Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ BN800UK

Do you need a blender or a food processor? If the answer is that you’re not sure or both, then the Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ BN800UK could well be for you. In the box you get the food processor bowl, blender jug and a self-serve cup, making this a flexible all-in-one choice for all your cooking and drinks needs.

Powerful automatic programmes, flexible controls and, generally, the excellent performance makes this a great tool for most people.

Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ BN800UK – What you need to know

• Ice crushing – Makes short work of ice, turning it into fine powdered snow.
• Smoothie making – Quickly turns even the toughest ingredients into a smooth, tasty drink.
• Chopping – Doesn’t handle smaller dry ingredients so well, but can chop, grate and slice larger items, such as cheese and onions.
• Controls – Simple AutoIQ programmes for most common jobs, plus manual controls for when you need to fine-tune the action.

Related: Best blender

Design and features – Plenty of accessories and some neat programmes

At the heart of every blender and food processor is a motor base that drives the accessories attached. For this model, the base is effectively the same as on the Ninja 2-in-1 Blender BN750UK, providing 1200W of power.

The main difference comes from the controls and the accessories that you get. As this is a food processor, the BN800UK comes with a 1.9-litre food processor bowl, which is shorter and squatter than the 2.1-litre blending jug (also provided). The extra width gives a bit more flexibility, with the food processing component designed to let you chop, mix and stir ingredients, rather than blending everything together.

Made of plastic, the food processor bowl feels tough enough. Its lid must be dropped on, then turned and locked into position; if it’s not in the lock position, then you can’t operate the food processor.

On top of the lid are a feeding chute and pusher. The hole is big enough to get a large carrot through, but you’ll need to cut other ingredients down to size. You’ll primarily need this chute when using the slicing and grating disc, to automatically cut ingredients.

For chopping, there’s a chopping blade assembly, which has multiple blades at different heights. How fast you run the food processor defines how finely your ingredients are chopped or mixed.

There’s also a dough blade assembly, designed for mixing doughs, taking the strain out of having to do the job by hand.

With the food processor bowl in place, the right three Auto IQ programmes light up, giving you Chop, Puree and Mix options. Plus, you can run the machine manually, using the three speed options or pulse control.

Take the food processor bowl off, and you can use either the single-serve cup (the blend and go option thanks to its included travel lid) or the 2.1-litre jug and Pro Extractor Blades. You’ll probably end up using the jug more, which has to have its lid inserted and locked into place to work.

With the jug, there’s a lift-up spout for pouring out more liquidy blends, but you can remove the lid and pour out thicker mixtures. Just be careful, as the mixing blades should be lifted out before pouring or you risk them falling out.

With either blending parts attached, you get the left-hand two Auto IQ programmes: Blend and Max Blend (the former is for softer ingredients, and the second for harder ones). This particular model doesn’t have the Crush programme that the regular blender has. Of course, you can run the blender using the manual speeds (Low, Med, High and Pulse).

There’s no cleaning programme on this model, but you can put everything into the dishwasher, although it’s recommended that you put the blades and lids in the top shelf.

It’s worth pointing out that you can’t put hot liquids into the machine, so if you want to finish off a soup, you’d need to wait for it to cool before blending and reheating.

Performance – Really loud but really powerful

If there’s one minor problem with Ninja’s blenders and food processors, it’s the noise, and the BN800UK is no different. Standing 15cm away (operating distance), I measured the BN800UK at 93.4dB, which is properly and distractingly loud.

Although it’s loud, this food processor is also exceptionally powerful. Although there’s no ice crush programme, I just ran the blender jug on High speed and soon had turned ice cubes into fine powdered snow, perfect for frozen desserts.

As I found out when reviewing the BN750UK blender, the jug’s not so good at handling dry ingredients and didn’t manage to grind down my coconut flakes. However, making a smoothie (a handful of ice, tablespoon of mint leaves, half-a-cup of coconut milk, quarter-of-a-cup of plain yoghurt, and one cup of chopped pineapple including the core), the additional liquid let everything blend down into a fine smoothie using the Max Blend mode.

Looking closely at the finished product, and you can see the finely chopped mint leaves and small pieces of coconut. With no chunks left, this is as good as blenders get.

Next, I moved onto the food processor bowl, starting with pineapple salsa. This requires chunks of pineapple to be blended with the juice of half a lime. When I attempted the recipe with the blender jug, I had to add additional water; with the food processor, the puree programme did the job: the wider bowl made it easier for the pineapple to be cut up without lots of chunks sticking to the sides. Just a single scrape down at the end and a bit of Pulse was needed to get the right texture.

The result, was a fine, well-textured salsa, with the additional chunks of pineapple that you can see added in at the end. The result was less watery than the original I made in the blender, too.

Next, I used the grating disc to grate some cheddar cheese. I ran the food processor on Low speed, which was plenty to give very even results. As the cheese was quite soft, there was a small amount of cheese left on the disc at the end, though.

I tried to grind some coconut shavings, but the blade arrangement made this impossible and the bits flew up into the air and swirled around. If you’ve got fine, dry ingredients, a dedicated spice grinder or alternative product will be needed.

Next, I roughly chopped some onion and put this into the bowl, turning the food processor on to the chop programme, I soon ended up with expertly diced onion with very little hassle.

Similarly, the dough blades make mixing your own bread that much easier than doing the job by hand.

You miss out on some features that other food processors have, such as a whisk to deal with eggs; however, it has to be said that whisking results are hugely variable and a proper food mixer will do a better job.

Should you buy the Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ BN800UK?

You can get food processors that cover more ground and give you more accessories, but Ninja has focussed instead on the core features of what makes a food processor good: chopping, grating and mixing. It nails these features, with some clever automatic programmes, too.

Then, you get the full-on blender set, too. You might miss out on the automatic ice crushing programme that Ninja’s dedicated blenders have, but you can still do this job manually. And, when it comes to blending drinks, this machine is just as good as any other high-end blender.

Small dry ingredients are a little tricky for this machine to handle in food processor or blender modes, and it’s also very loud. However, if you want a food processor and a blender and don’t want to compromise on quality, the Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor with Auto-IQ BN800UK is a well-priced way to achieve this goal.

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