OXO Salad Spinner
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Our Price: $19.76 Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of OXO Salad Spinner
Customer Review: It's a good thing I got this as a gift.
Summary: 5 Stars
I wanted a salad spinner and this one looked like a good one, but I never would have spent this much money on a salad spinner for myself. I figured for as often as I would probably use it, I should get a cheaper one.
A friend kept me from making that mistake. I've now had this salad spinner for a couple of years, and it turns out that this one is not only durable enough to survive my abuse, but I use it for just about every fruit and vegetable that comes into the house.
No, I don't spin a bag full of apples. But I do wash all my produce when I bring it home. (That way, if I'm trying to decide between a peach and a bag of potato chips, I can't use the excuse that I don't feel like washing the peach.) Apples, peaches, plums, pears, and so on all get loaded into the salad spinner. I fill it with water and a splash of vinegar. (That seams to get the produce clean faster than plain water alone.) I use the inner basket to swish everything around, then pull it out and dump the water, and rinse everything in the basket. A quick shake, then I leave the basket in the dish rack for an hour or two. The produce dries and gets put into the produce bin in the fridge. Repeat with grapes, cherries, strawberries... all the smaller, more fragile fruits. I even spin those gently, and they dry more quickly.
Veggies get the same treatment. While the fruits are drying in the basket I'm cutting up broccoli, cauliflower, and whatever other vegetables I've gotten. They get washed, rinsed, spun a bit, and stored in a plastic bag with a paper towel to absorb what little moisture remains.
At the end of the day when I'm tired and I want to eat NOW and I've thrown burgers on the grill, it's a lot easier to throw some veggies on the grill too when they're already washed and cut up. If I could just figure out a way to use this for mushrooms, I'd be all set.
And yes, I do use this for salad. Just about everything that's going into the salad goes in the spinner to be washed, rinsed, and spun. And I use less salad dressing because it sticks to dry lettuce leaves better and doesn't get diluted from the water on the leaves.
If I had gotten myself a cheap, flimsy salad spinner I would probably never use it. This is stored on top of the refrigerator. I keep it handy because I use it all the time.
Customer Review: simply revolutionary!
Summary: 5 Stars
Simply put, the Oxo salad spinner receives such stellar reviews because it is an extremely well designed product, that operates on a simple principle, and works fantastically well. Given a choice, almost everyone would prefer fresh, clean vegetables and fruit. However, washing them usually leaves you with the problem of excess water, and that is where the Oxo comes in.
The spinner has three components, the bowl, the basket, and the lid. Put your vegetables, fruit, or whatever you want to drain off excess liquids from, in the basket. Place the basket in the bowl, resting on the center pin at the bottom of the bowl. Release the spring loaded handle, and then while holding down the lid, push down on the handle a few times. The centrifugal force generated from spinning the contents in the basket, draws liquid and small debris to the outer walls of the bowl. What remains in the basket is relatively dry, and excess water and debris can be discarded.
The bowl is made of extra hard plastic, that is shaped so that it is difficult to tip over, even when the basket is spinning at high speed. The rubber on the bottom of the bowl provides traction, and helps keep the bowl from spinning, or tipping over, while you are pumping. There is very little friction between the spinning basket, and the bowl and lid, and it is quite remarkable how long the basket will keep spinning if you just let it spin. There is a button on the top of the lid that acts as a brake, and will slow and stop the basket. To maintain a minimum profile, there is a sliding lever that locks down the spring loaded handle into the lid. Although holding the lid down is recommended, even when spinning at high speed, the lid seems to stay in place pretty securely. It is kind of hard to see the mechanism inside the lid, but hopefully any metal parts are corrosion resistant, as these would probably be the only things that might normally fail.
The Oxo spinner is a little pricey, and takes up quite a bit of space, but with a near perfect design, it is highly recommended if you enjoy serving a terrific salad. It appears to be made of high quality materials, that should provide excellent results for a very long time, and is available in a variety of colors and sizes. If you get one, the odds are very high that you will love it. Bon appetite!
Customer Review: so close
Summary: 2 Stars
So many salad spinners I've reviewed founder on the problem of translating some physical movement into rotational inertia without giving the unit any transverse inertia which, given how light plastic and lettuce are together, translates into the thing flying right off the table.
So a central push is perfect. It's what any engineer with a physics concentration would think of first--no lateral bias. So what's the problem? The gear ratio is just too low--a single push, even a firm one, does practically nothing. So you've got to really rev this sucker up, pressing hard hard hard! not taking a break because otherwise it slows down. But if you press too hard, the bowl shatters and sends plastic shards into you. (OK, maybe not. But it might!)
This might seem an extreme scenario that would only be relevant for the maniacally hydrophobic. But we hydrophobes aren't the only ones who love salad spinners--kids love them too. Being the one to spin the salad is always a big treat. There are three things kids hate when it comes to salad spinning: (1) being unable to get the lettuce dry enough and being humiliated by having the adults re-do it all; (2) having the unit shoot off to the side and spill everything; (3) having the unit break, whether it is the cord on the Zyliss or the bowl on the OXO. This one has dangers (1) and (3), even though not (2).
Because the salad spinner is such a simple engineering problem, and because it appeals to kids so much, I think it is worth a serious comparative review. I do understand that this isn't the way to boost one's reviewer ranking. Oh, I know all the tricks. You go to some pop culture item, especially a new one, give it a 5 or 1 star, and throw in a lot of gobbly gook. The more popular the item, the more popular the review. It's that simple. But how many pans of some Mariah Carey CD do we need? While finding the best salad spinner can actually lead to a fair number of happy hours of bonding between adult and child. Salad spinning was one of my prime step-parenting experiences and it can be yours. But maybe with the Progressive or the Zyliss. It's not clear yet which is best--there just isn't a perfect salad spinner. If they just make this gear ratio a bit stiffer, this could be it! [50]
Customer Review: Works great, and fun to use too!
Summary: 5 Stars
Whoever designed this salad spinner had probably run into all the frustrating scenarios of other spinners, and put in a lot of thought. So thank you, designer!
Things that are great:
* "Multifunction" - it allows you to wash, strain, spin, serve and store all on the same container (OK, maybe not store after you've added the salad dressing, but for sure between washing and serving).
* The previous spinner I had was open in the bottom, and basically the only thing you could do is spin it on top of the sink - otherwise there would be a big mess all over your kitchen. Not with this one. You can wash your vegetables, strain, and then take the whole thing wherever it is convenient. The water accumulates in the bottom of the main cointainer, and then you just toss the water out. The inside space is used very efficiently (the "colander" takes most of the space inside the outer container), and yet there is enough room for the spinned water to rest in the bottom without touching your vegetables.
* Sturdy, and easy to use with a variety of vegetables. Besides the lettuce, we've used with a lot of cherry tomatoes - this would have been a pain to spin with the spinners that need to be cranked, but it was very easy with this salad spinner, and it never went out of balance.
* Most of the water is efficiently spinned out of the vegetables.
* As a bonus, it is fun to use. Our young kids had no trouble making it spin, were amused by it (almost like a stationary top), and since it was them who completed the task (and had fun at it), were excited about eating their spinach and lettuce! Parents, this doubles as a toy with healthy side effects.
* The only drawback is that it is somewhat bulky (nothing is perfect), but at least the spinning mechanism can lay flat on the cover, and it is spacious enough to allow you to store a few round plastic containers inside it when not in use.
Customer Review: Saves a lot of work, takes less time & definitely eliminates drippy, mushy greens
Summary: 4 Stars
Got mine a few days ago after reading these reviews over and over since before the holidays. It works; simply and easily. It is quite large so storage of greens inside it in your frig may present a problem, but otherwise, the size is great for lots of greens and berries. It doesn't 'dry' as a towel or paper towel, but it does remove most of water which easily pours out of the bowl. The inner colander-type bowl can be used for many other kitchen draining chores as well.
The description indicates this has a non-skid base - not mine. Unless I hold the bowl as it is spinning, it walks all over the counter and the lid bounces all over the place. I would like to see it actually have a base that would keep it in place so I could pump the spinner knob a few times and walk away to do something else while it spins. I would also like it better if the lid actually secured to the bowl while spinning and for storage; it doesn't. It just sits in place, so once again, I must stand guard over it holding the base with one hand, pump it, and then hold the lid in place.
The more one pumps, the faster it goes, but never fast enough to eliminate all the water. I haven't had mine very long, but I've already used it for blueberries, iceburg and romaine lettuces and celery. I especially liked the way it got most of the water out from the 'fluffy' tops of the celery stalks and didn't squish the blueberries - those are chores for only the most patient of people! It worked better than drying by hand I'll tell you that. Made my chores much faster and less tedious. It is a keeper, but I'd like to see the few changes I mentioned above and that, for me, would make it a 5-star product.