Could a Vegetable Chopper Help You Eat More Vegetables?

Recently, I saw a TikTok by creator @_gloyoyo_ where she was using one of those plastic vegetable choppers to make a salad, taking each vegetable and chopping it directly into the bowl she’d then eat it out of once she’d drizzled the vegetables and other ingredients with some dressing. I’d seen these devices before—I’m pretty sure I even owned one at some point—but I’d always thought they were kind of pointless. Is it really that much easier than just taking out a knife and chopping your salads how they’ve been chopped for much of human history?

But after a summer of relentless salad-making, I think I may have changed my mind. Sure, chopping a few vegetables is a simple task, but once you start making more complicated salads with a wide variety of ingredients (which, let’s be honest, are always the most delicious salads anyway), all of that cutting starts to add up. I recently spent an hour (yes, an entire hour) making a salad, and it was then that I knew the madness had to stop.

I decided to buy a salad chopper. I knew I didn’t want one of the super-small ones because I wanted to be able to chop my vegetables directly into a bowl, cutting down on both time and dishes. I opted for a larger option that would easily make a salad for one, as I didn’t think I’d need anything larger.

After making a single salad with the vegetable chopper, I was immediately hooked. I used relatively simple, standard ingredients, like lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumber, chicken breast and radishes, for my lunch salad. After washing the ingredients, I placed them on the base of the metal cutter, pushed down the plastic lid, and filled up the bowl with a colorful array of fresh vegetables. I was surprised at how quickly the salad came together when I didn’t have to carefully cut each vegetable and clean off a cutting board after finishing each individual ingredient. Within a few minutes, I had made a complete salad, and there was basically no cleanup to worry about.

Until I got my vegetable chopper, I didn’t quite realize how much my laziness and my dread of cutting vegetables was keeping me from eating salads. I would have a few a week, sure, but I love salads, and I could easily eat them every day if I just didn’t have to put in so much effort. Now that it takes me just a few minutes to throw a coherent salad together, I feel like I’m becoming the person I always knew I could be but was never able to truly embody. I’m a salad person now.

Maybe you’re the kind of home cook who has their life together, who always chops vegetables on Sunday afternoon after they come home from a day of productive grocery shopping to make sure they have everything they need to eat healthy meals throughout the week. And if you are, I’m happy for you. But for those of us who often struggle to throw our frozen Trader Joe’s “meals” into the air fryer after a long day of work, a vegetable chopper  may just change your life. It may be fall, but for me, salad season is just beginning.

Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.