Panda Chopper, my little kitchen helper is hailed from Korea, bought through Gmarket. This caught my eyes as it is compact, cheap and easy to operate – manually.
This chopper is handy if you have a small family to cook for and when meal menus are mostly last minutes. The chopper comes with a plastic container (with lid) to hold the items for chopping, guaranteed no messy worktop after all the chop-chop. Although the stainless steel blades are sharp, most items need to be cut into smaller pieces before working the blades.
To chop, simply press the handle downwards continuously as if pressing a button and the blades will rotate clockwise at every press motion. The more you press, the finer the good will be chopped.
I have tried garlic, ginger, tomato, shallot, onion, carrot. So far so good as long as they are cut into smaller pieces prior. Otherwise the larger chunks are likely to get stuck in between the blades. Refer to photo.
Washing up after use is also easy. The blades are rather deep, close to one other and not detachable. I simply soaked the entire chopper into a deep container with dish detergent. Be careful of the sharp blades when washing. What i did was i used a chopstick to push the sponge up & down the tight space between each blade to thoroughly washed them. You just need to dry the blades by airing the chopper.
Why not invest on an electric chopper?? There are Plenty of good brands with inexpensive price tags out there! Well, being a weekend cook I do not want to stock up on kitchen appliances and gadgets simply:
- I do not want to chalk up my electricity bill
- My mum taught me to use my hands “to feel” the garlics and the onions, the mixing and the seasoning to know my ingredients well. So getting dirty and smelly fingers in the kitchen was never an issue for me.
- The truth (hahaha above all) is, I am quite an idiot when comes to electrical appliances and tech-kie gadgets … I cannot even tell the difference between a LED TV and a Monitor !!! Hahahaha …
So do I think it’s worth paying $16.90 for a manual chopper? Sure why not ?! Storage ? No problem at all! I just stashed it away in the drawer.
Reviewed by: Orange Ranger