This £60 secret is a kitchen essential - Magic Bullet Kitchen Express review

The Magic Bullet Kitchen Express is just £60 and trust me when I say that it's worth every penny. If you get fed up grating cheese and slicing cucumber or you just want a compact smoothie maker, you've met your match.

I first tested the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express a year ago and I think its every kitchen's best kept secret. The hard-working device is essentially a mini food processor-blender combo, but it's so much more useful than that.

Not only is this one of the best blenders for people on a budget, it's the helping hand I need when I'm grating cheese, carrots, cabbage, and more. You'll wonder what you ever did without one of these, trust me.

Specifications

Unboxing

Magic bullet and Nutribullet are related brands, so it's no surprise that the two models look very similar. The Magic Bullet Kitchen Express comes in a recyclable cardboard box with pieces on cardboard packed around it. There is some soft plastic, which isn't recyclable, unless you have a special recycling near to you, but it does mean that everything arrives in pristine condition.

You can see that the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express comes with a food processing unit, a grating disc, a slicing disk, and two bullet blender cups. You'll get some instruction guidelines to go with the a base station, but you won't need them. This is really simple.

Who would it suit?

The Magic Bullet Kitchen Express is the most compact blender food processor combo I've tested. Even if you own a small kitchen you would be able to make space for this, and I recommend that you do. It's even light enough to lift up into your cupboards. 

The most useful aspects of this are the bullet blender and speedy chopping and slicing. The bullets are great for single-servings of smoothie that you want to take on the go. There are better personal blenders out there, but this does a great job of basic ingredients.

The food processor is the star in my kitchen. Before the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express, if I was grating lots of cheese, carrots, or cabbage, I used to wish for an 'electric grater' that could do it all for me. Now, the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express is that magic appliance. It can whizz through a carrot, lettuce, and cheese in a matter of seconds. I've also used it to slice cucumber for salads when I wanted consistent results - it's just so handy.

If you're looking for an appliance that's really premium or for something that has a huge capacity, there are better options out there. In terms of durability, you get what you pay for with the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express.

What is it like to use?

If you couldn't already guess, this is simple to use. You lock your accessory onto the base station and then the accessories will whirr away. This didn't get any louder than 74 dBA, which is about the noise that a printer or a hairdryer would make.

The dial on the base station flicks between 'on' or 'pulse'. Whilst this doesn't give you a whole host of options when it comes to textures, it's enough for anyone with a keep eye to work with. 

Magic Bullet have through through everything too. Whilst this is powerful, it has some grippy feet that will keep it from bouncing off your work surface. Similarly, the food processor is really designed for pouring, so if you've made a sauce, you can tip it out without making too much chaos.

Test 1: smoothies and protein shakes

Any blender should be able to make a smoothie, the two are synonymous. So, I packed frozen fruit, banana, spinach, oats, and almond milk into the bullet blender, added the lid, and locked it onto the magic bullet base. 

The small, slim jug initially made for some seriously hard work, given that my berries were frozen and quite large. I used the pulse function to worth through these, and once it had chopped everything into manageable sizes, I switched over to 'on', letting the Magic Bullet blend away. Less than a minute later, it had finished my smoothie.

The first time that I tested this, I happened to also have the Nutribullet 600 running too. I expected the bigger, better known Nutribullet's drink to be better in every way. However, it wasn't at all. My Magic Bullet smoothie was actually smoother and better blended. It couldn't have been improved, except if it had been a little quicker at running. 

We also add a scoop of protein powder to all of our smoothie tests, to see how well this handles dry ingredients in an already wet mix, The Magic Bullet incorporated this really well. I did give it a little shake every now and then, but the resulting drink was, again, silky smooth.

Test 2: hummus and dips

The next test that we give all of our blenders is making hummus. I also use food processors to make hummus, so I thought I would give both attachments a buzz. I added my normal can of chickpeas, a spoonful of tahini, some cumin, salt, and garlic.

Whilst the bullet blending cup did manage to make a serviceable hummus, the shape of the blender makes it tricky to make hummus as smoothly as a jug blender. It was, what I would call, a chunky hummus.

The one that I made using the chopping blades and the food processor was perfect. It was well blended, silky smooth, and delicious. I did have to take the lid off and stir the contents because some bit of chickpea sat stuck under the blades. It's a small intervention to make for some close-to-perfect hummus.

Test 3: chopping onions

I'd used the chopping blade for hummus, but I wanted more of a tangible idea of how the pulse setting would work on chunkier dips and ingredients. The most simple way to test this was with a red onion. 

I couldn't fit my chunks of onion down the feeding tube, since it's a slightly awkward, kidney shape. So, I put all four chunks of my onion into the food processor, screwed the lid on, and used the pulse setting to get my onion finely chopped. The pieces were relatively consistent, not quit as perfect as if I had chopped an onion by hand, but the few seconds that it took the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express makes up for that. If you don't like crying over chopped onions, or you know you're a liability when it comes to chopping vegetables, you'll love using this. 

I've since tried putting half onions and whole onions into the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express and have learnt that you really can't overload the bowl. If you jam your vegetables between the side and the centre, you'll never get good results. The key is to do small batches.

Test 4: grating carrots

The grating disc is my favourite part of the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express. I'm known to moan about big grating tasks, whether it's cheese, carrots, cabbage, or potato. Since investing in the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express, I don't need to moan anymore.

The grating disc sits at the top of the blender, on the middle pivot. You lock the lid on top, set the dial to on and then you can feed your carrot, cheese, or other ingredients through the chute - just make sure you use the tamper as you get near to the end, because you won't want to end up grating your finger.

The reason that this is such a strength of the Magic Bullet's is that it delivers consistent results in a matter of seconds. I was planning on timing how long it took to grate a carrot, but, by the time I had reached for my phone, the whole large carrot was grated. It's remarkably quick. 

Test 5: slicing cucumber

Everything that I said of the grated carrot rings true for sliced cucumber, all you have to do is change the disc. The Magic Bullet Kitchen Express is speedy and efficient. However, there are a few catches. You need to be careful with how much pressure you apply to your cucumber when feeding it down the chute, because this will massively effect the thickness of the slices. Mine ended up being on the thinner size, which was fine for a salad, but they didn't have much structural integrity if I wanted to overlap them or layer them. The other thing to watch out for is the shape of the chute. As I mentioned earlier, this looks like an exaggerated kidney shape, which means that a halved cucumber can't really be bed down without you whittling some off the centre or middle. It's annoying if you wanted perfect crescents, but not a disaster.

Cleaning

The beauty of all of this is that, once you're done with whatever task that the Kitchen Express tackled, you can pack all of your accessories in the dishwasher. I have to admit that I've taken to washing my grating and slicing discs by hand, since its easy for bits of food to get trapped and left behind in the different parts. 

You could wash everything by hand and I don't think it would take long, but it's nice to know that you don't have to. It's worth adding that the base station is electrical, so, obviously, that can't go in the sink. Mine never got particularly dirty, but it's worth giving it a wipe-down if you touch it with grubby hands.

While I was drying up my food processor accessory, the bowl slipped out my hands and fell on the floor. This was the first time that I dropped it and a shard of the side came off. It's still usable, but it's proof that this isn't quite as robust as other food processors - not that I ever recommend dropping those on the floor,

How does it compare?

I've tested plenty of blender food processor combos and there isn't a better one that is as compact and as cheap as the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express. If you love the concept of all this, but you wish it was all more family-sized, I'd recommend picking up the Ninja 3-in-1 Food Processor Blender Combo. It offers a blending jug, single-serve bullet cups, and a full-sized for a processor for just under £200. It's a step-up in price, but onw that I think is warranted by the increase in size and quality. This can handle much bigger portions and it feels much more robust.

If you liked the petite dimensions of the powerful Magic Bullet, you could opt for two separate, miniature appliances. The best small food processor that I've tested is the Ninja Blast. It's completely cordless, you can throw it in your handbag, and it can crush ice, make hummus, and whizz up smoothies. It generally retails around £50, which is a bargain.

If you want a compact food processor, the Cuisinart 0.9L Mini Prep Pro Food Processor is a great alternative. It's a little bigger than the Magic Bullet, but it feels much more robust. Again, this normally retails around £60. It can make great dips and salsas, but it doesn't have the same discs for slicing and grating. That's fine if you know you wouldn't use them, but I'd choose the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express in its place every day of the week - and I do.

Should you buy it?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express is one of the best investments you'll make this year. The petite powerhouse is just £60 and it is one of the most used appliances in my kitchen, namely for grating carrots and cheese. It's brilliant if you need single-servings, but if you need something that's robust and spacious enough for a family, you might want to check some other options.

How we test

At woman&home, we care a lot about how we test blenders and food processors. Each review that you read has had days of work put into it, 

We start by researching the model that we're testing, making sure we know everything we need to about what it claims to do. Then, we call it into our test kitchen, where we put each appliance through its paces.

Each appliance has its own, standardized series of tests, making it easy for us to compare across different models. We put blenders through making smoothies, dips, and ice cones, so we can get a good idea of how they handle different ingredients and moisture contents. We put our food processors through a different set of tests, shredding vegetables, chopping foods, making dips, and more. 

When something like the Magic Bullet Kitchen Express comes along, we have to think on our feet. We combined our tests for food processors and blenders, so we could exhaust every possible use that you might have for the Magic Bullet. Our expert, Laura, was lucky enough to buy one of these in March 2023, so she's been using hers in her home for a long time. She's been updating this with any new findings she has (the latest was her dropping and breaking the food processor attachment). The kind of use she's giving it is exactly what you would be doing in your own home. You can't ask for better research than that.