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Buy It And Try It: Chop Wizard

If you're not good with cutting fruits and vegetables a company called Vidalia claims they're product is for you. A viewer, Angela Marquez, wrote in asking me, to buy and try the Chop Wizard. So we did!

"Tired of all that chopping and those tears? Now there's a better way," says the infomercial.

The infomercial claims chopping with a knife is old fashioned and dangerous! Introducing the Vidalia Chop Wizard. Just chop, chop chop.

The Chop Wizard is supposed to save you time guaranteeing uniform results in every use.
We'll see about that.

With the help of executive chef Jaramie Smith of downtown Sacramento's 4th Street Grill.

"Basically most of the time is chopping back here," said Jaramie.

He admits, here and there, he sheds a tear while chopping an onion.

"I myself am used to it, but every once in a while you get a good onion, and there's nothing you can do. You gotta cry," said Jaramie.

He hasn't found anything that chops better than his good old fashioned knife. And he downplays its danger.

"I still have all my fingers...so i think I'm doing ok," said Jaramie.

He's curious about the Chop Wizard. It comes simply packed. In fact, you have to put its decal on yourself. The Chop Wizard comes with two different sized grates.

Jaramie's first instinct: "It looks like it's pretty sharp. It looks like it might be sturdy," said Jaramie.

So we try it out. We quickly learn we can't put our knives away just yet. The infomercial says you can cut a full onion with one swift motion. But how can that be? The directions say you have to cut the onion in half first.

Once we cut off those ends as it says in the directions and cut it in half, we still have to peel it.

Side by side, with some hand chopped onions, how does it compare?

"Looks like they chopped pretty well. They did chop up real nice," said Jaramie.

But Jaramie thinks using the Chop Wizard may have cost him some valuable time.

"It looks like I'm dirtying just as much stuff, if not more. Now I've had to use my nice and my machine too," said Jaramie.

So it could mean more cleaning time. But he spots a feature he likes.

"It does have this little fancy measuring cup on the side. Which is fancy," said Jaramie.

The Chop Wizard claims it chops a whole lot more than just an onion like tomatoes, mushrooms, and potatoes. So when we try it on a tomato. We also cut it in half and it seems to do the job.

Jaramie likes it, but he's starting to get concerned about the strength of the plastic.

"It doesn't feel heavy duty. You can see it's kind of flimsy. It looks like something that wouldn't last in my opinion," said Jaramie.

Let's move on and try it on a mushroom. This is how he normally chops them. But watch what happens when we use the Chop Wizard. They come out in odd cubes.

"I'm not sure what kind of application would be for a mushroom like this," said Jaramie.

How about on a full apple? We get some nice little apple sticks but we are most intrigued by the claim it cuts french fries. Jaramie sees a problem.

"The height of this. I've never seen a french fry that's two inches tall," said Jaramie.

He cuts the potato in half and chops. Let's try it on a full potato. Can we get it through this thing to cut long french fries? When I try, the potato won't go through so we trim it down and I try again.

The grate plastic cracked and the blades get stuck in the potato.

Once we got into making a french fry that actually resembles a french fry we saw what happened to this machine.

In the end, Jaramie's not impressed. He plans to stick to his knives and says you should too, unless you plan on having a special Chop Wizard piggy bank.

It worked on most of the things we tried it on, like onions and tomatoes. But would still need to use your knife. And if you have a need for mushroom cubes this is your machine. But you saw how long it lasted -- about 15 minutes when we tried it on something hard. The Chop Wizard costs $19.95 plus shipping and handling.

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