The 5 Best Vegetable Choppers of 2023

Final Verdict

For the best overall electric food chopper, we chose the Presto Professional SaladShooter because it comes with a variety of color-coded blades and has a funnel that keeps ingredients from shooting off-course and a plunger to protect your hands. If you favor a manual food chopper, then the easy-to-clean Fullstar Vegetable Chopper is the best option for precise slicing, cutting, and chopping.

How We Tested

We sent these food choppers to our experienced food reviewer, who tested them side-by-side. She used each one to chop both red onion and cherry tomatoes, to assess how it handled both hard and soft produce. She assessed them on their set-up, performance, and ease of use. She also cleaned each according to the manufacturer's instructions and analyzed how easy or hard they were to get back to spotless.

Other Options We Tested

Cuisinart Stainless Steel Food Chopper: We also tested this manual chopper hoping it would be a great value option that you could easily store away. That last part was true—it is very compact and easy to store. But the blades were the worst of the bunch. The flimsy blades didn't chop food at all, but more mashed it to bits. You're better off with another one of our options, or your own chef's knife.

What to Look for When Buying a Food Chopper

Manual vs. Electric

Both manual and electric food choppers have their pros and cons. With an electric chopper, in most cases, all you have to do is press a button, though you usually have to hold the button down for the entire process as opposed to walking away. Manual machines, of course, require much more hands-on work, but you also maintain more control. While an electric food chopper can quickly and easily overprocess your ingredients, with a manual one, you can see how every cut turns out and adjust as necessary. Manual choppers are better for making precise, uniform cuts. "I use a mandolin at home to slice something very thinly," says Alyssa Rimmer says. "I love it for all vegetables, but especially tougher vegetables like carrots, cabbage, radishes, and potatoes.” Electric choppers are your friend for quickly processing large amounts of food when you’re not worried about a picture-perfect presentation. 

Size

The size of your food chopper depends on how much storage space you have, as well as how much and what ingredients you intend to process. For example, the miniature chopper from Viatek is all you need to break down whole spices and coffee beans. But the larger-capacity Mosaic chopper will do a much better job making a smooth-textured soup like a cream of celery or herby pesto sauce. 

Maintenance

The electric food choppers on this list all have some parts that are not dishwasher-safe, such as the electrical base. This should be wiped down with a damp cloth and should never be submerged in water. While many of the electric food choppers like the Presto, Ninja, and Mosaic have dishwasher-safe parts, it's still better to hand-wash those parts whenever possible as some of the manufacturers recommend. Manual choppers, on the other hand, are often entirely dishwasher-safe, which makes for super easy clean-up. 

FAQs

Is a food chopper the same as a food processor? 

The main difference between a food chopper and a food processor is size. Food processors tend to have mixing bowls with at least a 4-cup capacity, and some are as large as 14-cup. They also have heavier, more powerful motor bases and larger S-blades than food choppers. Food choppers, on the other hand, are the smaller, less powerful, and more manageable cousins. They’re a great alternative to expensive and bulky food processors in smaller kitchens. "Food choppers are an amazing tool for beginners," says Rimmer. "They save loads of time chopping. I especially love them for things like onions and garlic."

What foods can you chop with a vegetable chopper?

A vegetable chopper is a perfect tool to cut up large quantities of produce. From hardy items like carrots and sweet potatoes to juicy fresh fruit, a high-quality food chopper can break things down into uniform pieces. You can also make a complete dish in a food chopper, such as mango salsa, butternut squash soup, or hummus. You can also use some choppers to make homemade seasoned ground meat for burgers and meatballs. In general, these devices make food prep faster and easier than doing knife work by hand. 

Why Trust Simply Recipes?

This article was written by Lizzy Briskin, a chef, food writer, and recipe developer who uses her SaladShooter whenever she can. In researching the best food chopper options on the market, she considered the pros and cons of electric and manual choppers, as well as size, capacity, and ease of care. Lizzy also consulted with meal prep expert Alyssa Rimmer, creator of the blog Simply Quinoa, for her insights on ways food choppers can improve food prep.

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