitely not in that class. We really like our other Cuisinart kitchen gear - but this is a disappointment.

As long as you don't need customer service, you will be OK. Cusinart has possibly the worst customer service I have ever experienced. I burned out a motor on my DLC-2011BC (apparently a common problem). I was told I needed to send the unit back for warranty service as the motor is warranted for 10 years. I sent it back the next day. Six weeks later I finally received a letter stating that the repairs would cost $46 (apparently for shipping and labor). I contacted them to find out why a warrnted repair, which per the warranty would be completed free of charge to the consumer, costs $46. They said they would get back to me in three days with an answer. Two weeks later, no repsonse. I called back and spoke to another individual and a supervisor both of which were were of totally no assistance. Here it is nine weeks after I sent my unit to Cuisinart and I am no closer to getting the warranty work completed than I was then. If you have a Cuisinart product and it breaks under the warranty period, just throw it away!!!!

My wife has been cooking up a storm lately (in a good way) for me and our four small children. We changed our diet a couple of years ago and have been eating a lot more fresh foods, which of course involve more preparation. This year for Christmas I came up with the idea of a food processor to save my dear bride a lot of effort chopping and slicing.

The big plus is that I think this Cuisinart Prep 11 Plus model is a fine piece of machinery and is well thought out. I'll get into more detail on that later.

The big minus is that I was somehow expecting a food processor to do more. Note that I'm not taking off any stars for my false expectations, but potential buyers should know these things. Before you put most things in to be chopped, they have to be pre-chopped. If I'm going to spend the time to cut everything into 1" squares before putting it in the food processor (FP), I'm pretty sure I haven't saved that much time. And there are some shapes the FP just can't make. For example, my wife made a roast over the weekend in the slow cooker. For the potatoes, she had to chop them up by hand since there is no way for the FP to make small (½") cubes out of them. Then when you're all done, you have to wash everything - a blade, a disc, a small feed tube, a large feed tube, the bowl cover, and the bowl. Oh yeah, and the spatula, too. So just be sure and think through your cooking needs to see how much time and effort this will actually save. The bigger the meal, the more time it will save. I'm not saying we'll regret getting a FP and we'll certainly find it very useful for some things, but it's not the end-all super gadget that I was unrealistically hoping for.

Now, back to the actual performance of this unit as a food processor...

This Cuisinart 11 cup model has not failed to impress this engineer as a machine. The motor is very strong and the working bowl and feeders all snap into place solidly (the bowl maybe a little too solidly, as my wife is still getting the hang of snapping it all the way locked). Things are as they should be for a well-thought-out design. The small feed tube locks into place in the large. The blades slide easily onto the keyed drive shaft. The buttons have a great feel and are the membrane-type, which doesn't allow food to get in the unit. This thing cuts through stuff with ease. We haven't used the dough blade or shredder disc yet, but the slicing discs works great, as advertised. The chopping blade does pretty well.

One annoyance is that when chopping, bigger pieces tend to stay on top and not get chopped further while little pieces keep getting chopped smaller. With some items (like garlic) you can avoid this by pulsing the machine, which bounces the contents around and mixes them up pretty well. But other items like tomatoes just turn into puree on the bottom and chunks on the top. If you watch the included DVD, you'll notice that this happens in the video, too. But Cuisinart is sneaky and skips forward in the video to after they've opened the top and mixed the tomatoes manually to eliminate the chunks on top. You see chunks on top, then a slow fade, then magically uniform chopped tomato. I think we'll get used to doing this, but I wish Cuisinart would just 'fess up that it is a fact of life and say that you have to take a break and mix things up with a spatula.

The other big downer is that you now have all of this stuff to store, and nowhere to put it. Two blades, two discs, and that disc adapter. They're sharp, so you can't just throw them in a drawer. You could get Cuisinart's caddy (Cuisinart Blade and Disc Holder), but I would argue that it should be included with this processor as I'm not sure what Cuisinart expects you to do with the discs and blades when not in use.

All in all, I think this is a great food processor. I would recommend this model to someone who knows they want a food processor. I can't speak about longevity or customer service yet, and hopefully I won't have to. It does carry that substantial warranty.

When I put this food processor on my Christmas list last year my parents doubted whether I would actually use it. After all, I already had a Cuisinart blender, Kitchenaid stand mixer, and smaller Cuisinart food processor, what use could I possibly have for an 11 cup food processor? After a year of using it I can easily say, a lot.
My initial draw to this food processor was for bread making. I do not have a bread maker so all of my kneading has been done by hand or using my stand mixer. The dough blade has proven perfect for making bread dough in my food processor. I find that it is powerful enough that it kneads the bread even more quickly and evenly than my stand mixer which makes bread baking a breeze. I also dabble in vegetarian cooking and find that the dough blade also works perfectly when making seitan and other vegetarian meat substitutes from scratch. I have also found that it does an excellent job on pie crusts by incorporating the chilled butter evenly and perfectly, something I always found challenging to do by hand.
I've also found that I get a tremendous amount of use out of the slicing and shredding blades. They work wonderfully for grating cheese, shredding lettuce, and slicing vegetables. I love how it cuts my prep time in half and is easy to clean up afterwards.
Overall I have been thrilled with this appliance. It has proven so versatile and powerful that I find I am constantly finding new uses for it and loving how it makes me more efficient in the kitchen. As other reviewers have said, I am at heart a Kitchenaid girl, but the usefulness and durability of this appliance speaks for itself.

A joy to work with and a great time saver. Lots of practical attachments, slices and dices better than I could by hand. Great for making dough, easy to keep clean and looks great on the kitchen counter. I'm a busy cook and along with my Kitchen Aid professional mixer I can cook for two or 20. There are larger capacity models, but I find the 11 quart to be a handy size for home use.

There are things that I love about this food processor: great speed, flush buttons that make the base unit easy to clean, wide variety of available slicing discs. However, the plastic parts crack and/or break over time, with light use (once or twice a month). Replacement parts are very expensive: e.g., about $25 for a work bowl, $40 for a work bowl cover. Given the initial price, I expected a more durable unit. So far, I've replaced the work bowl, the work bowl cover, and the work bowl feeder part. Next time a part breaks, I'll replace the unit with another brand.

The biggest disappointment is working with pizza dough; being able to make pizza at home was a big selling point for me. Following the directions exactly, I ended up with a machine rocking from side to side and almost burning out the motor. What a mess the dough was, as the motor had heated it way up.

It cannot grate any shape of potato pieces without leaving "chips" stuck up in the grating disk.

A lot of cutting needs to be done to get things to chop right. Often vegetables need to be processed twice: once with the slicer, then with the chopper.

Nuts? Better to use a little Black and Decker mini chopper, as this model powders some of the nuts while leaving a lot of big chunks.

Raisins for pastry are tricky. You pulse and pulse and pulse and nothing seems to happen. Hit "ON" and in a few moments you get a ball of raisins and the machine starts rocking and the motor starts straining.

I've had this for months and learned how to work around its limitations. My wife loves it for mincing pork and Chinese cabbage for dumplings. It does shred cheese very nicely. It also slices potatoes quickly. Chopping large quantities of onions is no longer a dreaded chore (but you do have use the slicing disk first and the chopper). And the included blades do a fine job with cole slaw (again using the two step slice and chop method).

A big plus is that cleanup is easy.

If I were to buy again, I'd look more carefully at motor power, and I would definitely buy a 14-cup model. Even cooking for two, we find that this fills up too fast, meaning we often have to process two or more batches of, say, cabbage, cheese, or meat.

Right now I'm going to use it to finely chop lots of vegetables for meatless spaghetti sauce.

So, it does have its uses, but it is not the wonder machine that the many breathless reviewers here had me thinking it was!

I received this product as a Christmas present and upon its first use this morning (2 days later) it started billowing thick smoke from both sides of the engine housing. I was making a soft vegetable dip and the chopping blade turned freely at full speed, so I know that engine was not being taxed. When I called Cuisinart customer service I was informed that the unit was most likely defective and that I could take the unit to a factory authorized repair center. However, but they flatly refused to replace the defective unit. When I said I didn't want a full priced "factory refurb" as a Christmas present and would try to get a refund from Amazon, the representative just said "fine -- have a happy day." I will now try to get a refund from Amazon and will replace this unit with a different brand.

This processor has done a great job in the two months that we've had it. Our first test was a block of sharp cheddar - which it completely shreaded in about 3-4 seconds. A softer cheese (such as Italian) takes a little longer, but still incredibly quick at about 6-8 seconds.

It does a great job with everything we have put in to it, but occasionally it still leaves just a little bit of unblended food at the top. No where near the amount from other processors we've tried, but a little none the less.

I would recommend this - it's been a great tool for our kitchen!