A Guide to the Best Vegetable Choppers
If you want to prepare a salad, sauce, or dip, you could use a blender or food processor. But, that might be overkill if you just want a small amount for a single meal for two or three people. A vegetable chopper can help you prepare a salad in far less time than the traditional chopping and dicing on a cutting board. And you’re not just limited to a vegetable salad. You can try preparing your own pesto sauce, or spreads such as hummus or guacamole!
We’ll see that there are manual and electric vegetable choppers. Some of the manual choppers have a number of interchangeable blades, allowing you to cut vegetable slices, julienned vegetables, or crinkle-cut vegetables. And if you want to dice onions or garlic without any tears, these vegetable choppers can get it done!
We’ll go through some of the options among the selections in the Best Reviews Guide list of vegetable choppers. Many of them are not much more than the price of a set of kitchen knives and a cutting board!
Types of Vegetable Choppers
In the Best Reviews Guide list of the best-selling vegetable choppers, we see a few available options:
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Electric-powered chopper: These are in essence “mini-blenders”, with two major functions: chopping, and grinding (or puree). You use the slow speed to chop and then switch to the high speed to grind the food finely, or into a puree. An example is the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Food Processor. The rotating blades of the device have a sharp side and a blunt side. It employs the sharp side to chop up soft foods, and the blunt side for hard foods to grind them down. You have to press the button constantly to keep the motor running.
Cuisinart Mini-Prep Food Processor
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Manual vegetable choppers: There are also manual vegetable choppers, that come in three main designs:
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Pull-string choppers: These involve a spring-loaded set of blades. You pull a string to rotate the blades, and the spring pulls the string back. So, the food gets cut both times, when you pull the string, and when the string is pulled back. An example is the Kuhn Rikon Pull Chop Chopper. Just 5 pulls on the string is enough for a coarse chop, 10 pulls for fine chopping, and 15 times for preparing a dip or sauce.
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Kuhn Rikon Pull Chop Chopper
- Plunger chopper: Another manual chopper design uses plunger action. You insert the foods that you want to chop into the container and push down on a plunger that uses zigzag blades to slice and dice up fruits and vegetables. An example is the Vivaant Food Chopper. It also has rotating scrapers so that food won’t adhere to the sides and remain unchopped.
Vivaant Food Chopper
- Clamshell-type chopper: Yet another type of vegetable chopper uses a number of interchangeable blades. You place the food to be diced in the device and press down with the blade. One of the most versatile vegetable choppers of this kind is the Alrens Vegetable Chopper. It has 2 stainless steel blades for dicing and cutting vegetables. The cut vegetables are collected in the chopper’s container. Besides the press, it also has a mandoline slicer, where you run the vegetable over the blade manually. The mandoline slicer includes a special blade for grating ginger, two blades for shredding, one for large slices, a waffle-shaped blade for wavy slices, and an egg separator to separate yolks from egg whites.
Alrens Vegetable Chopper
What reviewers say
Here are some impressions of customers regarding the vegetable chopper that they chose:
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Great for people with limited hand strength: One customer said that she was accustomed to using a box grater or mandoline slicer. But these require that you push hard in order to cut properly. Also, a food processor may be on the heavy side for an elderly person. These small vegetable choppers are lightweight, and can cut your vegetables for you with much less effort!
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Use thin slices for the clamshell chopper: It’s possible to run an entire onion or potato through the clamshell chopper, and have it ready in one go. However, you may damage the blades if you push too hard. So, it’s advised to use only thin slices in such a chopper.
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Capacity of the container: You’ll notice that different choppers will also differ in their capacity. One of the largest is the Mueller 2-speed Pull Chopper Vegetable Cutter. It can hold 5 cups or 1.2 liters of cut vegetables!
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Use a brush to clean: The blades of these choppers can be very sharp. Some manufacturers supply a brush to clean between the cutting blades. This ensures that you won’t cut your fingers during cleanup.
Important Features
Here are some tips about selecting a vegetable chopper:
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Blades must be sharp: These vegetable cutters usually have stainless steel blades. It’s essential that the blades remain sharp. Otherwise, they will tend to squash vegetables and fruits instead of actually cutting them.
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Shorter food preparation time: These vegetable choppers can reduce your food preparation time in half. Instead of having to dice each vegetable separately on a cutting board, you can run the vegetable through either a manual or electric chopper and have a large amount prepared quickly.
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Dishwasher-safe parts: Not only is the actual food preparation time shorter. You’ll also notice that many of these vegetable choppers are dishwasher safe as well. However, some should be washed in lukewarm water. For example, the parts of the Alrens Vegetable Chopper should not be put in water hotter than 60 degrees. It may damage the plastic holding the blades in place.
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Julienned vegetables: Some vegetable choppers allow you to rotate a carrot or zucchini into a spiral blade, in order to prepare julienned or spiralized vegetables. An example is the FullStar Vegetable Chopper. You rotate the vegetable onto the spiral or ribbon blade, much like sharpening a pencil!
Blade options on the FullStar Vegetable Chopper
Final Verdict
We went through some of the features of the best vegetable choppers. You can use them to prepare diced onions, for colorful salads, and even to grind up nuts or ginger. Whether you need food diced or pureed, a vegetable chopper is an easy-to-use, low-tech product that can do it fast! Check out the list and choose one today!
