Chef'n VeggiChop Vegetable Chopper, Arugula

I got the VeggiChop because I'm trying to cook from scratch more instead of buying pre-chopped mire poix from Trader Joe's or frozen chopped veggies for soups & stews.

I have a certain breaking point, where a whole lotta chopping becomes... well, demotivating, and the soup just doesn't get made (pizza, anyone?).

I also have a TINY kitchen and an electric, full size food processor is simply out of the question.

The VeggiChop brings enough variation and novelty to the chopping process to keep me on task in the kitchen. I'm using a lot more fresh vegetables in my cooking now, saving money, and enjoying the work!

Some notes...

You'll still have to clean & cut the veggies (I've tried onions, celery, bell peppers, carrots, and shallots) into chunks before they go into the bowl. And if you're doing a stock pot of soup, you'll be doing a couple of rounds of each of the major ingredients.

And the chop isn't as even or "pretty" as a good knife chop or even a food processor chop. So if it's food for a party and you want a perfect dice of red bell peppers for garnish, get out your knife.

Also, I haven't had much luck with herbs or garlic. They stick to the blades and don't really get minced, even with the little paddle attachment that's supposed to help with that. I bought a garlic twist NexTrend Garlic Twist - Clear for the garlic, and use a knife for the herbs.

And although it says somewhere in the product info online that you can chop ice with this thing... meh. Not really. Or I couldn't... Maybe if you started with those tiny hotel cubes?

However, you CAN make fruit sorbets with the thing. Mark Bittman had a recipe in the NY Times recently for simple fruit sorbets, and if you let the frozen fruit thaw slightly first, you can make a nice two serving batch very easily with the VeggiChop.

What else: Oh. Easy to clean, just be careful with the blade.

Hope that helps!

I just got the Vegichopper yesterday, so the review is based on one use---but the results are conclusive so far as I'm concerned. I chopped each of the following separately: celery, onion, zucchini, bell pepper, and garlic. Four pulls is usually enough. Just as with an electric food processor, too much chopping produces a purée: on one pass I got a little red pepper purée from 7 pulls. So check as you go.

The product is EXTREMELY well-designed: for example, it has a guard for the blades, and if the guard's on, the blades won't turn. Lid seats firmly, and cleanup is rinsing off the blade unit, rinsing out the bowl, and wiping the bottom of the lid.

The great thing is the compact size: easy to store (good for small apartments), easy to get out of storage, easy to use, and easy to like.

We like our chopper. We eat big green salads almost every night, and we include lots of chopped veggies such as carrots, celery, radish, zucchini and yellow summer squash, and sometimes hard-boiled egg. It's nice to put chunks of each into the chopper and pull the string a couple of times. The only thing I wish they had done differently is the ribbing inside. The chopped contents are pretty moist so they all stick to the walls. It's a bit hard to scrape out, which you want to do with the back of the knife you used to cut the veggies into chunks. Still, we used the upright kind of chopper for years - the kind that you whack with the palm of your hand, and we like this better, all in all. It's quicker in the long run.