5 Cheese Gadgets Tested by Design Expert | Well Equipped | Epicurious

i've managed first try to draw a sort of a disgruntled looking cyclops i'm dan and i've been designing kitchen gadgets for 40 years i'm gonna test some cheese gadgets and see if i can find a way to make them better maybe a lever that comes out here stagger these blades this is how guillotines are designed these are the products i'm going to test rotary cheese grater fondula cheese gun slice the cheese slicer handheld cheese milk adjustable grater slicer [Music] rotary cheese grater it is designed to grate cheese with a turn of a crank let's see how effective it is i've got the medium grate attachment in place i will first suction it down which is going to be important when i start cranking see if we can get started and wow it's going through this really quickly okay so that felt pretty quick and i think i annihilated that piece of cheese here's a slightly bigger piece of cheese this cheese doesn't stand a chance it is graded and graded pretty quickly boy i would say that worked pretty well that was great get it let's see how the rotary grader compares to a standard box grater in terms of effectiveness i would give the rotary cheese grater a five out of five it's really fast it gets through the cheese really quickly it's very consistent i am loving it now i'm gonna try the left hand oil test by making my non-dominant hand slippery it's going to highlight any deficiencies and i read those comments get your mind out of the gutter now the first thing that needs to be done is i need to lock this to the table i'm going to turn it towards me so i can get my left hand on it you may not be able to see this but because of the shape and because everything's rounded my slippery hand is falling off of here i'm not getting any good grab on this which means to compensate i'm really squeezing the hell out of this to hold it steady with my left hand i've got to spin the other way no problem and this is going through pretty quickly let's try it now with the plunger and yeah oh my suction cup let go oh yeah this could be a bit of a problem and this depends on the countertop that you have it took a little bit of work but still i think i'm a happy camper in terms of usability i would give this a five out of five has a couple of things that i think could be improved but i am willing to forgive it let's talk about a redesign even though i like it i think there are things that can be improved so this knob looks like this and takes some force to get this suction to the table i would rethink this and probably give this a lever action the other thing i would think about for the suction cup is make the flange just a little bit wider and i'm thinking that may help it stick to the countertop a little better in doing that it may actually suction to the table a little more effectively the way this handle is designed now it forces you into this position which can put your wrist at an angle and may not be as friendly ergonomically if your hand was on the edge here if there was a ball to grab or a mushroom shape that way you would keep your hand in neutral position as you spin i think that would be an improvement in terms of a buy rating i would give the rotary cheese grater a five out of five i am loving it i love you because of your speed and your ease of use and your ability to give me a lot of cheese very quickly fun doodler cheese gun it's basically a hot glue gun for cheese let's see how effective it is the inside piece is a tube this tube is going to get filled with cheese as it's melting is going to get pushed out the tip i'm going to turn this into a glue stick size rectangle squeeze it down i'm going to assemble it into the gun as the cheese is heating in here it's expanding a bit so little bits are dribbling out our canvas today is going to be a bowl of taco chips okay let's give it a try it is rather melted it's not a smooth output of cheese it really is click by click give it two eyes oh the eye isn't quite working i've managed first try to draw a sort of a disgruntled looking cyclops it tastes fine it just wasn't the amazingly beautiful piece of artwork i expected but we'll give it another try it really is coming out rather unevenly it's not like a continuous flow boy i think this needs to be a slow process because as the new cheese gets into the heated tip uh it is not yet melted and you can see it's coming out as a chunky version of melted cheese let's see how it compares to using a microwaved cup of velveeta [Music] in terms of effectiveness on a one to five scale i would give this a one i don't think my artistic visions have been fulfilled it's time for the left-hand oil test i am going to try a spiral again it's going to be my trademark in the art world boy the problem is it's good for the first squeeze because the cheese is melted but as you go along it's just getting to be chunky inconsistency i'm getting some leakage inside the tube not having a wonderful experience this time out i will say that my left hand being slippery it does highlight the fact that this is a bit out of control especially as i'm pumping i'm a little less coordinated with my left hand and as i pump i can feel the nozzle just being a bit out of control i guess i could use two hands to do this and probably if i wanted to be accurate i would but that doesn't solve the problem of the fact that the cheese just doesn't want to flow i'm not sure i'm really proud of my final artwork but here it is i know this may not look like much but we are willing to sell this segment of the video as an nft for 60 million dollars in terms of usability i would give the fun doodle a one out of five i don't think you're going to be happy with it it's just not a smooth working tool let's see how i would redesign this for one thing i think we need to melt more cheese right now the part that gets hot is this metal tip it's kind of small it's also kind of lightweight i would extend this so that the heated area extends boy at least halfway up this tube you're going to want to have a lot of melted cheese if you're going to draw any sort of shape and also i would probably consider instead of a round shape to this tube i would consider a rectangular shape that would do a couple of things one a rectangular shape would automatically align the slot so that it's horizontal but maybe even more importantly the flat surface of a rectangle is going to heat up more effectively than a round shape that being said this is still a ratchet every time i pump it indexes which means the cheese is not flowing out continuously it's flowing out in spurts i don't have a good way to solve that yet because this is a pretty simple mechanism what i would do though is consider a couple of shape options for the handle and for the trigger itself so for the handle as i'm pumping i can feel the tip wavering so it's a little hard to control making this back part flat i think would offer a lot more control for the trigger itself the pivot point is boy way up here which means my index finger is not doing as much work as it could move the pivot point up here and have the handle be longer so that i can get three fingers in here in terms of a buy rating i would give the fun dollar a one out of five even if you have any expectations at all i think you're gonna be disappointed for all your cheese artists out there i'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but i'm not sure the fondula is going to make you shine slicer cheese slicer its purpose in life is to slice cheese in one downward motion let's see how effective it is the slice the cheese slicer does have a thickness control and i think i will just set it to a medium thickness to give it a test i'm going to push the bar up against the edge of the cheese and push i've got a piece of cheese stuck in here let's see how i can release that easily and it's okay actually it's a little bit thicker on the top than it is on the bottom i'm going to do a few in a row it's taking a bit of pressure because i am cutting the entire width of the cheese as opposed to if i was doing it with a knife i'd probably angle the knife and let's see what we ended up with the other slices were relatively even the first one i did was a little off it was okay it sliced the cheese i didn't feel the magic coming out of it not very impressive let's see how the slice the cheese slicer compares with a good old kitchen knife it tastes very evenly sliced in terms of effectiveness i would give the slice the cheese slicer a two probably no better than that i don't think it's really any more effective than a standard old kitchen knife let's test this usability i'm going to try this again and i'm going to make my non-dominant hand a little slippery let's see how i'm doing oh i really slipped forward at that because again takes quite a bit of force now takes some pressure to push down because you're slicing the entire width of cheese at the same time you may not be able to see this but i really am putting a lot of force into this especially as i'm into slice 8 or 9 or 10 here i'm feeling that it is taking more force than a knife would do i think the issue is to really be effective you need to keep this vertical and that is not as easy to do with a whole lot of pressure it's okay not loving it in terms of usability i would give this a two out of five it's just gonna be too difficult to use for too many people let's think about how i would redesign this it's got some inherent problems i would see if there's a way to angle the blade this way so that this part starts cutting first once this bottoms out this part will catch up this is how guillotines are designed so that's my inspiration the blade goes across your neck not just straight down the blade has these holes in it that's giving it sort of a swiss cheese look but the function of that is it keeps the cheese from sticking because there's not as much surface area for the cheese to stick to once that slice is made there's no good way that i can think of to keep this straight or steady i would wonder if we actually want this to stay on the ground i wonder if this would sit stable on the table and the blade would start up here so that it's above that brick of cheese some of the improvements we're talking about here remind me of the bagel guillotine gadget that we looked at in the breakfast episode in terms of a buy rating i would give this a two out of five i don't think this is all that it's cut out to be i know you love dad jokes handheld cheese mill its purpose in life is the great cheese using a twisting motion kind of like a pepper mill let's see how effective it is i have some parmesan cheese here i have a bowl of pasta just waiting for some grated cheese first thing i need to do is load up the mill put the plunger back in place and let's give it a go so it's coming out it's a little on the slow side but i think that's because of the way that the cheese was in there it's really a wedge of cheese so i'm probably only grating a very thin part of that cheese and here is in case you're interested a shred of plastic in case you want to add that to your pasta it is somehow not just grating the cheese it's grating some of itself doesn't sound that good it sounds a little cheap but it's doing its job i usually put a lot of cheese on pasta because i like it and i would say i would stop right around there my first impression is that it's a little too plasticky doesn't feel like a super high quality product i have pepper mills that are really nice this is not that same level let's see how the handheld cheese mill compares to a microplane grater [Music] in terms of effectiveness i would give the handheld cheese mill a two out of five it does not grate nearly as well as the handheld grader so i think you have better alternatives out there time for the left-hand oil test see it's grading but not very much with every throw i feel like i'm doing a lot of movement for not a whole lot of grading and because of the way the shape i feel like it's going to be doing that a lot wow i think at this point i would just grab a more traditional cheese grater in terms of usability i would give this a two out of five just not getting the output that i would want let's talk about a redesign boy this has been the case with a lot of products that we see is that they're just round and smooth and there is nothing really to keep your hand on it so i would do something to counteract that i would add some sort of detents or grooves or indents here or something so that as one hand is spinning my other hand is pinching it that i really have something to pinch into in terms of this top piece i would consider boy more of a crank handle maybe a lever that comes out here with a ball on it pepper mills do this as well because then what the action would be once i have a good grip i can actually go through a rotary motion here as i was grating the cheese little bits of plastic were coming out i can kind of feel a little bit of grinding but also i could see little shreds of plastic come out any improvements you make in terms of usability don't mean much if you're going to be grinding plastic instead of grating cheese just make make make make sure that the blades and the plastic don't start interacting with each other in terms of a buy rating i would give the handheld cheese mill a two out of five it's good for people who don't like that much cheese you look okay you just need to work harder adjustable grater slicer this is a multi-function tool designed to both slice and grate cheese let's see how effective it is i'm going to start by slicing this block of monterey jack cheese this tool has an adjustment here that would vary the thickness let's try in a medium position i will start at one end pull across keep my hand away from the blade and that worked okay with the exception that i started to grate some of the cheese as well depending on the angle of my hand i am doing those multi functions at once i am grating and slicing at the same time see if i can prevent that so i'm going to keep the grading blades high that prevents it from grating at the same time i'm going to try this again but this time using the grater something very interesting is happening here and it's a fault that i actually see with a lot of of cheese graters when the blades are perfectly aligned what you end up with are grooves in the cheese where you could have used that same action to cut twice as many shreds if they were offset this would be a much more effective tool as i come across i am slicing with the first blade but not with the second row of blades so it's a lovely cheese pattern maker but it's a lost opportunity as a cheese grater there is one other function on this tool it does have a blade edge on the front so you can use it to cut slices that way so let's see how the adjustable grater slicer compares to a regular cheese grater and a regular kitchen knife in terms of effectiveness i would give this a two the grader is just really unusable there's no sense buying a multi-function tool if one of the functions is completely useless it is left-hand oil test time the control for adjusting the slice is really kind of fussy you got to push and twist at the same time but i'm going to open this to some sort of medium sized slice i could see right away that because my hand's a little less coordinated positioning this is a little trickier than it would be with my other hands that already gives me some thoughts for improvement you know it works okay this is a little more awkward than using my right hands and let's try grading to no surprise the same issue what i'm doing is grooving the cheese but not really getting all of the grated parts out of it that i otherwise would if these blades were in a better position my left hand is highlighting the fact that it is really a lot of work to get just a little bit of grated cheese from this tool in terms of usability i would give this a two out of five it requires a whole lot of effort for not that much output let's think about a redesign and there are definitely a couple of things that i would do with this puppy as mentioned lining up the blades makes no sense it's kind of like sitting in a stadium and having every seat perfectly lined up you don't want to do that you want to stagger the seats kind of the same thing here what you want to do is stagger these blades so that you have as much cutting power as possible what they have here instead is they have rows and columns they're not staggered at all so this blade is going to try to cut the same thing that this blade just cut that makes no sense if this was just over even just a little bit it would start cutting a new row of cheese the other thing i would look at is try to make these blades wider as possible a traditional cheese grater has you know curves like that i would create more of a landing area what you want to do when you start slicing is have the cheese sit on top of this bar and the easiest way to do that or way to make that easier is not make this bar so small right now the bar looks like this and what i would do is make that bar look like this really extend this so it's going to be very easy to place the cheese at the proper position in terms of a buy rating i would give the adjustable grade a slicer a one out of five if you're gonna make a multi-function tool both functions better work really well i'm sorry but i only half love you cheese has been around for a very long time we've been eating it for centuries and centuries if you're gonna come up with a new cheese gadget it better be good even out of these five boy only one of them was stellar in my opinion there's a lot of things you can do with cheese you can slice it you can grate it you can draw with it i just wish some of that creativity led to better executions

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 505,141

Rating: 4.9329958 out of 5

Keywords: cheese gadget, cheese gadgets, cheese grater, cheese grinder, cheese gun, cheese slicer, dan formosa, epi, epicurious, epicurious gadget, fondoodler, funny kitchen gadgets, gadget designer, gadget review, gadget show, hot cheese gadget, hot cheese gun, hot cheese maker, kitchen gadget, kitchen gadget designer, kitchen gadget review, kitchen gadget show, kitchen gadgets, new kitchen gadget, new kitchen gadgets, well equipped, well equipped epicurious

Id: SaezNHx6gao

Length: 18min 58sec (1138 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021