Read This Before Putting Liquids In Your Food Processor

Any tool that helps speed things up in the kitchen is a major help — and there are certainly quite a few on the market. From air fryers to pressure cookers, these gadgets can become invaluable in your quest to get a meal plated every evening. However, there is a bit of a learning curve for most of them, and food processors are no exception.

As Southern Living explains, a food processor is an incredibly useful appliance to have in your kitchen. Yes, it allows you to chop or shred ingredients at a much quicker speed than you ever could with just your knife and cutting board, even if you have some expert-level knife skills. However, it can also be used to make creamy dips, cut in the butter for a flaky pie crust, and more.

There's just one component of a recipe to keep an eye on if you're debating pulling out your food processor: how much liquid it contains. As dietitian Sofia Norton told Allrecipes, "Food processors don't need liquid to work their magic." In fact, not only can they function extremely well with just a batch of dry ingredients, but adding a ton of liquid can actually cause an issue. Thus, if you're looking at blending a recipe such as a creamy soup or a smoothie, you may be better off pulling out your blender for that particular job rather than your food processor.

If you don't have a blender, or simply would prefer to only clean one small appliance, here are a few tips on handling liquids in your food processor that may help you avoid potential disasters. First of all, as The Kitchn explains, you want to keep a close eye on the fill line that's present on the bowl of your food processor and make sure that the contents you're looking to blend don't creep up over that line, as that's when you might encounter issue like the contents leaking out.

On a related note, you may need a bit of extra patience if you're using your food processor to blend up or process a larger batch of food. As Bon Appetit outlines, you will likely have to end up doing multiple batches of a liquid-packed substance, such as soup, in order to avoid the contents creeping up over that fill line.

Finally, you'll also need to consider exactly what you're looking to achieve with your food processor. Miss Vickie Pressure Cooker Times goes through a few different potential uses, and cautions that adding liquid may change your results. For example, if you add too much liquid to something you're just trying to chop up finely, you could end up with a sauce.