Breville BFP838 Paradice 16 Cup Food Processor and Dicer, Large, Brushed Stainless Steel

A luxury item that I am still luxuriating in almost a year later. Great purchase.
I waited almost a year before reviewing the Paradice 16. Prior to this, I had a trusty, basic Cuisinart 14 for about 16 years, and prior to that, I had a smaller Kitchenaid dual bowl. My Cuisinart finally had a part break, and the old Kitchenaid was just too small once we had kids. Basically, I’m not new to food processors, but my prior models were limited to a basic slice, basic grate, or basic puree. I really debated about whether or not I would use all of the attachments on the Paradice, having gone for so many years with just the very basics.I find that I do use them! I’m so glad that I was able to splurge to afford the Paradice with all the attachments! I use the adjustable slicer, dicing, grating, and puree multiple times per week, and I can get so much food prep done in so little time. I do not really use the french fry cutter, or the smaller bowl very often. The dough mixer is fine, but I often just use the blade for dough, I guess out of habit. I recently specially ordered the Paradice potato peeler from Breville (it took a long time for Breville to notify me that it was in stock, and this does NOT come with the Paradice), but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet.As to the size, I have found that with more than two people to cook for, I really need the large size. The 9 cup version just wouldn’t be big enough for our family.This is an expensive item, but it does save a lot of time and produces an evenly chopped or sliced result. My family especially enjoys fruit salads and cucumber tomato salads made with the Paradice because of the even texture. So yeah, it’s expensive, but we eat at home much more often, and we eat more fruits and vegetables. It’s an investment in health, to me.The Paradice 16 has handled almost everything I’ve thrown at it, but it does have a few flaws. I do not ever use it to dice onions because that just ends up as a mess. I have found that certain things dice better in some sizes rather than others. Other than that, I LOVE the dicing feature. The dicing feature is far better than the Kitchenaid mixer dicing attachment that I had. The overall performance of the Paradice on every setting is generally trouble-free, but it does have its limits. I tried grinding frozen turmeric root (dried) in it, and it couldn’t handle it, and ended up scuffing my bowl. 🙁 To be fair, my Vitamix grain bowl also couldn’t do frozen turmeric root, and also had a hard time with thawed turmeric root (dried). I think this was an extreme test. My spice grinder was absolutely hopeless at grinding the turmeric root. My Vitamix bowl was not scuffed by the turmeric root, while the Paradice bowl was, which I thought I would mention-but again, I think that this was an extreme test. The Paradice bowl does look better than my Cuisinart bowl looked after a year (still looked brand new before I tried to grind frozen, dried turmeric root), so I think it is overall durable. But…it does have its limits.The dicing features are easy to clean if you use the cleaning tools Breville provides, spray with a sink sprayer (my sink will either do a regular faucet flow or a spray), and use a small tool for a few of the tougher bits (I use a bundt pan brush). I know people say that they could chop or slice in the same time it takes to get out the food processor and clean it, but for me that’s very far from true due to the amount of food I’m prepping. I usually batch prep all the slicing/chopping/grating for the week, and I don’t really wash the machine in between foods. I just give it a quick rinse. Then at the end, it all goes into the dishwasher, which is amazing. The only thing that (I think) can’t go into the dishwasher is the dicing spindle. Being dishwasher safe is really important to me because I sometimes make stuff with raw meat in the food processor, and I just feel like it’s not really CLEAN unless it’s been run through the dishwasher.Before I bought the Paradice 16, I read a negative review that said that it couldn’t dice because the food just got stuck in the machine. Look…if you are trying to dice a quarter of a cucumber, half the food is going to get stuck in there. But why would you use a food processor to dice a quarter of a cucumber? Realistically, people using this machine are going to shove at LEAST an entire cucumber into this machine, and we’re ok with part of the cucumber basically being wasted. And after the cucumber? We’re putting tomatoes in there. And after that? Maybe rinsing, drying, and grating a block of cheese. There IS a bit of food wastage with this, but it’s an acceptable amount to me. I would very, very rarely fire this machine up and only process one food item.The size is very large. The base plus large cup and lid can’t fit under my kitchen counter. This baby takes up a lot of kitchen real estate. The base is heavy. It’s not too heavy for me, but it might be too heavy for you. I keep the base on my kitchen counter, and the accessories and bowl on one shelf in a large lower cupboard.Overall, my main uses are:Very nicely textured fruit saladsVery nicely textured cucumber and tomato saladsScones/Biscuits (they come out so well in barely any time, just don’t overmix)Pizza doughSlicing, dicing vegetables ahead of time for meal prep (I use the adjustable feature on the slicing disc so often!)Mix/puree meat, like mixing meatloaf/meatballs quickly (I just hate touching raw meat, so this helps with the worst part of that)Grating cheddar cheese, jack cheese, parmigiana cheese, asiago cheese (blocks of cheese are usually half the price in my area compared to pre-shredded cheese…I may have saved the purchase price of this machine in a year due to cheese-related savings alone)Pureeing quick sauces, like pesto

Huge upgrade over our old Cuisinart
We’ve had a Cuisinart food processor for something over 20 years. It worked, that’s the best I could say about it. This Breville is the food processor that the Cuisinart hopes it becomes when it grows up.This thing is a beast – it’s super powerful, but also beautifully designed. All the parts fit right, the bowls are a heavy, clear plastic (polycarbonate?) and the adjustable slicing blade replaces a rack full of blades for the Cuisinart. I like the smaller bowl, I actually use that the most. I used to have a little Kitchen-Aid mini-chopper, which was convenient, but they seemed to last about a year. This Breville has the power and substance to last a long time (I hope).The storage boxes for the accessories are great, though they do take up quite a lot of room. They do eliminate the need to re-wash each tool you use because they’re dirty from sitting on a shelf.I haven’t tried the dicing function yet, I hope it works as well as the rest of the machine.

This unit did not come with the potato Peeler I was told that it did by many sources. that’s the Only reason I purchased this as I have 400lbs of small potato’s to peel and freezedry the potato’s. We have too warm of weather still so the potato’s are softening and won’t last the winter. it was a weekend when I wrote this review and now have talked to customer service they informed me that this does not come with the potato peeler attachment but it is available under the name “potato peeler no logo” Breville Customer service was great to deal with.So I received the potato Peeler disc attachment, ( I work in camp a lot so away from home for long periods) today I finally had time to peel spuds only to find that my $1000. Breville Paradice 16 doesn’t have the correct spindle for the potato Peeler after the phonecalls I made about the potato Peeler not in the kit you would think that they would tell me everything that I need to get for this thing to peel potato’s? I am not happy at all. It would have been less hassle to have just bought an industrial potato Peeler for a few dollars more. NOT HAPPY