A Better Way to Chop

A friend recently sent me a few new kitchen toys and man are they awesome! The best of the batch is called the Miracle Kitchen Plus and I am having a ball experimenting with it. I decided to start with something simple. I whipped up a quick batch of mango salsa to use on top of some fresh baked flounder. It really cut back on prep time. I also received a little tool for juicing citrus and an invincible knife. All three tools are from the collection of a television Chef named Vinni Villicano.

First, let me say that this is not a paid endorsement of any kind. My friend knew I recently started blogging about some of my cooking and she thought I would enjoy trying these products and blogging about them. She was right!

Here are my ingredients for the salsa, laid out next to the chopper. Two mangoes (which I peeled before adding), a half cucumber (peeled), a clove of garlic (peeled as well), a small bunch of fresh cilantro, salt, pepper, 1/4 jalapeño without the seeds, and the juice of one lime.

This handy little juicer worked great! It has a little filter inside which captures seeds. I simply squeezed the lime juice into the batch of salsa ingredients.

I added all of the individual ingredients, slapped on the lid, and turned the crank a few times round until the salsa had the consistency I desired. It took minutes!

The only thing I did notice was that the pieces are not shaped like little cubes as they are when you hand chop something and the consistency of size is not as precise as hand chopping. But honestly, for a salsa, it saved a ton of time.

Now, if you are accustomed to making everything in your electric food processor, then using this hand-powered tool may not be a revelation. But I hate pulling my big heavy food processor out of the pantry. And I hate cleaning it. This is lightweight, small, and easy to clean with either hot soapy water, or it can go in the dish washer.