7 Slicing Kitchen Gadgets Improved by Design Expert | Epicurious

Oh oh that's so sad hold on I'm Dan and I've been designing kitchen products for 38 years I'm gonna test these seven kitchen gadgets and see if I can find a way to make them better notice that the pinky is doing the most stretch use that curve around those edges come around with a wing like that these are the gadgets I'm going to test it watermelon windmill strap chop clever cutter pineapple slicer apple peeler strawberry huller and the corn kernel stripper now here's the fun part pineapple slicer the purpose of this device is to both core and slice the pineapple in one continuous motion we have a couple of pineapples here we're gonna put it through its paces okay I'm gonna take this pineapple off with the tip I am ready to test how effective this device is so it is finding its way down once it catches the pineapple it feeds itself down so it really is a simple screw mechanism I feel like I'm done and pull it out and I've got a cored pineapple and a spiralize pineapple this takes a little bit effort to do that it's off and now I've got pineapple slices spiralized on the table and you now have a great container for pina coladas so I'm now going to slice the pineapple and skin it using a knife and we'll see how long that takes and how it compares [Music] in terms of effectiveness I would rate this a five it was very effective at producing a pretty good looking cylinder of pineapple slices let's now try the left handed oil test if you're in the kitchen you're gonna have wet hands or oily hands or slippery hands and even if you dry them or grab a towel sometimes it just doesn't work I am right-handed I'm gonna try using this with my left hand but making it as slippery as possible this is a technique that I use when designing almost anything that's going to be handheld and by challenging myself like that it'll really point out some design flaws and I do feel like the handle is just a little bit slippery going this way why because it's this bulbous shape and because my hand is so slippery it's kind of like spinning a bar of soap okay we're coming out I am now struggling to squeeze maybe because I'm using my left hand I just can't get my fingers in there okay I did it but that work I would give this a four for ease of use there's not a whole lot of pressure involved in doing this it does feed itself down but just bear in mind worst case scenario you may want to put a towel on top of this it's something that's going to stabilize your hands a little more if you have any dexterity problems or if your hand is even a little bit slippery when your design items for the kitchen you need to design for the whole family and using fingertips when you have arthritis is difficult there are as many younger people as older people who have arthritis when you look at the actual demographics the change here would be very simple it would just be tapering these buttons so that you don't need as much push you can see that these buttons are tapered in this direction a little bit I would have gone in quite a bit more and still allow this to push or to design this so that the button is shaped this way with just a little bit of a flat here to catch the steel because then if you push that way you don't have to push your fingers into the hole but you'd still be able to release this and slide it out of the tube the other thing I would suggest is that this handle is fine but you only twist this clockwise it has no reason to go back so just from a visual cue I would have designed this to look a little more like it was shaped to twist in the clockwise direction and the reason is now I am pushing against a curve and pulling against the curve I think I would buy this I like it usually a five-point scale five would be something that I buy for myself because I want to own it for be something that I buy for someone else I would give this a four point five it is pretty nice and does have a some satisfaction quality to it in there visser rating that pineapple corn stripper now I am going to strip some corn to load the corn we place it on the bottom teeth there that are gonna grab I'm gonna gonna take this piece which is gonna Center the corn put the corn stripper on top okay it's taking a bit of force to do this and I'm not sure what my results are looking like things are starting to go a little crooked it's taking a lot of work I'm just going down okay I made it down that's a quite a bit of way to do it let's see what the results are and it's okay it didn't get everything there are some corn kernels here corn kernels here so that great [Music] in terms of effectiveness I rate this corn stripper a one-in effective and starts a push oh oh that's so sad hold on well luckily there was nothing else on the counter this breakable I'm gonna have to try the two hands of technique get some body weight into this nope that is an unreasonable amount of force I'm gonna do some banging here okay corn cob is out I'm missing a pretty good section of corn the results of fine but the effort was excessive in terms of ease of use I give the corn stripper a one if you have a bundt pan at home and you want to make some corn I would say pull out the bundt pan my vibrating I would give this a 1 I wouldn't even buy it for someone I don't like this is the watermelon windmill this gadget is designed to Cuba watermelon let's test it out you don't want to put a lot of pressure on a knife ever especially something round like this which can be a little bit out of control so rockin it is a bit safer way to cut something like this okay so I am ready to start windmilling my watermelon push forward and what you get are some cubes actually pretty good-looking cubes let's keep going to see how quickly I can decimate this watermelon the first pass this is not a problem but as you get down into the watermelon these fans are actually preventing you from getting all the way to the end of the watermelon if you're like me I would want to eat that and I do want to need that [Music] so for effectiveness I would give this a three I'm going right down the middle because I thought it was pretty easy to get through a good portion of this watermelon but I am a little disappointed that I'm running up against the wall and I'm not being able to get as much out of this watermelon as I wished so let's get nice and slimy not too bad but I'm not easy right so that was a little awkward what's happening is I really don't have an ability to push with my left hand since I Orel dit up this should be the case not only if your hands were slippery but also if you had any any form of dexterity problems it just makes this tool a little bit harder to use ease of use it wasn't a whole lot of effort required to do that I would give that a four I would have designed this with some contour at least make it flare out a little bit so that you're able to push against something they could have done that with the same piece of green plastic so they could have done that without adding a part they actually get deeper into the watermelon the windmill the fins are stopping you from going all the way to the edge I think it's just inherent in the fact that this is designed to make cubes watermelons are designed to be round the solution I would say is to go to Japan where they create square watermelons the advantage of the windmill for the watermelon is that there is a bit of playfulness to it and a little bit of novelty that using a knife doesn't but as I started getting down into the watermelon I was starting to see some faults which was unfortunate so I would give a buy rating for this a number one I don't think I would personally buy this clever cutter it is designed to cut costs start with zucchini I will say it with zucchini it cuts pretty smoothly let's try potato because the potato is fatter you're using a blade that's further from the pivot point means you have less leverage it should be a little bit harder but since it's a potato it's pretty soft it is still possible to cut this without a whole lot of effort let's see what does on the tomato okay I don't know if you caught that but if I start a little bit of cut on the tomato we're now into the into the tomato and it seems to be cutting okay maybe not that very last part which wants to be chopped it's working better than I anticipated I think as seen on TV very often drives me away more than it pulls me forward but it did cut with less effort than I expected [Music] in terms of effectiveness I would put it up there at a four I will say off the bat it does feel pretty stable I don't feel like it's out of control use of my left hands and let's try cutting some things it seems to cut pretty well the shape of the handle is catching my hands I'm not relying on any pull or friction or sliding friction to use this in terms of ease of use I would rate this a for whenever you squeeze anything your thumb is opposing four fingers and those four fingers are supplying a lot of the power even though you're picking little finger may be weaker it is furthest from the pivot point so your pinkie actually has the most leverage if I was going to squeeze this with my finger here choke up on it I'm very close to the pivot point and it's not that easy to do if I want to get some leverage on it I would come back here with my fingers and it feels much lighter to squeeze the way this handle is shaped it actually requires your pinkie to stretch further and in almost guarantees that your pinkie is going to beat with a smaller hand any way that your pinkie is going to be reduced to using its fingertip not the middle segment of the pinkie what I would have done or at least experimented with is a curve that went the complete opposite way to make sure that that the pinkie comes into play that would have been a simple change and I think that would have been the case if the design team who designed this was one thinking or two looking at people who may have smaller hands okay by rating for the clever Carter is five I would like to have this around the kitchen slap job these choppers and not new inventions I remember my mother having one when I was a kid there was always one in the kitchen and it was kind of a fun thing to do to chop things or say hey you know let me try that so I'm gonna start with a couple of herbs here now what happens as the chopper blades come down is they rotate a little bit just enough to keep chopping in different places so let me try this 10 to 12 times now let's see how we did I would say basil wise not that great I still have a lot of intact pieces it's not what I expected so let me take a look here if I can see any gaps between the blades and the table and I can see gaps there is light coming through okay we're gonna try it next with some celery and I'll just break off one or two stalks here and we're kind of mixing some carrots as well okay let's go so it's dropping in the beginning it's light it's sticking a little bit and let's stop there because I think we're getting pretty fine with the with the carrots and celery so that was not too bad let's push these aside and try it tomato and what we got is pretty finely chopped tomato so that is looking pretty good although it didn't get the skin which is kind of too bad so maybe I'm not done yet let's try this again that's better so the say oh not really good though we still have skin left so the same problem we have with the herbs we have with the tomato skin is it wants to stay intact in terms of effectiveness I'll give this laptop of three the reason is is it does carrots celery things like that things that want to be chopped like that it does them really well and does them very quickly it's effective in some cases well first of all picking this up was a little tricky even with my right hands right so I am picking up a cone which is not that easy to do of course I could pick it up from here shove some bits under there slapping like this I wouldn't expect this to be any difference because I'm just coming down hard I'm not really grabbing or it's not dependent at all on any form of friction since I'm just pressing down that wasn't much different than using my right hands I know spinning this to open it is going to be totally an impossible task you're gonna want to get a towel or something maybe to get a little more friction on this terms of ease of use I would want to take the entire experience into consideration including the fact that at the end of the process you're gonna want to open this and rinse it out and that was just unfortunately difficult so I would knock this down to a three the fact that the blades don't hit the bottom is kind of curious and that problem could be solved by just making sure that those blades are flexible enough or at least the the connection was Blaze's flexible enough so even if one corner of the blade hits first the rest of it will fly now this could have had some shape to it something other than being round at least you'd have some pressure to push against certainly just do something a little more typical as standing and put in some serrations or something that would add some friction to it one other thing I would consider is the shape of this top circle it's a little sharp it's a little tight when you put your hand on top of it I would have turned this more into a mushroom shape so ease that curve so that you have a bit of a flatter surface so that the pressure is distributed more evenly across that surface when your palm comes so for a vibrating I would give this a - I would buy this for someone that I don't particularly like if it was on sale apple peeler corer slicer it's got a couple of parts here that look like directly I had a game of Thrones look at this medieval Apple piercer let's see if we can just get it to go we may have to pull this back and start the peeling process whoa that goes my spring that wasn't too bad but did I get the core the Apple no I kind of missed now depending on the Apple your spiral may or may not hold together Granny Smith is holding together pretty well it is possible to pull this back clamp it so you can core without peeling you can also do the opposite you can put this up you can swing this back and you can peel without coring [Music] in terms of effectiveness I would give this five out of five five stars for this so time to oil up my left hand and see what I can do here we go it's on its way how are we slicing so what I've done now is I had my blade pulled away but I just spiral the Apple for people who like the skin skin is good for you it was not difficult to do with my left hand the shape of this is contoured in a way that my hand wouldn't slip you do need to line things up you do need to be careful when you're cleaning it because parts can get lost so in terms of ease abuse I would give it this a3 you'll notice that this cross-section forms an upside down tee and there quite a number of crevices here that would be difficult to clean so I would take this cross section of a tee which now looks like this I would round those edges so that it's a bit easier to get a cloth or a rag or a brush in there and clean out anything that may find itself trapped in here I got to say some of these small parts are kind of difficult to deal with in the kitchen I mean you really don't want small parts like this that could fall down the drain you could put a more of a molded knob on here which actually may be a little bit easier to control they think that would be less likely to be lost and I think they're just all around be a little bit nicer for a Buy rating I would give this a three because I think this would make a perfect Secret Santa gift strawberry huller let me start with what could be a relatively small one in our pile and I'm just gonna pull up the leaves a little bit so I catch them all press open the prongs push in a little bit twist pull out like I left a couple leaves here but they actually loose and that's it pretty well I'm gonna try something a little different with the strawberry huller it was not designed to be used with a tomato but we have some Tomatoes here and I'm gonna give it a go open it wide because it's a tomato now to Strawberry I'm gonna give it a little spin give it a little more spin that wasn't too bad so again this is not designed for tomatoes but certainly can be used for tomatoes [Music] if you're going to design something as odd as a strawberry huller it needs to work great you don't want to design one of these or buy one of these and have them kind of sort of kind of work so I think this is effective on strawberries I would give it a five extremely effective let's try the left-handed oil test on this one this is a little less stable in my left hand especially when when slippery staying in place it's not terrible but I do feel the difference in terms of results that current that turn got fine in terms of easy use I give this a four it's pretty easy thing I would advise is look at this part of the flange and either widen it or give it a bit of an undercut or do both because that would stabilize the finger under that flange what you would do is you'll come around like that with a wing you know really make that plan to catch the finger I would check to see if this green part would want to be a little bit taller because as you get into tight pinches that's also difficult with someone with arthritis don't want to get too big that this is just out of control is a very odd-looking object but I think coming up a little bit higher could help people and that's about it I would give this a buy rating of five not only for myself but this would be a cute little present to give people so I'm all for it virtually everything you see in touch throughout the day is a design decision made by someone it's very often that someone is a male sometimes they're not as conscious of who they should be designing for as they could be companies will come to me and they would describe to me their average consumer or the average user and I would say that's fine but I don't care about the average person I need to know the people who are weakest and strongest I need to know the tallest and shortest I need to understand the spectrum and sometimes that's not in the mindset of people who are designing things I think that explains why so many products may not be designed as optimally as possible I still through the kitchen today and I see opportunities to do something unique and different and to surprise people so I from a design point of view it's you know it's not rocket science it's not life and death they just kind of fun things to design and fun things to design cleverly

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 2,928,119

Rating: 4.7898283 out of 5

Keywords: design, design expert, kitchen gadgets, slapchop, gadget, gadgets, cooking gadget, cooking gadgets, food gadget, food gadgets, gadget 2019, best gadget, cool gadget, best kitchen gadget, top gadget, top gadgets, top cooking gadget, best cooking gadgets, 10 kitchen gadgets, 7 kitchen gadgets, crazy kitchen gadgets, gadgets for kitchen, new gadgets, gadgets reviewed, kitchen gadgets reviewed, reviewing kitchen gadgets, testing kitchen gadgets, kitchen gadget 2019, epicurious

Id: w08XDXjJhsQ

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 29 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/notgivinafuck]

The weak+slippery hand was a good showcase of thinking about edge cases while designing. Great stuff.

[u/CholentPot]

The apple peelers/corere thing saved me many many times. It's an old design that's in desperate need of an update though.

[u/Gankus]

It’s refreshing to see an expert who can walk us through the process of their field, even if it’s an abridged version.

TIL that while a gadget like the slap chop is easily replaced with a simple chef’s knife, it has marketability and a decent amount of merit in the layman’s kitchen, designed for a majority of different users. It’s so easy to criticize unique tools without considering other’s abilities and experience in the kitchen!

[u/iftttAcct2]

Fascinating video, thanks for sharing!

Anyone interested in the last bit of what he was talking about, where designers forget about part of their audience (especially women) may be interested in this recent 99PI podcast on the book Invisible Woman: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Or the podcast in general, if design interests you.

[u/anzaii]

The end to that was so wholesome! It is pretty amazing that indeed everything we tend to use is designed by others! I really liked how concerned he was for all hand sizes and how hard it can be for older people to use devices without pain. Very cool, ty for the share :)

[u/odokemono]

This guys knows ergonomics.

[u/MrWindu]

I think we are missing the whole study case perspective. If we review this gadgets and give them a rating they should be all compared to their competitor. The knife. These are all specialized tools that will sit 350 days unused in your kitchen somewhere, while a handy knife can handle most of the tasks no problem.

[u/fuckoffshitface]

Honestly this might be the greatest video ever made

[u/Metasheep]

Corn on a bundt pan! Now that is a nifty tip.