Appliance Reviews

The feature that made me buy this machine was the auto-turnoff, which turns out to be a misnomer. After the eggs are cooked the machine turns itself off but if you don't go to the machine and physically turn the knob to off, IT GOES BACK ON AND CAN THEN BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE. Obviously, I bought this so that if I forgot the eggs were cooking, which is possible if children interrupt or visitors come, the machine would turn itself off. Instead, if you don't remember to turn the button to the off position, it will turn on by itself. This machine is a danger at all times. What if after you take the eggs out, you forget to turn the button to the off position, it will go on again. Next, the noise it emits when the eggs are done is very low and HARD TO HEAR!!! If a television were on or if children were playing, I doubt that the noise signaling that the eggs are cooked could be heard by anyone. Don't buy this item.

I promised myself that I wasn't going to buy any more kitchen appliances. I have too many already. However, my boiled eggs have always been overcooked and rubbery, and I just knew that there must be a way to avoid that. When I read the description and reviews on this device, I bought one.

It came today and I immediately gave it a try. I had three Eggland's Best eggs that I wanted to hard boil for dinner. The operation is intuitive. I used the measuring cup mark for water for three hard cooked eggs, pierced the large end of the eggs and placed them in the holder (pierced end up), put the domed lid on and flipped the switch to ON. About 17 minutes later, the soft beeping sound notified me of the completion of the cooking. I removed the lid, using the handles, and placed the eggs in a bowl of icewater using tongs.

There was no problem of live steam hitting my hands, as mentioned in another review here. In fact, at the point when the completion alarm rings, there is no steam at all because the water is cooked away before the alarm sounds. At that point, all of the steam has escaped through the vent.

Although I will usually only cook 2 or 3 eggs at a time, having a capacity to cook 7 of them will be handy when it comes time to make egg salad or tuna salad.

There is a slight, unusual smell that comes from the unit when the eggs are done. I have no recollection of ever smelling it before. It isn't unpleasant, but it is unidentifiable to me. I suspect that it comes from some egg/water residue left behind when the water evaporates. I have to wipe the heating surface with a wet towel after I remove the eggs because an easy-to-remove residue appears. I suspect that the residue might become hard-to-remove if I don't wipe it away quickly.

I have never had more perfectly cooked hard-boiled eggs before. Mine have always been rubbery, with the green-tinted yolks. These were a perfect consistency, with yellow yolks. I am quite pleased with this purchase. I will probably buy more for gifts.

Hard boiled eggs are often a part of my lunch and my breakfast. Now, I don't have to watch them boil and risk overcooking.

This thing cooks hard boiled eggs perfectly every time to the exact doneness you want. It's true that you have to be careful removing the lid after cooking, but it's easy enough to use mits or a kitchen towel to get around the danger. The poached eggs do come out in a triangular shape, but that really doesn't matter if you're eating them on toast or in a bowl. And regardless of their shape they still come out perfectly cooked. A great timesaver!

This blender is too expensive for what you get. Sure the moter is 600 watts. Sure it can blend heavy duty foods. But that is not enough for a blender. You buy a blender to chop food by automatically sucking food down to the blade to chop the food to tiny bits. This blender will NOT always do that unless you put in a good quanty of liquid, usually more liquid than you want. If you dont put in enough liquid, the food will sit above the spinning blade and not get pulled down. You will have to manually assist the blender (pain point). I had to either add more liquid to the very heavy glass jar or stop the blending and use a fork to push the food into the blades and start again (I would repeat this until the food would get cought by the blender). If you want a blender to make smoothies (for one person) this is not the blender that you need. I returned this blender 2 weeks after I got it and replaced it with an Oster. It pulls the food down to the blade no matter how much liquid I put in the jar and it works perfectly every time! Oh, it cheaper too!

I use this blender for two things: frozen fruit smoothies and milkshakes. I got it because my old blender was not powerful enough to chop up the deeply frozen strawberries I use to make smoothies. It is loud, but I expected that with the immense power that this blender packs (600w!). The three settings are enough, I use ice crush to blend stuff really quickly. Bottom line: Yeah it's loud, but comes apart easily and blends powerfully and quickly, I would buy this product again.

I am recently married and, because of this, we have been able to try out a few blenders. We have tried a $100 Oster, an $80 Waring, and this ...Cuisinart. The Oster worked fine, but it was very loud. The Waring worked ok, but it was very loud and broke after the second pitcher of drinks. Now, this Cuisinart is awesome. The 50 oz. jar is big enough for a pitcher of frozen drinks without overflowing and it is at least half as quiet as the Oster and Waring. With the Waring, I felt guilty about running the blender for more than 30 seconds in my apartment. But with this Cuisinart, the noise isn't a problem at all. This Cuisinart has the most power of the blenders I tested, and the ice came out the smoothest. I usually buy bags of ice to make drinks because the ice is smaller and "softer", but when I wanted to test this Cuisinart I had no bags of ice. So, I used the icecubes from my freezer which are bigger and harder. The drinks came out perfectly smooth anyway, without one piece of unblended ice. PERFECT!
The one thing I cannot comment on is the endurance of this blender. I've only owned it a short time, so I'm not sure about it's lifespan. But if a perfectly smooth drink made quietly is what you want, this is the blender to do it!

Alas, the Cuisinart 7 blades have fixed rods and so this storage unit is useless. It should NOT be listed as an accessory on the Cuisnart Amazon page!

This is listed as an accessory for the DLC-5 7-cup food processor on special. However, it works with all Cuisinarts *except* the DLC-XP, DLC-X, DLC-5 and LPP. This would have been nice to know in advance!

It may be a fine product but it does NOT work with the 7 cup model. We tried.
After going back to the reviews, I find similar statements. We will have to find another solution for our Cuisinart DLC-5 blades.

Cuisinart is well known for their quality kitchen appliances, but they failed on this one. It doesn't do a good job extracting the juice out of the lemons (or whatever), its "reversing" turner is acutally quite annoying and causes the appliance to move all of the counter. The spout is not long enough and drips juice down the side of the machine. Further, it does an extermely poor job of filering out the seeds and pulp. I think that there are much better models out there and I think a hand reamer and common strainer do a MUCH better job.

I used a friend's citrus juicer, and that got me excited enough to go out and buy one of my own. The store didn't have the model I was looking for, so I ended up with this one, because I didn't do enough research.

It's "okay" at extracting juice from citrus fruits, but after about two oranges it clogs up, and it's necessary to clean out the pulp catcher. If you want to make more than 6-8 oz of juice at a time, it may be better to go with another model.

The biggest problem I have with this juicer is that it turns--and sometimes spins--on the counter. Because it is important to keep the receptacle cup directly underneath the spout, this turning and spinning inevitably creates a mess, as the spout moves away from it's place over the cup. I find myself chasing the spout with the cup, or trying to hold onto the juicer to ensure that it stays in place. Because of it's aerodynamic design, though, it's hard to get a grip on it. Sometimes I feel like I need three hands--one for the juicer, one for the cup and one for the fruit. I found a solution to be to place the juicer on a towel on the counter, as this cuts down on slippage.

I like my friend's juicer a lot better, because it has a receptacle built in to the juicer. The juice just falls to the bottom of the juicer into a pitcher that is built in, and even if the unit turns a bit, it doesn't matter. I saw a couple built like this on the Amazon site. For example, the Toastmaster 1109 Citrus Juicer has a built in pitcher to chatch the juice.

I've decided to return this model, not because it's horrible, but because I know the other type of juicer is more convenient and less messy. I bought it because it matches my kitchen--not a very responsible reason. In it's defense, it is a cute little juicer, though! Still, looks are not enough--performance is the most important thing. So, back it goes!

It looks like a not very good appliance to me: not powerfull enough; moves on a countertop when it works; the output nozzle is too short. On a bright side, it looks very nice and takes little of the countertop space.

I have now owned two identical versions of this particular blender. Unfortunately both broke after a year in exactly the same way. The black plastic gear that engages the blades cracked, and in both cases it broke on while blending either bag ice or most recently, frozen bananas. Considering that these ingredients are not that hard to blend, I am greatly disappointed.

If you buy a Cuisinart, it's because you demand quality. However if you buy this it should only be because you like the appearance, and not because you plan on making frozen drinks or smoothies. As said I've bough two, so obviously I've been patient; but no more.

I have owned the duet for approximatley one year. I use the blender mostly for milkshakes. The food processor is small, which is ok with me, except I do not like the feed tube. With a processor this small, it's unlikely one would use it to slice or shred, so why bother with the slicing disk and therefore the feed tube? Also, the feed tube makes it too tall to work with right under kitchen cabinets--you must pull it out to use. The motor is loud for both appliances. And the biggest problem is that mine broke this morning while I attempted to make a milkshake rendering both applicances unusable, since now the blade will not rotate. There is a small black plastic disk that fits between the base and the jar that has shattered all on its own. After reading your other reviews, I see I am not the first person to experience this. Buy this item with caution.

I've had mine for a while and have used it to make many batches of baba ganouj (it's like hummous but with eggplant instead of chic peas) in the food processor, and plenty of frozen drinks in the blender.

Like others have said, it is very loud, especially in the food processor mode. That aside, it works efectively. The blender really tears through ice and rarely leaves any chunks behind. The food processor does the trick, although it is a compact size, so I have to do the dip in batches then mix the batches together. I don't mind this since the reason I got it was to save space. I really like the idea of versatility with this, but there are some bugs in the design that need to be worked out.