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Nicer Dicer
May. 4th, 2011 04:41 pmI was going to do a rant about gloves, and I will, but I'll start with the other subject matter because I have just had a war with it.
A few weeks ago King of Knives were having a sale (I assume that particular store is closing down), 40% off everything. So I bought a "Swisstar Nicer Dicer". It was a bit cheaper than the showcased "Alligator" and seemed to be more versatile. I figured it would make onion chopping less traumatic for me and hey, I could use it for other veggies too.
Take a look at the infomercial for this 'amazing' product. The brand is different, but the product is identical.
I made spaghetti a few days after buying it so tested it out. Initially I put half an onion on the device, skin side up. It would seem that you need to cut it smaller, and put it skin side down (it does mention the skin side down thing in the instructions, I'd forgotten, becuase it made most sense to put it down in the most stable way). The blades promptly got stuck in the onion. Matt came out to help and quickly decided the whole blade mount would need to come apart to extract the onion. He figured that it was meant to come apart like that for cleaning, I immediately expressed my doubts, but apart it came. Oh yes, in his effort to get the blades to cut through the onion the collecting cup also cracked under the pressure required - it's still usable, but not watertight.
In the end the rest of the onion was chopped using a good old fashioned knife. Matt had a few attempts to put the thing back together before becoming frustrated and leaving it. I thought I might want to take this back to the store the next day, so it had to be reassembled. I had a brainwave involving putting it together on a mound of play-doh - so the blades would stay put instead of falling over. The idea worked, I sat down with a head torch on for better lighting and using the tweezers out of my dissection kit to maneuver the blades and eventually got the thing back together. The I watched the above video and decided to give it another chance.
Today I made soup for lunch and decided to give the thing another try to chop carrots, celery and onion. My experiences were similar to those of the guy below - who made a Youtube clip about it. Again, the brand name is different, but the product is the same.
The carrots initially cut okay, but most of the problem was pressing the blades all the way down so the cut veggies would pop into the holding container. This really became a problem with the celery. I was finding that I had to lift the blades and pop out the stuck pieces with a skewer - so instead of quickly and neatly getting all the pieces into the holding cup, it was time consuming, and messy, because a lot of the stuck pieces got everywhere but in the cup.
The blades would sometimes end up bent. I was able to carefully pull them back into place, but I was risking cuts to do so, and I shouldn't have had to do it.
On close inspection I discovered what was behind the issues. The big problem is the plastic grate you push the blades onto. If it is slightly offline (which is easy to do because the 'hinge' allows for sideways and back and forwards movement), and the blades don't sit precisely flush with the gaps, it will give resistance which you naturally respond to by pushing harder. This causes the blades to CUT the plastic below, so now you have little flaps of plastic sticking out into the gaps. The blades will continue to catch on these little flaps until they eventually manage to chop them off altogether (leaving tiny bits of plastic in your chopped food). Because of all this resistance and extra force required, the blades sometimes bend and go out of place. I've found that the blades are actually quite hardy (and sharp). Once you put them back in place they're okay to use again. With rough treatment I wouldn't be surprised if one eventually snapped though.
I chopped the onion next, cutting it into sixths first. It worked pretty well, but got stuck frequently. I'd still say it may be preferable to chopping onions with a knife, which I simply hate doing. But my eyes still stung.
So yes, instead of quick, easy and neat as the infomercial claims, this product was tedious, complicated and quite messy. I wonder what device the guy in the ad was using, or what special effects they used - because that is NOT the experience of some people who have actually used the product. Man false advertising pisses me off - I thought there were laws against it? I think I wasted $23, but at least it was only $23 and not $40.
A few weeks ago King of Knives were having a sale (I assume that particular store is closing down), 40% off everything. So I bought a "Swisstar Nicer Dicer". It was a bit cheaper than the showcased "Alligator" and seemed to be more versatile. I figured it would make onion chopping less traumatic for me and hey, I could use it for other veggies too.
Take a look at the infomercial for this 'amazing' product. The brand is different, but the product is identical.
I made spaghetti a few days after buying it so tested it out. Initially I put half an onion on the device, skin side up. It would seem that you need to cut it smaller, and put it skin side down (it does mention the skin side down thing in the instructions, I'd forgotten, becuase it made most sense to put it down in the most stable way). The blades promptly got stuck in the onion. Matt came out to help and quickly decided the whole blade mount would need to come apart to extract the onion. He figured that it was meant to come apart like that for cleaning, I immediately expressed my doubts, but apart it came. Oh yes, in his effort to get the blades to cut through the onion the collecting cup also cracked under the pressure required - it's still usable, but not watertight.
In the end the rest of the onion was chopped using a good old fashioned knife. Matt had a few attempts to put the thing back together before becoming frustrated and leaving it. I thought I might want to take this back to the store the next day, so it had to be reassembled. I had a brainwave involving putting it together on a mound of play-doh - so the blades would stay put instead of falling over. The idea worked, I sat down with a head torch on for better lighting and using the tweezers out of my dissection kit to maneuver the blades and eventually got the thing back together. The I watched the above video and decided to give it another chance.
Today I made soup for lunch and decided to give the thing another try to chop carrots, celery and onion. My experiences were similar to those of the guy below - who made a Youtube clip about it. Again, the brand name is different, but the product is the same.
The carrots initially cut okay, but most of the problem was pressing the blades all the way down so the cut veggies would pop into the holding container. This really became a problem with the celery. I was finding that I had to lift the blades and pop out the stuck pieces with a skewer - so instead of quickly and neatly getting all the pieces into the holding cup, it was time consuming, and messy, because a lot of the stuck pieces got everywhere but in the cup.
The blades would sometimes end up bent. I was able to carefully pull them back into place, but I was risking cuts to do so, and I shouldn't have had to do it.
On close inspection I discovered what was behind the issues. The big problem is the plastic grate you push the blades onto. If it is slightly offline (which is easy to do because the 'hinge' allows for sideways and back and forwards movement), and the blades don't sit precisely flush with the gaps, it will give resistance which you naturally respond to by pushing harder. This causes the blades to CUT the plastic below, so now you have little flaps of plastic sticking out into the gaps. The blades will continue to catch on these little flaps until they eventually manage to chop them off altogether (leaving tiny bits of plastic in your chopped food). Because of all this resistance and extra force required, the blades sometimes bend and go out of place. I've found that the blades are actually quite hardy (and sharp). Once you put them back in place they're okay to use again. With rough treatment I wouldn't be surprised if one eventually snapped though.
I chopped the onion next, cutting it into sixths first. It worked pretty well, but got stuck frequently. I'd still say it may be preferable to chopping onions with a knife, which I simply hate doing. But my eyes still stung.
So yes, instead of quick, easy and neat as the infomercial claims, this product was tedious, complicated and quite messy. I wonder what device the guy in the ad was using, or what special effects they used - because that is NOT the experience of some people who have actually used the product. Man false advertising pisses me off - I thought there were laws against it? I think I wasted $23, but at least it was only $23 and not $40.
