I’ve done my share of product reviews in various blog categories from the cotton candy maker to the super chamois, the bag tracker to the pasta express, mopping shoes to bug zappers. I especially love reviewing kitchen gadgets. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I love anything that claims it will make life easier. And, it would seem as though I am not alone. Judging by reader comments there are many people out there who share my love of handy-dandy products.
A few months ago I got a comment from Jaime who asked if I had ever heard of the Vidalia Chop Wizard. It is a slicer, dicer that claims to let you cut fruits and vegetables: “faster, better, and safer.” The commercial for the Chop Wizard is on ALL the time on what seems like every channel on television. It’s supposed to be pretty spectacular (the TV ad promises the Chop Wizard will put an end to your “kitchen cutting woes”), but does it work? After months searching through other people’s kitchens (see previous blog) I was able to track down someone who actually purchased a Chop Wizard online.
So without further adieu, here’s my review of the infamous Vidalia Chop Wizard:
The product itself is less than a foot long and doesn’t weigh very much. It is almost 100% plastic, save for the stainless steel cutting blades. Basically, it looks like a very crude (okay, modest) kitchen mandolin. The checker board blade is framed by plastic and it sits in between a clear plastic container which is designed to collect your chopped food items and a hinged plastic top, which you are supposed to press down on to force your food item through the blades.
The directions say to place the unit on a flat sturdy surface (I did) and prepare your food items. The Chop Wizard says it works best with items such as potatoes, onions, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, garlic, zucchini, etc. I chose to test the product with a raw onion. On TV the woman using the Chop Wizard dices an entire onion in one quick motion. However, in reality the product’s directions mandate that you peel the onion and cut it in half yourself prior to putting it in the Chop Wizard. To be safe I cut my onion in quarters, loaded in the Wizard and karate chopped the hinged handle like the way they do on TV. The wizard chopped the onion… into big hunks (no where near the size of the chopped onions on TV).
I decided to nix the martial arts theatrics when I went to dice the tomatoes (the Wizard claims it will dice tomatoes into cubes small enough to add to fresh salsa). The Wizard I was using massacred my tomato. I would have gotten the same results had I placed the tomato under my car tire and reversed over it. The potato didn’t fare much better.
The bottom line: the Vidalia Chop Wizard didn’t prove to be the time saver it claimed to be. The product retails for about $20. My suggestion: put that money towards a good set of knives.
If you have had a better experience with the Vidalia Chop Wizard than I did, please let me know.
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