A stainless steel grid set into the top of a white plastic body, with a clear container built into the base underneath it. Half an onion goes on the grid, the flat of your hand comes down on the lid, and what you lift away is a container of even cubes with nothing left on the counter.
No board. No knife. Nothing sliding off the edge at the wrong moment.
The cutting was never the slow part
Anyone can dice an onion. What nobody enjoys is the eleven minutes around it — the board out, the knife found, the ends trimmed, and the pieces coming out bigger and rougher with every row because you have started to hurry. Then you carry the board across the kitchen at an angle and half of it ends up on the floor.
So most weeknight cooking quietly gets worse. You cut fewer vegetables, or you cut them coarsely and they finish at different times, and the pepper is still crunching when the onion has gone soft.
One push, and the grid does all of it
The blades are a lattice of stainless steel strips crossing at right angles, sitting flush in the top deck in square cells of exactly the same size. Under the lid is a pad of short white pegs, one standing over each cell.
Food goes on the grid, the lid comes down, and the pegs drive it through in one movement. Every piece is the size of a cell because it has nowhere else to be. Nothing spins, so nothing gets whipped into a wet mince, and the last press is identical to the first.
Why not the one with the cord
The pull-cord choppers work by throwing blades round inside a bowl, and the number of pulls is a guess every single time. Three is too few and the onion is in wedges. Five is too many and you have onion soup. Anything soft goes straight past the stage you wanted and there is no way back.
A grid cannot do that. The cell decides the size before the food ever touches it, so a mushroom, an apple and a red onion all come out at the same dice, and the tenth one matches the first.
It catches what it cuts
The container is the base of the tool, so everything drops into it as it is cut and the worktop stays exactly as clean as it was. There is nothing to scrape up and nothing to chase around a board with the side of a knife. Carry it to the pan, tip it in, and the job is finished.
A dark non-slip band runs round the underside, so it stays put on a smooth worktop when you lean on it. Closed, the whole thing is under eight inches long and four inches tall, which is a drawer rather than a shelf.
Half an onion, one push, and dinner is already moving.
Specifications
Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.9 x 3.9 in (20 x 12.5 x 10 cm), closed
Blades: Stainless steel, a fixed lattice of square cells set into the top deck
Body, lid and container: Plastic
Cut: Even cubes, one size, set by the grid
Operation: Manual. One downward press with the flat of the hand
Lid: Hinged at one end, with a soft dark push pad on top and a pad of white pegs underneath, one peg over each blade cell
Container: Clear, built into the base, catching everything as it is cut
Base: Non-slip band around the underside
Color: White body with a clear container and a deep pink peg pad
Suits: Onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, apples, potatoes, carrots and other firm fruit and vegetables
Package Includes
1x Manual Vegetable Chopper