So you have things that need chopping.

Possibly even Broccoli (Phil Hartman, we miss you still, and Dana, what have you been up to?)

I actually owned an earlier Black and Decker Chopper (lost in a long ago move, I think, probably still in Montana somewhere). It was amazing. It did one thing, chop stuff. The thing is, it did it very well. There were two modes, chop, and pulverize (that was the blade turned backwards and the dulled side of the blade would power through things like peanuts to mince them, yet not turn them into butter.).

I was scrolling through the world of gadgets and lo and behold Wired was looking at the most recent version in their “Best of Gadget Lab.” This seemed weird to me, as their best of, was mostly spent smashing the egos of the people that made those things in a single paragraph. They have a “Wired, or Tired” style format, and this was the “Tired” portion for the chopper.

“TIRED Definitely not a one-stop chop shop. Any ingredient larger than a tennis ball must be pre-sliced before chopper can handle it. Not much variation in chopping options.“

Yeah, umm, you can’t fit things bigger than a tennis ball in it, because it’s smaller than a tennis ball. They might as well note that; black seems like an unusually dark color.

I have found that especially with tools. You can get a number of tools that do many things ok, or you can get a single tool that does a particular job well. This falls into the latter category. If you want to chop,, cilantro (www.ihatecilantro.com, (a favorite of my wife’s, I happen to love the stuff)), parsley, onions, peanuts, ginger, or other flavor adding ingredients (great for making little portions of curry people), this is the thing to get.

If you’re looking for something to make latkes and the like where you’re chopping up 20 potatoes so that you can feed 10 family members, it’s not going to do the job, but for a meal for 2 to 4 people (one of which I like to refer to as dinner) it’s perfect, cleans up easily and will really do the trick.

Thanks Wired Gadget Lab (don’t worry I still think you’re hot)

Black and Decker Home Product site