Vidalia Chop Wizard
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Our Price: $27.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Vidalia Chop Wizard
Customer Review: BUY IT NOW - prefer it to the Progressive Intl. chopper
Summary: 5 Stars
This thing is so fantastic I make excuses to use it. For years I have wanted something to make Mexican salsa with. Tomatoes, onions, and jalapeños for a big bowl used to take me 40 minutes to chop! (OK, so I'm not that good in the kitchen). Now I've got a bucket of salsa in five minutes, and it's fun. It's even fun to clean! Along with a cat, it is one of the things I have resolved never to live without again. If it broke, I wouldn't even care--I'd just buy another one.
The one thing I would kill for is a slicing insert. Why didn't they make this? Or did they? Please Vidalia, THIS IS A CRI DE COEUR!
The Progressive International Chopper comes with a slicing insert, and I even think it's manufactured by the same people (the Vidalia has the word "Progressive" in slightly raised lettering on it). However, I don't like the Progressive as much, for persnickety reasons. You have to put the lid (the thing that slams down on the onion) on "just so," whereas with the Vidalia somehow you just slap it on and away you go. The Progessive comes with a handy plastic case to put the whole thing in, but it is so precise that, again, you have to fit everything in just so. Psychologically it seems too tight and compressed ... I need wiggle room. I throw my Vidalia back in the box, toss it on the top shelf, and I'm done.
Objectively the Progressive chops and dices just as well, once you've hooked the lid into place and pulled it out of its tight little box. And it has the slicer attachment for mushrooms, etc. If you are not bothered by the same crazy stuff as I am, then buy the Progressive. Personally, I am sticking with the Vidalia, which gives me enormous pleasure, and in the meantime I'll pray that Vidalia starts making other inserts.
Customer Review: Baker seeks nut chopper for delicious encounter
Summary: 4 Stars
Part 1. I like to bake - a lot. And being a Texan I use a lot of nuts (mostly pecans) in my baking. I've bought all kinds of tools - electric and not - to uniformly chop nuts. None worked well. Believe it or not, I was trying to persuade my husband (a retired tool and die maker) to build a similar "grid-like" device to chop nuts when we ran across this chopper at a local kitchen store. I had not seen TV commercials so had no preconceived ideas about it. I am pleased to report it works pretty darn well. Not perfectly. It is time consuming in that you can't lay a pile of nuts on the grid and expect the lid to close and chop. The nuts have to be pretty well flat on the grid. Nonetheless, it works far, far better than any other tool I've used. If there are too many nuts on the grid, it's very hard to press. I've learned what works, and that's what I do. I can see that if you're rough with it or put too much on the grid, it could break. I can say that I've chopped more than 40 pounds of pecans, walnuts, peanuts, almonds, and macadamia nuts, and it's as good as new. I have reserved it only for nuts. I don't want any cross-contamination from other flavors.
Part 2: My daughter purchased one of these for herself, but since she doesn't enjoy cooking, she passed it on to me, not knowing I already had one. My husband uses it to make quick work of chopping onion, celery, and bell pepper (using the small dice grid) for his bean salad. I use it for dicing potatoes for soup and other uses. It works wonderfully. Again, you just have to be judicious about how much you put on the grid. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but if you use the included cleaning tool under running water, it goes pretty quickly. All in all, I'm very happy with this tool.
Customer Review: Great but don't lose that cleaning tool!
Summary: 4 Stars
I had a different version of this type of thing and it broke on me - I literally bent the steel grid trying to chop a piece of onion that was too big. The reviews I read about the Vidalia Chop Wizard remind me of what I would have written for that machine - that is - don't really waste your time. But this type of gadget really did speed things up when I had a lot of small chopping to do so I went ahead and bought the vidalia chop wizard, and it is GREAT! The sturdy rubber grips, the huge bottom container, the sturdy construction, etc. It's all true. It's also true that if you're not strong - don't buy one of these things. I am small so usually find myself putting my entire weight on the gadget to get it to chop (but at least this one can handle it.) The reason I didn't give this a 5 star rating, and this is serious, is because if you lose that little finger cleaning tool they provide, the chopper becomes useless. It's almost impossible to clean the thing. If you soak it, the food just absorbs water and expands to fill the slots and you can not get the food out. If you dry it, the food is dried to the inside. Now I've lost that little finger tool and don't see how to buy a replacement. If the tool came with 4 of those things and a repeat order form, I'd buy another one. But with 5 cooks in my kitchen, it's tough to keep track of little things like that. I highly recommend for someone who does a lot of chopping (I do carrots, celery, peppers, mushrooms, apples, onions of course, etc.) is very strong, and who doesn't have anyone else in their kitchen who can lose the cleaner tool.Customer Review: FANTASTIC
Summary: 5 Stars
Like some others here I am very leery of TV infomercials and after studying it HEAVILY.... calling the company, seeing, taping and RE-watching the half hour infomercial, also looking all over the internet including Target's reviewers along with Amazon's reviewers, I decided this was safe to take a stab at [pun IN-tended lol] because I cannot stand in the kitchen chopping because of my back. This device is FANTASTIC. At first don't get nervous, because you have to get accustomed to it's little quirks [hey, WE all have those too lol]... like making sure the whole fruit or veggie is cut in half OR quarters or YES, it WILL be a mess, as some have said, and celery has to be cut into smaller segments [I cut across the WHOLE bunch of celery, hard to explain] and you DO have to bang the cover down VERY HARD sometimes, but hey.... so what! It WORKS. Then when done chopping, take the blade out and bang it over the pot to get the excess into the pot/pan that remains in the blades [unavoidable], then use the white piece that they enclose to help OR a fork, and it's fine. What a DIFFERENCE instead of cutting everything. Don't hesitate for a MOMENT in getting this. By the way, Target's reviews were much worse so don't even bother to go there... I read these here first [it's FROM Target through Amazon] and there were much more great reviews HERE to overpower what I read there, so decided to try it, and am so glad I did.Customer Review: Love it! Bought two for me and several for friends!
Summary: 5 Stars
I think the Vidalia Chop Wizard is an awesome kitchen gadget - one that everyone should have! For starters, if you chop some garlic, zucchini, squash, etc. and shake it all together with some olive oil, salt and pepper - you don't even need to cook it. The "fresh chop" just tastes so good and it slices and dices faster than I ever could. Often I will stay away from veggies because I am too lazy to chop...but this device makes throwing together a meal healthy and simple. I have found the small dicer to be great for garlic, but because I like the dices smaller, I put the garlic chunks though it a second time to get them even smaller. You will not use this chopper for all your chopping needs - sometimes you just want a different cut - but it will come in handy time and time again. Especially wonderful for small kitchens with little space, throwing together some fish (or other) and veggies, or just prepping for veggies to throw in some foil on a BBQ. I love my Vidalia Food Chop. It's a time saver! Just make sure you rinse/clean it after use so the bits don't stick in the grate. I wouldn't mind a larger container to chop into, more grates with different cuts and a more compact way to stack/keep all the pieces together...but this is something that can easily be solved by future attachments and/or alterations (hint, hint Vidalia). Definitely not good enough reasons to go without while you wait!