Monday, April 28, 2008

The Vidalia Slicer

One of the frustrations of being a trained chef without a lot of money or a second income to help feed my addiction to good quality kitchen stuffage is that I know what the professional equipment does but don't have access to it at home. Because I'm broke.

One of the gadgets that has been on my wish list for a while is a professional mandolin. These heavy duty tools are quite expensive and so far, I haven't had anyone volunteer to be the gift giver on that one. Every time I start to break down and convince myself that I should splurge something more important comes up and I am unable to make the purchase.

Enter the Vidalia Slicer. Yes. The Vidalia Slicer-the one that annoying Billy Mays guy screams about on TV. A couple of months ago I was hired to cater a business lunch and wanted to serve fresh potato straws. I did not, however, want to cut them by hand and knew that the only other option would be to use a mandolin. Just as I was turning off the tv to go to the store, the commercial came on for this plastic version of what I really needed. It was, of course, significantly cheaper than the real deal and quite frankly, it looked good enough to try.

I have to tell you-for the home cook, this is a fantastic buy. The blades are sharp (though I question for how long) and the cuts are precise. It takes very little effort to cut harder vegetables and even has a handy slip guard with prongs in it to grip the food. Mine came with several blades for a variety of cuts.

In short-I highly recommend this as seen on tv item if you can't yet afford a real mandolin. The Vidalia Slicer is sold in places such as Target and Walmart, and also online-just Google it.

Does anyone else have it? If so, are you happy too?

4 comments:

Mo and The Purries said...

Well, Billy Mays brought us OxiClean too... and I swear by that, so I'd be willing to give it a shot. Anything that can make dicing onions easier is a treasure in my book!

Danielle Athanas said...

Oh man... Billy Mays is EVERYWHERE....

Danielle Athanas said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Crazy Working Mom said...

They tried this out on the early news this morning and said it was worth the buy! I'm gonna have to get me one. I SUCK at slicing, especially onions and tomatoes. Thanks for the mention. I need to add it to my "to do" list so I don't forget it.