Commercial Vegetable food processor advice needed.

[danpri]

Need to cut more than a mandolin can handle for a long salad bar. Need something specific to veggies. Ability to dice soft tomatoes and chop other stuff.

Looking at RobotCoupe CF50, Electrolux dito and Omcan C/e TV.

Anyone with experience with any of those units.

 

[foodpump]

Those machines will excell at slicing and shredding. Chopping and dicing is another story.

To "dice" a vegetable you typically push/shove it through a grid and it gets cut to length. The machine does the cutting to length, you do the pushing.

Hobart makes an attachement for its 30 and 40 qt machines called a "power dicer" You put the item on a chute and it gets drawn into the grid via a threaded acme screw. This goes amazingly fast and works well, but it is very expensive. But if you're doing 200 -300 lbs of home cut fries every day, it's really worth it.

A buffaloe chopper is an ancient machine, precurser to the food processor. With this machine a large bowl rotates, and a rotating knife cuts vertically. You have much more control over this when chopping vegetables, but you will not get nice cubes.

Hope this helps

 

[danpri]

Thanks Chef. My problem with my Robotcoupe and Waring Pro is they have to many RPMs and turn everything to mush. But the units I am looking at now have RPMs in the 380 vs 1700 range.

 

[left4bread]

Hi.
We purchased one of these a couple years ago: http://www.globeslicers.com
I started a thread on the site asking about it some time ago... looking for it... here it is. I'm not sure if it will help or not.

The Globe works like a champ. I've had to replace the grid attachment a couple times (and they are pricey), but we have definitely get our money's worth out of them before they start to degrade (razor thin metal grid... it's sharp!). The slicer blade for the grid has had to visit the bench grinder a few times too. Either there are rocks in our potatoes or soft metal is soft.

We use the grid to cut 3/8 inch cubed potatoes and onions for chowder and other soups and cut 3/8 inch tomatoes and onions for salsa.
We also use a julienne blade on carrots for our salads.
There are other applications too, I just can't think of them right now, but those are the main uses.

If you need a work horse for a high volume restaurant (and have a few grand to blow), I suggest the Globe. They even came by and gave me a demo AFTER I had purchased the machine. Call them; tell them you want to see it in action. There's a "request a vegetable cutter demonstration" link on that page in my first link.

Foodpump is right, too. Mixer attachments are great, and we employ them for grating cheese and a few things. I haven't tried their dicing attachments, though.

Anyhow, let me wrap it up here with a disclaimer stating that I am far from an expert on this subject, I just wanted to say that I use this product and am more than happy with it and so are the prep cooks. The others you suggested look like they could become clogged easily, leading to frustration and mushed vegetables. I wouldn't waste my money on them (not speaking from experienced use with them).