Description
Hamilton Beach 70730 Food Processor: what it is
The 70730 is a 10 cup food processor from Hamilton Beach, positioned at the value end of the category. The listing records a 10 cup bowl, two speeds, a stainless steel chopping blade, hand wash care, and included components covering a chopping blade, a container and a lid. It was first listed in September 2017 and carries 35 customer ratings averaging 4.2 stars.
Ten cups is a genuine family size. It is enough bowl to chop vegetables for a large soup, make a batch of pesto, or process pastry dough without splitting it into batches, and it is the capacity most home cooks should be aiming at if they only buy one machine. A 3 or 4 cup mini chopper such as the Cuisinart Mini Prep Plus is a different tool for a different job.
What two speeds and a pulse actually give you
Food processors are often sold on speed counts, and the number matters much less than people assume. What matters is control at the start and the finish.
Two speeds plus a pulse function is enough for essentially all home cooking. Pulse is the important one: short bursts let you watch the texture develop and stop before onions turn to slurry, which is the single most common food processor mistake. A continuous high speed handles purees and emulsions where a smooth result is the goal. Anything beyond that is refinement rather than capability.
A stainless steel blade rather than a coated one is the right specification here. It stays sharper longer and does not chip, and blade sharpness is what determines whether a processor cuts food or bruises it.
The bowl scraper question
This model’s name and its previous description on this site reference a bowl scraper attachment, which is a paddle that wipes the sides of the bowl during processing so ingredients do not stick above the blade and escape being cut. It is a useful feature and it is the sort of thing that distinguishes one processor from another.
The listing’s included components field does not list a bowl scraper. It lists only a chopping blade, a container and a lid. It also does not list a slicing disc or a shredding disc, which most food processors at this capacity include. That may be an incomplete record rather than an incomplete box, but it is a significant gap: a food processor without discs can chop and puree but cannot slice or shred, which is half of what people buy them for. Confirm exactly what is in the carton before ordering.
Where a food processor helps and where it does not
A food processor is worth owning for a narrow set of jobs it does far better than a knife or a blender, and it is worth being honest about which those are.
It is excellent at chopping quantity: onions, celery and carrots for a stock base, breadcrumbs, nuts, herbs in bulk. It is excellent at pastry, because it cuts cold butter into flour faster than warm hands can and produces a better result for exactly that reason. It makes pesto, hummus, dips and nut butters properly, where a blender needs added liquid to keep the contents moving.
It is poor at small quantities, because a wide bowl and a low blade mean a small amount of food simply gets flung to the sides. It is poor at anything liquid, which belongs in a blender such as the Waring CB15. And it will not knead bread dough as well as a stand mixer, though it can bring a dough together.
Understanding that division is the difference between a machine that gets used weekly and one that lives in the back of a cupboard because it was bought for the wrong job.
Highlights
- 10 cup bowl, a genuine family capacity for soups, doughs and batch preparation.
- Stainless steel chopping blade rather than a coated one.
- Two speeds plus pulse, which covers all normal home food processing.
- Hamilton Beach is a long established mainstream brand with parts availability.
- Listed since 2017.
Things To Consider
The rating base is very thin. Thirty five ratings averaging 4.2 stars is not enough to establish reliability on an appliance with a motor and a gearbox, and 4.2 is a middling average on that sample. For comparison, mainstream food processors typically carry thousands of ratings. Read all thirty five before deciding.
The listing record has several faults worth naming. The bowl capacity is recorded as “1E+1 Cups”, which is 10 cups written in scientific notation, a spreadsheet artifact rather than a specification. The power source is recorded as an AC adapter, which is wrong: a food processor of this size plugs directly into a wall outlet and does not use an adapter. And crucially, no wattage figure is published anywhere, which on a food processor is the specification most closely related to whether it will handle dough and hard vegetables without stalling.
The dimensions given are package dimensions of 14 by 10.5 by 9.75 inches, which is the shipping carton rather than the appliance. The 14.99 pound weight is likely the shipped weight for the same reason. Neither figure should be used for planning counter or cupboard space, and Hamilton Beach’s own specification should be consulted instead.
The manufacturer description field is entirely empty, so there is no Hamilton Beach explanation of the features, the accessories or the warranty.
Hand wash care is recorded, which on a 10 cup bowl with a lid and a feed tube is a real ongoing chore compared with a dishwasher safe machine.
Who should buy it, and who should not
This suits a home cook who wants a large capacity processor for chopping, mixing and pureeing at a modest price, and who has confirmed what accessories are actually included. Ten cups plus a stainless blade covers the everyday work, and Hamilton Beach is a brand that stocks replacement bowls and lids.
Skip it if slicing and shredding discs are needed, unless the seller confirms they are in the box. Skip it if a substantial rating history matters, where the KitchenAid KFP0918 and the Cuisinart FP-11GMP1 in the same food processors category have far more feedback behind them. And skip it entirely for commercial volume work, which needs a machine such as the Robot Coupe R2 Dice instead.
