Veggie choppers: Brilliant kitchen hack or silly TikTok trend?
Don't retire your knife set just yet
Credit:
Reviewed / Amber Gibson
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In the era of lazy girl dinner, the vegetable chopper has become popular among Millennials and Gen Z as a kitchen hack for pesky knife work.
It can cut, slice, and dice all manner of vegetables (and even chicken or eggs) in a snap, with everything falling into one container for an instant chopped salad or stir-fry prep.
It seems like a great way to make healthy eating more convenient and fun. But can it replace my all-purpose Chinese cleaver, which is my favorite kitchen tool and go-to knife? We tested the trendy tool to evaluate all its pros and cons.
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What is a vegetable chopper?
The Mueller vegetable chopper comes with several different attachments for dicing and slicing.
Vegetable choppers have gone viral on TikTok, and there are plenty of options out there to help slice, dice, cut, and chop vegetables and other ingredients into uniform pieces directly into a self-contained collection tray.
Most choppers come with a few different interchangeable blades. Popular brands on Amazon include Fullstar and Mueller, which also come with grating and slicing blades. It takes several uses to really get the hang of the vegetable chopper, becoming familiar with all of the various parts and how to switch out the attachments.
The instant vegetable dicer cuts directly into a 1.2L collection tray with four interchangeable rust-resistant blades.
This vegetable chopper has eight interchangeable stainless-steel blades to chop, grate, slice, and dice ingredients directly into a food container.
What to use a veggie chopper for?
A medley of vegetables can be chopped and sliced directly into a food container.
A veggie chopper is a tool that's great for small kitchens, as well as for people who cook for one and want to make quick and easy meals with fresh whole foods.
Making chopped salads and preparing veggies for a stir-fry are examples of quick, healthy meals that this tool is made for.
I enjoy going to the farmers market (my favorite is Chino Farms if you’re in Southern California), getting a medley of seasonal vegetables, and tossing them together with scrambled eggs, fried rice, or quinoa.
Using a veggie chopper is a modern method for prepping all of those ingredients without a cutting board, so they’re ready to easily dump into a frying pan or wok without any small bits escaping.
Many ingredients still require some work before placing them in the chopper, though. For example, you’ll still need to peel ingredients like garlic, onions, and carrots.
Common vegetables like cucumbers, mushrooms, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, broccoli, romaine lettuce, peppers, and celery can all be chopped in the veggie chopper. You just need to cut them into small enough pieces to fit in the square chopper beforehand.
The benefits of a veggie chopper
It was a cinch to chop up ingredients to use for fried rice.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t have great knife skills and is intimidated by words like julienne and brunoise, a vegetable chopper will deliver instant uniform cuts to vegetables without the risk of cutting yourself.
When making a dish like fried rice, this can be a method to efficiently prepare a variety of vegetables. If you’re making a chopped salad, you can even eat directly out of the food container by adding a little dressing and shaking everything up, which saves time and water on cleanup.
Just be mindful that for certain fibrous ingredients—like asparagus and celery—you need to push down pretty hard and put some muscle in it to get the chopper to work.
The downsides of a veggie chopper
Cylindrical baby corn was too thick for the small dicer and became impaled halfway through.
If you’re making a recipe where ingredients need to be added at different times, a vegetable chopper is not a good idea, since everything ends up mixed together in the collection tray. Otherwise, you need to empty the tray in between chopping each ingredient, which can be more time-consuming than simply cutting them up on a cutting board.
Certain ingredients, like mushrooms and tomatoes, can be too soft and mushy and could make a mess if you try to chop them with a veggie chopper.
During testing, mushrooms simply got stuck and required a lot of cleaning. (Luckily, there's a small plastic cleaning fork that comes with both the Mueller and Fullstar vegetable choppers.) Tomatoes, on the other hand, squirted everywhere and made a mess on the table.
Baby corn was challenging to work with, too. When we put in whole stalks of baby corn, they were too thick and were completely impaled in the small dicer attachment. It was very difficult to remove them. We had more luck by slicing the baby corn in half lengthwise and then using the dicer.
Our advice: Make sure you don’t attempt to chop any ingredients that are too thick. When something gets stuck like this baby corn, it takes forever to individually dig each square out with a knife.
Fullstar vegetable chopper vs. Mueller vegetable chopper
Two of the most popular vegetable chopper brands on Amazon and other retail sites are Fullstar and Mueller. We tested both, and found the Mueller chopper to be superior.
The Mueller model comes with many more useful attachments, and the blades are much sharper, resulting in cleaner cuts. I could cut celery easily with the Mueller, but it got stuck in the Fullstar. Even romaine lettuce was a huge hassle to clean with the Fullstar, and most of it didn’t even make its way into the food container below.
Should you buy a vegetable chopper?
Maybe, but you're better off strengthening your knife skills
You may want to stick to chopping up your veggies with a knife and cutting board before considering these devices.
Unless you'd benefit from this product from an accessibility standpoint—or you're a hand model who has been instructed never to use knives at home—a veggie chopper is probably more of a hassle than it’s worth.
With all of the prep required in peeling and cutting vegetables small enough to fit in the square attachment, it is much faster to just chop the vegetables by hand. Plus, cleaning the attachments in between each chop slows down what is marketed as an efficient process.
We would recommend a great cutting board and versatile knife instead. They're tried-and-true tools that will last longer, are easier to clean, and are much more versatile. If you're looking to up your knife skills, consider a Gordon Ramsay Masterclass to become a pro from home.
This sturdy but lightweight bamboo cutting board is more durable than wood and won't dull your knives as much as hard wood or plastic.
Our pick for the best chef's knife is incredibly comfortable and easy to use.
Buy at Hedley & Bennett
This all-purpose kitchen knife is comfortable to hold, just as versatile and more precise than a vegetable chopper.
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