Chopzilla

   Chef Pierre reviews the Norpro Stainless Steel Food Chopper: 

I am not the sort of cook with a lot of gadgets in my kitchen.  I am very set in my ways.  I tend to develop extremely personal relationships with my cooking equipment.  It stands to reason then, that when I was presented with the slick looking Norpro Deluxe Food Chopper, I was rather skeptical.  I already had a device in my kitchen for chopping.  It was called a knife.

    Removing the product from it's packaging was simple enough and there was very little waste excepting the exterior box (which I plan to save for storage) and single plastic bag.  That was it.  No registration postcard, no brochures, stickers, warranty cards, packing peanuts or extraneous instructions.  Simple.

    Setting aside my ego, skepticism and trepidation (as pertaining to the new gadget), it was time to make soup.  After selecting a few ribs of celery and a dozen or so baby carrots, it was time to test the chopper.  To start out, I broke down the celery into approximately two inch lengths.  The baby carrots I reasoned, should be small enough.  For the sake of efficiency, I reasoned that the best course of action would be to cram as many of these pieces as I humanly could into the chamber of the chopper, smash the cover on, and slam the handle down repeatedly until the objects inside had reached the desired size.  Had there been instructions included with this product, I am almost certain that this method would have been specifically discouraged.  Now I was faced with a problem, the gadget was jammed.  This was completely my fault.  I asked too much of this gadget all at once.  I took the device apart, removed the offending carrots and celery bits, reconciled my expectations for the chopper with reality and tried again.

    Success.  With a lighter load, and a lowered set of expectations, the chopper made quick work of the vegetables in question.  2 minutes after clearing the jammed blades I was faced with a a mound of finely chopped, almost minced, veggies.  The zig-zagged blade of the chopper turns about 90 degrees with each cut, a plastic fin orbits the chamber to prevent food from sticking to the sides.  It also makes a chiming sort of noise with each cut, although I am not sure this was intentional feature.  By this point I was addicted.  I did not need any more vegetables chopped, but I kept chopping.  Then I decided I should make sticky buns, then I would have an excuse to chop some nuts.  Or garlic.  Surely I could find something to do with a bunch of chopped garlic.  Or onion.  Or, just about anything.  Eventually, I had to admit that I had chopped enough.  The chopper comes apart into 4 easily rinsed pieces, almost all of which are apparently dishwasher safe.  Easy cleanup.  Even easier when you consider the mess I didn't make outside of the chopper.

    The Norpro Deluxe Food Chopper made a believer out of me.  It works.  I did not expect it to.  It is easily cleaned, I did not expect it to be.  It makes slightly larger things into  rather smaller things, I guess I did expect that, but it does so really quickly.  And of course it makes noise, alerting everyone else in the household that I am in fact doing something productive.  I won't be getting rid of my knife any time soon, but I will be on the lookout for more things to chop...