Justine Sterling
Want that chef-quality chop without the knife skills class? We tested eight of the top food chopper brands and found the best of the best, plus a vegetable chopper and slicer that one of our editors is totally obsessed with.
Let me take you back to late 2008. Barack Obama has been elected. The housing bubble is bursting. And the first Slap Chop infomercial airs starring Vince “ShamWow Guy” Offer (who is, at the time of this writing, currently running for congress on an “anti-woke” platform). The Slap Chop promised to “make America skinny one slap at a time.” I guess by chopping vegetables small enough that we could just swallow them whole? Anyway, it purported to make chopping a breeze—no more knife work for you! But it’s not the only handheld chopper on the market—not by a long shot. We recently tried eight different brands of food choppers in search of the best food chopper to buy. And we found three brands in three different styles that checked our boxes. Spoiler alert: the Slap Chop did not make the cut.
How we tested food chopper brands
We chopped three different vegetables with each food chopper: onion, garlic, and potato. If the food chopper came with multiple blade inserts for different chop sizes, we tried each one. If we were testing a vegetable chopper and slicer, we only tested the chopper functionality.
What we looked for in the best food chopper
- Ease of use. The best vegetable chopper should make chopping easy. That’s kinda the whole point. Whatever the mechanism, it should be easy to push, requiring very little upper body strength.
- Even chop. Ideally, the best vegetable chopper chops vegetables evenly. It doesn’t have to rival the skills of a sous chef at Eleven Madison Park—but it should at least leave you with a pile of relatively evenly sized vegetable chunks.
- Easy to clean. It’s all well and good if a food chopper makes chopping easy, but if it takes ages to clean and/or is terrifying to clean, then you’re probably not going to want to use it very often. We looked for food choppers that came apart easily for quick cleaning—bonus points for a dishwasher safe gadget.
- Affordability. While they’re useful, food choppers are still a niche kitchen item. And niche kitchen items should be affordable. The choppers we tested all fell between $20 – $33.
We managed to test all of these handheld choppers without a single injury. (Hooray!) Here are the top three best vegetable choppers we found in our test.
3 Best Food Chopper Brands, Ranked
- Mueller Pro-Series 10-in-1 Vegetable Chopper ($29.99)
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Pros: My colleague Gwynedd Stuart was immediately enamored with this vegetable chopper and slicer combo. It comes with two chopper inserts for both a medium chop and smaller dice, as well as blades for grating and even a mandolin-style slicer. The chopper inserts are sharp and produce nice, evenly sized vegetable chunks. It doesn’t require much pressure at all, and there’s a grippy bit of rubber on the top that keeps your hand from slipping. The chopper is mounted onto a clear container, so all of your chopped veg is cleanly collected—no scraping it off a cutting board. The blades come out easily with a push of a button, and it’s all dishwasher safe. You even get multiple brushes to clean the tricky bits.
Cons: While it’s not massive, it’s nearly a foot long, so it will take up cabinet space. And you’ll have to figure out safe storage for all the additional blade inserts. This also isn’t the best manual vegetable chopper if you’re interested in using it for garlic—the cloves are just too small.
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon
- OXO Good Grips Chopper ($24.99)
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Pros: If you’re looking for that Slap Chop style functionality, OXO makes the best food chopper for you. It chops like a dream. The plunger (which has a nice grippy material on top) goes down easily, cutting through potatoes like butter. Plus, the blades rotate as you chop, giving you really even cuts. We even got a nice garlic mince out of it without having to scrape the blades and risk injury. The “catcher cup” has measurement markings, which is super useful. And it’s dishwasher friendly. It’s a real joy to use—and a productive way to get out any aggression.
Cons: While the potato and garlic were easy-peasy to chop, the onion was a bit more of a formidable foe. It took more chopping and some adjustment, but in the end we still got a totally acceptable rough chop from the OXO.
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon
- Kuhn Rikon Pull Chop 2-Cup Food Chopper ($33.93)
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Pros: We really ooh’ed and ahh’ed at this baby. I didn’t even know such a contraption existed but now that I do I’m obsessed. This is essentially a manual food processor. All you do is put your vegetables (or cheese or egg or whatever) into the container with the blade. Then secure the top and pull the ripcord—like starting up a lawnmower. The blade spins and you get a perfect chop. The more you spin, the finer the dice. It’s easy and takes barely any effort aside from a little bit of a jerk on that first pull. And, of course, it’s dishwasher safe. This is the best chopper for vegetables or whatever else you’ve got.
Cons: We had to cut the onion in quarters so that it fit in the bowl—but there is a three-cup model that might fit a half onion if such a thing is important to you. And you do need a little spatula or something to scrape your chopping out of the catcher. It’s also the most expensive food chopper we tested and it only has the one functionality. Put it on your Christmas list for someone else to buy for you.
Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon
Best Vegetable Chopper and Slicer
Best Classic Vegetable Chopper
Best of the Best Vegetable Chopper
Other food choppers we tried:
Fullstar Vegetable Chopper, Zyliss Zick-Zick Classic Food Chopper, Vidalia Food Chopper, Cuisinart Push Chopper, Slap Chop
Danny Palumbo
Jordan Myrick
Gwynedd Stuart
