No one likes chopping onions. It’s time-consuming and makes you cry. In this review article, we’ll find the best onion choppers and let you know about a few additional options.
Since there are many inventions to help cut down on the amount of time and effort involved in cutting onions (we’ve all seen their infomercials on daytime TV), this list covers several different types of onion chopper. Some are electrical while others are hand-powered by a drawstring or push button.
Even better, you can use these machines to cut most vegetables, not only onions, and save yourself a ton of time while making just about any meal.
- Operation Mode: Push-down blades
- Blade Material: Stainless Steel
- Dimensions: 11.5 x 5.71 x 5.39 inches
- Operation Mode: Manual rotation of blades
- Blade Material: Stainless Steel
- Dimensions: 5.5 x 5.25 x 4.25 inches
- Operation Mode: Blade rotates
- Blade Material: Stainless Steel
- Dimensions: 3.3 x 3.3 x 8.8 inches
- Operation Mode: Blades rotates
- Blade Material: Stainless Steel
- Dimensions: 13.62 x 7.36 x 7.32 inches
- Operation Mode: Push-down blades
- Blade Material: Stainless Steel
- Dimensions: 10.83 x 5.12 x 5.31 inches
How We Picked Onion Choppers
Onions are one of the most important ingredients in all of cuisine, going into just about everything. They also happen to be one of the most irritating to prepare both, even if we ignore how irritating they are to our eyes. They are difficult to cut consistently on your own and take a long time.
We spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to find the best onion chopper and asked ourselves what the best way to eliminate all the problems with cutting onions.
Here are five questions you should ask yourself while shopping for an onion chopper, which we also used to evaluate all of the onion choppers that we looked at.
How High-Quality are the Materials?:
In general, when a kitchen appliance is made from high-quality materials, it’ll not only be more durable but will also accomplish its task much better and more efficiently.
When we were looking at which onion choppers were made from the highest quality materials, we considered how much of the machine was made from metal materials and hard plastics. Metal will generally hold up much to repeated use better than plastic, so we preferred onion choppers that had more of the former.
We paid special attention to the quality of the material used for the blade of the onion chopper. The better the quality of stainless steel, the easier the time you’ll have when chopping onions. Better quality blades will also stay sharper for longer.
We also looked at user reviews to see what problems generally cause onion choppers to break or stop working as well.
How Many Blades Does It Have?
The more blades an onion dicer machine has, the easier it will be to cut your onion into very small pieces. It’ll also take less time because you have many little knives doing the cutting instead of just one.
So if you’re someone who makes a lot of dishes that require diced onions, and prefer them to be on the smaller side, the best onion dicer for you will be one that has many blades instead of one or two large ones.
What’s the Capacity?
Another key question is just how much onion you can slice before the device fills up.
We looked at the capacity of both where you load the onions and where the chopped onions fall to. Some of the products only had one chamber where onions are both loaded into the machine and cut. Whatever the case, the greater the capacity of the
It’s worth considering just how much you’ll use your onion chopper. If you’re someone who cooks every day for a large family or works in a restaurant setting, it makes sense to get a bigger machine that can hold large volumes of onion or other vegetables.
However, it wouldn’t make sense for a single person who doesn’t use too much onion to get a huge onion slicer, as it will never be full and take up a lot of storage space.
How Easy is it to Use?
Since you’re buying a device to save you from the difficult task of cutting onions, you want to make sure it’s easy to use and that you aren’t replacing an annoying task with another annoying one.
We looked at the amount of physical effort it takes to operate the machine, the ease or awkwardness of performing that motion, and the number of steps it takes to use the device. Many onion choppers didn’t make the list because using them was too difficult or complex.
Is It a Pain to Clean Up?
As one has to whenever in the kitchen, we also thought about cleaning up afterward. In specific, the ease of breaking down machines and cleaning them was a big consideration. I didn’t like having to stick my fingers in between blades to clean up while testing these products, so those didn’t generally even make it on the list.
Machines that easily disassemble into several parts are by far the easiest to clean, especially when the blades completely detach and can be cleaned separately.
This is also a safety issue. Cleaning is then your hands will come into the closest contact with the blades and therefore when you have the highest chance of being cut.
Best Onion Chopper Reviews
In the end, these were our five favorite onion choppers. However, the ranking isn’t completely clear because some of them are better for certain uses than others.
So, we broke the top five down into the best overall, best pull cord, best spiral, best high volume, and best budget onion chopper categories to help you know which product has the most relevant features for your specific needs.
1. Muller Heavy Duty Onion Chopper
We loved the Mueller Heavy-Duty Vegetable chopper because of its simple design the many different blades it comes with.
First thing is that the Mueller Heavy-Duty is a machine that cuts onions by pushing downwards on them, forcing them through a grid of blades that cut the vegetable. It looks like a large Tupperware whose lid opens up to a bunch of knives.
You have a wide array of possible shapes and sizes that will be easy to achieve consistently. There are eight different chopper blades that you can swap for one another, including ones for chopping, slicing, and grating.
For some of the blades, you won’t push down on the vegetable but instead, run the vegetable over it. This feature means that we can also call the Mueller Heavy-Duty the best onion slicer as well as the best onion chopper.
When you need to chop something, it does require a little bit of strength to operate because you’re pushing the onion downwards through a grate of blades. This is more of an issue with harder vegetables like carrots and potatoes than with onions, but even in the toughest case, the effort required to use the Muller Heavy-Duty chopper isn’t so much that it takes away from the other benefits of the device.
- Made from high-quality materials
- Can chop vegetables into many different shapes and sizes
- Has a large but not huge bowl for cut vegetables
- Requires a little bit of effort when using the chopping options
- Food can get caught between blades and be difficult to clean
2. Kuhn Rikon Pull Chop
You operate the Kuhn Rikon by pulling on a cord that spins rotating blades inside its bowl. This easy and smooth process will help you get through that pile of onions in no time. The large plastic handle is on the side of the onion chopper, just below a little inset that you can hang onto while pulling. There’s even a rubber ring at the bottom that keeps it from slipping around the countertop when you’re using it. I’ll say again just how comfortable it is to use.
The amount of times that you pull on the cord determines how coarsely or finely chopped your onions will be. For coarsely chopped vegetables, you only need to pull the cord five times, while pulling on it about 15 times will chop your vegetables into small enough pieces to be used in sauces and dips.
The Kuhn Rikon isn’t the biggest vegetable chopper on the market, holding only about 2 cups at a time. If you need to chop multiple large onions, you’ll have to do them in batches with this machine, but it’s a great compact option for those who don’t use too much onion.
- Has three blades
- Small and compact for easy storage
- Comes with a blade protector for when it’s not in use
- The lid isn’t dishwasher safe so it can be a pain to clean
- Only holds about 2 cups of product
- Doesn’t have an option for slicing vegetables
3. Zyliss Zick-Zick Food Chopper
The Zick-Zick’s design is an old one, first sold by Zyliss in the 1960s. The long life of this product proves that it’s been working and helping people out in the kitchen for decades.
To operate the Zick-Zick, you load the vegetables in a compartment at the top, then push down on a button. Your produce is pushed onto a zig-zag blade that rotates and spins each time you push the button. The fact that the blades move in two directions means that you get a more even and finely chopped end product.
One cup of produce fits into the loading area for vegetables. A nice aspect of the product is that the chopper is easy to load because everything goes through the top and rests on top of the blades. With some other kinds of choppers, like spiral choppers, you’ll have to put vegetables in between the blades, which can be dangerous and difficult to do.
The blade cover is removable, which makes it much easier to clean. Luckily, you won’t have to be trying to clean upwards into a small space filled with sharp edges.
- Zig-zag blades chop vegetables finely and consistently
- Comes with a cover for the top of the bowl, so any extra ingredients can easily be stored in the fridge
- Doesn’t require much physical effort beyond pushing a button
- Only has a small (1 cup) capacity
4. KitchenAid Cordless Onion Slicer
The Kitchen Aid Cordless Charger is a rechargeable electric vegetable chopper that will make quick work of large volumes of vegetables. If you find yourself often needing to chop large amounts of vegetables, this is the machine for you. Not only do you not need to chop many batches of onions to get the amount you need, but you also don’t have to put in any physical effort.
You can choose between 2 cutting speeds and vary the amount of time the machine runs to chop vegetables to several different sizes. A few quick pulses will coarsely chop vegetables, while turning up the speed will result in a puree or even, with the right mix of ingredients, a delicious pico de gayo.
It’s a stylish product that comes in seven colors you can choose between, including Matte Black, Blue Velvet, Empire Red, and Matte Charcoal Grey. You don’t even really need to store it in a drawer, it’ll look great sitting out on your counter all the time.
It’s really quick to charge the battery. You’ll have enough juice to chop around ten onions after about 10 minutes of charging, while it takes 2 hours to fill the battery.
- Quick charging batteries mean that you can get chopping after as little as ten minutes
- Two-speed options for a lot of flexibility
- Isn’t able to slice any vegetables
- Comes with a high price tag since it is technically an electronic
5. Brieftons QuickPush Food Chopper
This final vegetable chopper has an easy-to-use push-down design that will let you chop a lot of onions in short order.
The bladed area is large enough to fit a medium-size onion, while there’s a large container that fits up to eight cups of chopped vegetables.
The Brieftons QuickPush Food Chopper has a similar design to the overall best onion chopper, but slightly lower quality materials push it down to number 5. The blades also cover a smaller area, which goes a long way towards explaining the price difference. That said, it’s still a great vegetable chopper and you’ll save a few bucks by going down this route.
- Great price
- Great storage capacity
- Smaller chopper grid
- Lots of plastic rather than metal
How Onion Choppers Compare to the Plain-Old Knife
An onion chopper is preferable to a knife for a few reasons. You can consistently chop vegetables to the same size, which is hard to do with a knife.
They’re also much safer since you won’t have your hands anywhere near the blades. If you’re a bit clumsy and often nick your fingers while using a knife to cut vegetables, onion choppers are a great idea.
Electric Vs. Manual Onion Choppers
Manual food choppers are great because they are simple machines that only do one thing, but do it well. Specifically, manual choppers are great because you can take them anywhere without worrying about finding a plug.
Electrical food chopping appliances are kind of like the Rolls Royces of food choppers, beautiful and full of power. But not everyone needs a device that can chop up 5 or more cups of produce in seconds.
It’s also not always necessary to buy an electrical vegetable chopper if you have a blender because one of the main reasons to get electrical choppers instead of a manual one is the ability to puree vegetables for sauces. But if you have a blender you could just use that whenever you need to puree.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to a couple of common questions about food choppers.
You can use an onion chopper for just about any kind of vegetable. You can also grind nuts in many of them, and even use them to get consistent pieces of boneless meat for a stew.
People who aren’t very skilled with a knife should think about getting an onion chopper, as well as those who have to regularly cut large quantities of vegetables. They are also great for people who have troubles with coordination or face pain due to arthritis or other health problems.
Conclusion
Our quest for the best onion chopper led us to the Mueller Heavy-Duty Vegetable Chopper, which is a well-engineered machine that’s capable of several functions—from slicing to grating as well as chopping. If you order one, or another of the options on this list, the days of you crying over a cutting board full of onions are in the past.
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