Consumer Watch: Investing in a food processor

Laura Nordstrom has been using her food processor almost daily since her company implemented a work-from-home policy.

"So I've been using it to shred cheese, which is way quicker than doing it by hand," she said.

She's not the only one! Lots of us have been using the quarantine to improve our culinary skills.

If you're ready to take it to the next level, you may consider investing in a food processor.

"If you find yourself routinely cooking for a crowd or like to prep multiple batches of a recipe, a larger food processor can handle lots of chopping, slicing and shredding," says Consumer Reports Home Editor, Perry Santanachote. "And smaller food choppers are helpful when you need to prep only a handful of something like herbs or nuts."

Consumer Reports runs a series of food prepping tests to find the best of each variety.

For grating tests, CR grates parmesan cheese. To test shredding ability, testers feed bricks of cheddar and bunches of carrots through the machine.

Finally, onions and almonds are used to test chopping proficiency.

Depending on what you'd mainly use the processor for, there's a number of different top-rated products.

If chopping, grating and pureeing in small batches is your priority, save some money and consider this Ninja Master Prep Professional.

It scored very well in CR's tests and costs just $60.

If you want capacity and performance, you'll have to pay a lot more.

TheBreville Sous Chef outperformed all of the larger processors, but it costs $400 dollars.

For less money and noise, CR also recommends the $180 Cuisinart Custom.