Can a food processor slicing blade be used for

[pastryani]

Slicing through frozen foods (like cookie dough)?  

[Kim Shook]

I'd like to know this, too.  I've never used my slicing blade very much and I'd like to.  

[weinoo]

Sure it can, if you must.

 

But my guess is there's a better way.

[pastryani]

2 hours ago, weinoo said:

Sure it can, if you must.

 

But my guess is there's a better way.

Do you know what the better way might be?
 

I was thinking of getting a deli slicer but then remembered that I have a slicing blade with my food processor which seems like the same idea as the deli slicer (though I don’t know how delicate the food processor slicing disk and if it could handle frozen solid foods).

 

 

[gfweb]

The feed tube would have to accommodate the roll of dough.

Mine would work if I was making a small oblong cookie

[Okanagancook]

53 minutes ago, pastryani said:

Do you know what the better way might be?
 

I was thinking of getting a deli slicer but then remembered that I have a slicing blade with my food processor which seems like the same idea as the deli slicer (though I don’t know how delicate the food processor slicing disk and if it could handle frozen solid foods).

 

 

If your food processor doesn't work I think a good quality deli slicer like Chef's Choice would do the trick...you can get a smooth or serrated blades.  Besides CC deli slicers are so useful for so many other things and they aren't that expensive...it's just kitchen space!

[pastryani]

30 minutes ago, gfweb said:

The feed tube would have to accommodate the roll of dough.

Mine would work if I was making a small oblong cookie

Yup it’ll accommodate the log of dough.  I was just worried about the blade being able to handle something frozen solid.

[pastryani]

10 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

If your food processor doesn't work I think a good quality deli slicer like Chef's Choice would do the trick...you can get a smooth or serrated blades.  Besides CC deli slicers are so useful for so many other things and they aren't that expensive...it's just kitchen space!

Thanks I’ll check it out.  Btw, What else can a vegetarian use a deli slicer for besides cookie dough and bread? 😃

[curls]

30 minutes ago, pastryani said:

Thanks I’ll check it out.  Btw, What else can a vegetarian use a deli slicer for besides cookie dough and bread? 😃

Cheese, vegetable slicing (zucchini, eggplant, potatoes, etc).

 

I would also be concerned about the safety issues of attempting to slice a frozen log of dough.

Edited June 4, 2020 by curls (log)

[blue_dolphin]

 

2 hours ago, pastryani said:

Do you know what the better way might be?

 

A sharp knife? 

Having spent many hours of my laboratory life cutting very thin slices of all sorts of frozen materials, I really can't imagine getting good slices of frozen dough from an instrument that doesn't give you relatively fine control over the cutting speed and ideally over the exact temperature of both the blade and the dough.   And double that warning if you have any sort of inclusions in the dough.

 

Even if it cuts well, the slices generated by the slicing disc in my food processor drop into the bowl and then get banged around by each subseqent slice as they fly off the disc, usually smashing into the side of the bowl before landing at the bottom.  I can't imagine that being good for the integrity of a slice of dough.  But do go ahead and check how yours works as it could certainly be better than my older KitchenAid. 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2020 by blue_dolphin (log)

[Okanagancook]

1 hour ago, pastryani said:

Thanks I’ll check it out.  Btw, What else can a vegetarian use a deli slicer for besides cookie dough and bread? 😃

Oh, vegetarian...that does reduce the usefulness alright.

As @curls mentioned...firm vegetables, especially potatoes for scalloped potatoes (that's hard to do with the food processor).  Maybe firm tofu could be added to that list if you need consistent thickness.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I use a heavy chef's knife for cutting slices of frozen cookie dough.  I can't imagine the food processor ending well.

 

[weinoo]

I basically have a problem cutting most cookie dough logs, frozen or even right from the fridge (you've all seen the mess I make with Korovas!).

 

\\

 

I've tried sharp knives, dull knives, serrated knives, etc. Next up, a bench scraper!

[scott123]

https://www.cuisinart.com/share/pdf/manuals/dlc-xp.pdf

 

"these discs slice cooked meat, semi-frozen raw meat"

 

The slicing blade on a food processor is very different technology to a meat slicer.  A slicing blade uses momentum to hack through food.  If the food is relatively easy to cut, it hacks through it quite cleanly, but, if the food offers some resistance, both the cuts can get messy, and the thickness can vary.  The large rotating blade on a meat slicer isn't hacking the food, but, rather, it's removing a tiny bit with every fraction of an inch that the blade moves.  Simply put, for sturdier foods, a food processor hacks, while a deli slicer slices. 

I've seen folks try to use the slicing blade with pepperoni, and, while it cuts it, it's a horror show.  It depends on how much water/eggs are in your frozen cookie dough, but I would wager that it's going to offer a bit more resistance than a stick of pepperoni. 

[pastryani]

2 hours ago, blue_dolphin said:

 

 

A sharp knife? 

Having spent many hours of my laboratory life cutting very thin slices of all sorts of frozen materials, I really can't imagine getting good slices of frozen dough from an instrument that doesn't give you relatively fine control over the cutting speed and ideally over the exact temperature of both the blade and the dough.   And double that warning if you have any sort of inclusions in the dough.

 

Even if it cuts well, the slices generated by the slicing disc in my food processor drop into the bowl and then get banged around by each subseqent slice as they fly off the disc, usually smashing into the side of the bowl before landing at the bottom.  I can't imagine that being good for the integrity of a slice of dough.  But do go ahead and check how yours works as it could certainly be better than my older KitchenAid. 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh a fellow lab person! (“lab rat” sounded better but I didn’t want to offend 🙃 ). I haven’t thought about the microtome in years!
 

All good points.  It’s true, even if the FP cuts well, the slices would likely all mush together. 

[pastryani]

1 hour ago, weinoo said:

I basically have a problem cutting most cookie dough logs, frozen or even right from the fridge (you've all seen the mess I make with Korovas!).

 

\\

 

I've tried sharp knives, dull knives, serrated knives, etc. Next up, a bench scraper!

Do you rotate the log with every cut?

[pastryani]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.  By the sound of it, I think I officially “need” to get a deli slicer. 😁. I’ll keep you posted when I experiment with it.

 

 

[Toliver]

As a teen, I was helping my mom by shredding a block of  cheese in our Black & Decker "Cuisinart". The block of cheese had been in the freezer and still hadn't thawed well enough when I started shredding it. The shredding blade was skipping off the surface of the very firm cheese so I decided to push down a little harder. I ended up causing the spindle to crack and that was the end of our low-price "Cuisinart". 

Needless to say I felt quite bad. From then on, I was assigned to be the grater of cheeses using the 4-sided metal graters. We never did get a replacement for the Black & Decker. 

[lindag]

I disliked using a hand grater so much that I bought a Salad Shooter.  (Arthritic joints in my hands.)

Now I grate cheese all the time.  The parts go in the d/w so it’s no fuss.

 

[pastryani]

1 hour ago, lindag said:

I disliked using a hand grater so much that I bought a Salad Shooter.  (Arthritic joints in my hands.)

Now I grate cheese all the time.  The parts go in the d/w so it’s no fuss.

 

I have one of these too.  Great for a quick grate of things without the cleanup of the FP.

[pastryani]

1 hour ago, Toliver said:

As a teen, I was helping my mom by shredding a block of  cheese in our Black & Decker "Cuisinart". The block of cheese had been in the freezer and still hadn't thawed well enough when I started shredding it. The shredding blade was skipping off the surface of the very firm cheese so I decided to push down a little harder. I ended up causing the spindle to crack and that was the end of our low-price "Cuisinart". 

Needless to say I felt quite bad. From then on, I was assigned to be the grater of cheeses using the 4-sided metal graters. We never did get a replacement for the Black & Decker. 

Note to self... don’t try frozen solid with the FP. 😬

[Smithy]

4 hours ago, Toliver said:

As a teen, I was helping my mom by shredding a block of  cheese in our Black & Decker "Cuisinart". The block of cheese had been in the freezer and still hadn't thawed well enough when I started shredding it. The shredding blade was skipping off the surface of the very firm cheese so I decided to push down a little harder. I ended up causing the spindle to crack and that was the end of our low-price "Cuisinart". 

Needless to say I felt quite bad. From then on, I was assigned to be the grater of cheeses using the 4-sided metal graters. We never did get a replacement for the Black & Decker. 

 

That's how I wiped out my Royal food processor. Don't remember where I'd gotten it -- Sears? -- but it had lasted me for many years and had been within (a very tight) budget...and then I tried to use it on Parmesan cheese. Cracked the spindle. No replacements possible. It was years afterward before I could afford a decent food processor, since Royal had disappeared. I'm still leery of shredding hard cheeses in my Cuisinart.

 

I suspect that frozen cookie dough would be difficult for the various reasons given above, but I've stayed out of the discussion because I've never tried it.

[MokaPot]

Nerd here. Here's what the Cuisinart manual says about cheese. The manual doesn't say anything about slicing cookie dough, as far as I could tell.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

15 minutes ago, Smithy said:

 

That's how I wiped out my Royal food processor. Don't remember where I'd gotten it -- Sears? -- but it had lasted me for many years and had been within (a very tight) budget...and then I tried to use it on Parmesan cheese. Cracked the spindle. No replacements possible. It was years afterward before I could afford a decent food processor, since Royal had disappeared. I'm still leery of shredding hard cheeses in my Cuisinart.

 

I suspect that frozen cookie dough would be difficult for the various reasons given above, but I've stayed out of the discussion because I've never tried it.

 

I bought a Cuisinart Parmesan disc a couple years ago but I confess I have been too afraid to try it.  However the Parmesan disc might work just fine.

 

Though for cookie dough I can only channel my inner Adam Driver...This isn't going to end well.

 

[scott123]

3 hours ago, MokaPot said:

"except mozzarella which must be well chilled"

 

I think this manual was written long enough ago that your average block of supermarket mozzarella was firm enough to be able to be grated in a Cuisinart.  These days, mozzarella is so soft, it would be like trying to grate ricotta.