Monday, May 26, 2008

Silly kitchen gadget No. 5

I love Good Grips products. The vegetable peeler, the 4-quart mixing bowl, the silicone spatula and the whisk all get a big thumbs up in my kitchen. And the salad spinner? I want to marry it. (Except I'm already planning to marry this soup.)
So OXO's decision to make and market this particular gadget baffles me. Maybe I just don't buy mangoes enough to appreciate its existence, but I can't see how this wouldn't create more of a mess than the one you were trying to avoid.

When's the last time you sliced open a mango with a knife? Could you tell which way the seed was oriented? Did the flesh cut away neatly from the seed with no mess? Did you worry the half-cut slippery fruit was going to shoot out from under your knife and land in the dog's water dish?

If the answer is yes, maybe you think this slicer would help. Me, I can't picture using it without creating a sticky, pulpy mess, first trying to orient it to the seed, and then probably getting it stuck halfway down because the seed ends up being bigger than the slicer allows.

That's the way it seems to me. But maybe I'm wrong. If you love your mango splitter the way I love my salad spinner, let me know!

6 comments:

  1. I don't know about that either. It's taken me many years to perfect my mango-peeling-and-slicing technique -- I can't quite see how that particular gadget would be an improvement. Besides, sticky fingers are half the joy of mango dissection.

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  2. the thing is very strange indeed. i think you should purchase it and give it a test run for us. i'm intrigued!! what if we gained precious amounts of time that the mangoes were taking up in our lives?! hahaha.

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  3. Sticky fingers and gnawing on the pit!

    Pink, I saw it again in the local Sur La Table today. Not tempted at all to try it.

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  4. Kitt, to my amazement, I ran across a rating of this splitter on America's Test Kitchen! I subscribe to their email and I thought it to be such a struck of luck that they actually reviewed this product within a week of you posting about it. See the review here: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/testing.asp?testingid=521&bdc=6252&extcode=L8EN5BI00

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  5. How funny, Marina! I guess I am wrong! (But I don't go through enough mangos to make it worthwhile to purchase.)

    Sorry for the slow response. Your comment slipped through the cracks.

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