Who actually likes these tomato slicer and chopper things? I have a love hate relationship with them
Who actually likes these tomato slicer and chopper things? I have a love hate relationship with them
by jjpwedges
46 Comments
CartographerFun9037
i fucking love obliterating tomatoes with this thing. i channel all of my pent up anger into it. the machine does have a habit of screws coming loose and bits falling off but that’s probably related to how hard i like to slam it.
bendar1347
That second one comes in real handy when you go through 18-24 quarts of pico a day.
discordia_enjoyer
Fry cutter good tomato slicer bad
HouseEducational5039
I’m a fan of #2. I’ve been cut by that damn tomato thing too many times.
Over-Anybody-5308
Whack
jjpwedges
Having a job that I had to wash all my dishes by hand myself I refused to use them, but now that I work in a more functional kitchen they make prep so much quicker
Daelisx
The tomato slicer never gets sharpened, so after a 1000 tommies, it’s useless.
bevelledo
As long as the things are getting cleaned right, and you have some experience with the tomato slicer they both make prep a breeze.
I’ve exploded a few tomatoes but still 100% worth the occasional splat than doing it all by hand
mtommygunz
Years ago, I hired several people that told me about their prep experience…only to find out that they had zero knife skills and the only tools they knew how to use were these. We had one laying around from the previous chef, that we never used. They always found it and always massacred the tomatoes. I should have thrown it away 20 times. And I swear I hid it. Then you have that one hire that after 3 days, drug it out from the depths of the corners only to ruin a case of 5×6 toms
kateuptonsvibrator
First one works great on rock hard out of season tomatoes.
ThatGayRaver
Reminds me of that trap in Saw 4 where he has to push his face into the knives
3nc3ladu5
The tomato slicers work great if you replace the blade regularly. Unfortunately, nowhere ive ever worked has replaced the blade regularly
j-endsville
Wall-mounted fry cutters are good. That stupid tomato slicer isn’t even nearly as good as someone with a decent sharp knife.
PunnyBaker
Cut my finger i dont know how many times on the tomato slicer at my first job. Still a great tool. I find the dicer less useful, i can usually chop what i need faster than it takes to set up and fiddle with the dicer
UnhingedNW
That dicer in the second slide is wack for normal mise. I replaced the blade and black plunger thing and the blades shaved black plastic into the tomatoes. I double checked and I did buy the right parts, they just sent me wack shit. Glad it got caught before it went to customers.
XOHJAIS
I tried to palm a tomato through a freshly sharpened cutter one time. I screamed like I loped off my whole half lol
CygateYaoiLuvr69
Don’t diss the fry cutter, I prep 2, 5lb buckets of fries and it couldn’t be done without it. Tomato smasher can suckle on my ball cheese tho
blueturtle00
I haven’t used one of those since I was at a deli 21 years ago and hated it then
JadedCycle9554
Depends on your quality/quantity ratio. For a tomato slicer to be practical you need to 1. Go through and absolute fuck ton of tomatoes 2. Keep those tomatoes in the fridge and 3. Those tomatoes should always be under ripened. I used to do 6 ea 6 in deep 3rd pans of thinly sliced tomatoes every morning during the busy season at one spot, and it was hell if the tomatoes actually came in fresh, ripe, and weren’t fridge cold… But we did 50k days and nobody cared about a table or 3 complaining about the lackluster tomatoes, we just comped it. On my last menu I did 3 ea 6 in deep 6th pans of thick cut vine ripened never refrigerated heirloom tomatoes every day. You better believe I heard about every single comp thoigh.
One called for a slicer, the other we used knives. There’s no bad equipment. Just equipment and the right time to use it and the wrong time.
tipofthemitt69
It’s easier just to slash at them with some knives like the Gordon Food Service version of wolverine.
This-Unit-1954
The tomato slicer is fine as long as it’s cleaned promptly and maintained properly. I always kept a spare blade assembly on hand for when they finally got dull. The guides on the pusher get bent easily so then they bind on the blade and my 18yo openers would try to muscle the tomatoes through and that’s where the fun starts.
I like using the dicers vs using the big hopper-fed food processors, you get a better quality and you get to work out some frustrations. I once had a prep cook decide to defeat the safety on a robocoupe using a magnet, which saved a bit of time until an onion got jammed in the blade. Predictable outcome was all the flesh on the tip of his finger was remove and the bone was left exposed from the last knuckle onwards. HR loved that report.
duskymourn
I kid you not the tomato slicer will save you if you take care of it, had one at the cafe, I commissioned a blade smith to make good quality blades for it, low carbon steel so it wouldn’t warp, kept em sharp and had them professionally sharpened every year,slices better than the Chinese at excutions.
bunion_ring
Fuck those. I will not.
greeneagle2022
If the blades are sharp, it is all good on the first pic. I would prefer this than doing it on a slicer (takes forever to clean). Using it for a potatoe, come on, that has to be gaslighting.
GhettoSauce
Ok, seriously now: there’s a bowl of carrots in the photo but has anyone ever processed carrots with one of these? You’re not gonna get this picture-perfect bowl, ever.
I did a lot of high-volume kitchen work, like where 2 days out of the week every week it was just cutting veg. Full 8-10 hour shifts of veg and only veg with a chef knife, and we didn’t use these tools (budget wasn’t an issue, either). You get some guys used to cutting toms by hand every week like that and they could match the timing of someone using the slicer. If at that point you calculate the cost of the device, the replacement blades, the time to clean it, the time to sanitize it, etc, it didn’t add up. I used them a lot in corporate, “every-item-is-the-same-down-to-within-a-gram” settings, where I understand they’re useful, but in smaller kitchens these tools are just *illusions* of savings. (Well, sometimes, not all the time.)
Back to that promo photo. Bro, who does potatoes like that? You ever see *short* fries? I swear, when I hit management/head and I had to deal with these catalogues they’d send, nothing spoke to me because their material didn’t line up with the actual *work*. On one end I’d have to make calls based on salespeople who didn’t know shit about kitchens, then on the other hand I’d have complete dunces working for us that would suggest informercial shit like slap chops and Magic Bullets. Fuck, man – I’m glad I’m out, sometimes
Harddaysnight1990
I worked at this deli for a few years and we used an old deli slicer for tomatoes, cabbage, and iceberg. Best way to prep those, in my opinion.
european_dimes
I used one of those tomato slicers at Quiznos like 20 years ago. If the tomatoes were at all soft, it just splattered them all over the wall
legallyvermin
They get dull so damn quick. I literally tool out every other blade and use it for onion rings
CanadianDragonGuy
Jesus murphy all the hate for the tomato slicers when yall never replaced the blades. I worked a fast food joint that used these on the regular to prep big fuckin plastic bins of em, if it started struggling I’d just tell a higher-up and there’d be a new blade on the way within a week or two.
Only issue I ever had was when I was new and stupid I got a little too careless with it an cut into my finger bout an eighth of an inch in, was right on the tip of my index finger too so was a bitch to chuck a bandaid on.
On the other hand can’t really say nothing one way or another about the fry chopper, our shit came pre-frozen in bags, but the slicer we used for onion rings was always a bitch to work
FrizzWitch666
When you clean them and don’t slam them around, they’re great. But can you trust your people to use it is always the question.
BallsDeepinYourMammi
The Onion King was an absolute time saver
ShinyCardboard412
Fun story: when I was 16 the spot I worked at had just gotten a new tomato slicer. I was in the back doing prep and it got knocked off the counter. Me being a dumb kid ..I went to catch it. I did. But blade portion across my hand and fingers. Went to the office to bleed it out. Lesson learned: let shit fall. Don’t catch blades. Yadda yadda.
Poisson_de_Sable
Punch dicers are great when you have a large project. But they also suck balls if they’re old and the blades are worn out. We got a robot coupe cl50 and holy shit it has a dicer function. That thing is the shit.
ammenz
To this day, the best way I’ve found to slice tomatoes is an actual meat slicer. Even when they are super-ripe you can get the exact thinness that you require. A bit of a pain to clean though.
The second best way is with a bread knife. I would pick one or the other depending on how many tomatoes you need and how thin.
Rampasta
These things are great right up until the second week when they’ve been abused to all hell and the blades are bent, chipped, or dulled.
rog13t-storm
I love the tomato slicer. Efficient & it’s fun to use lol
the3litemonkey
With sharp blades and fresh tomatoes. They’re great
Brief-Pair6391
Well, they have their place, i suppose. I’m not a fan.
But i also have good knives i tend to keep very sharp
spirit_of_a_goat
I have scars on 2 knuckles from that bad boy. But man, new blades were the best.
Withafloof
Spray the fry cutter with cooking spray when it gets hard to slice, then it’s perfect. I work at a restaurant with, along with other fry-based dishes, Pittsburgh-style sandwiches, salads, wraps, and bowls. For those who don’t know, Pittsburgh-style sandwiches and wraps come with fries and coleslaw. A bowl is the same except no bread/wrap. And the Pittsburgh-style salad comes with fries on top. We go through so many fries in a day that we make at least 10 storage bins of cut potatoes in water every day. If we didn’t have a fry slicer we’d be fucked.
t0mt0mt0m
Another useless gadget in the kitchen for those who refuse to learn knife skills.
Moby1029
The slicer is a pain in the ass. I’d rather use a deli slicer honestly. The chopper can be quite useful though
CumpMoney
Shit for tomatoes is great for lettuce
PasteurisedB4UCit
Wall mounted potato chippers are much better than that piece of shit.
The tomato slicer works great but really only used them at high volume burger/sandwich places and places with inexperienced staff.
Sidenote, slicer really only works with tomato varieties that are typically more firm, like beefstakes (sp. *beefsteaks, lol). Good luck if you are trying to slice Romas or the like. At that point, it’s a piece a shit too.
kippismn
If you know what you’re doing, it saves tons of time.
Cosmonate
I remember my 16 year old coworker dropping the tomato slicer and trying to catch it and it fucked up her hand. Dunno how the fuck she was using it to end up dropping it.
46 Comments
i fucking love obliterating tomatoes with this thing. i channel all of my pent up anger into it. the machine does have a habit of screws coming loose and bits falling off but that’s probably related to how hard i like to slam it.
That second one comes in real handy when you go through 18-24 quarts of pico a day.
Fry cutter good tomato slicer bad
I’m a fan of #2. I’ve been cut by that damn tomato thing too many times.
Whack
Having a job that I had to wash all my dishes by hand myself I refused to use them, but now that I work in a more functional kitchen they make prep so much quicker
The tomato slicer never gets sharpened, so after a 1000 tommies, it’s useless.
As long as the things are getting cleaned right, and you have some experience with the tomato slicer they both make prep a breeze.
I’ve exploded a few tomatoes but still 100% worth the occasional splat than doing it all by hand
Years ago, I hired several people that told me about their prep experience…only to find out that they had zero knife skills and the only tools they knew how to use were these. We had one laying around from the previous chef, that we never used. They always found it and always massacred the tomatoes. I should have thrown it away 20 times. And I swear I hid it. Then you have that one hire that after 3 days, drug it out from the depths of the corners only to ruin a case of 5×6 toms
First one works great on rock hard out of season tomatoes.
Reminds me of that trap in Saw 4 where he has to push his face into the knives
The tomato slicers work great if you replace the blade regularly. Unfortunately, nowhere ive ever worked has replaced the blade regularly
Wall-mounted fry cutters are good. That stupid tomato slicer isn’t even nearly as good as someone with a decent sharp knife.
Cut my finger i dont know how many times on the tomato slicer at my first job. Still a great tool. I find the dicer less useful, i can usually chop what i need faster than it takes to set up and fiddle with the dicer
That dicer in the second slide is wack for normal mise. I replaced the blade and black plunger thing and the blades shaved black plastic into the tomatoes. I double checked and I did buy the right parts, they just sent me wack shit. Glad it got caught before it went to customers.
I tried to palm a tomato through a freshly sharpened cutter one time. I screamed like I loped off my whole half lol
Don’t diss the fry cutter, I prep 2, 5lb buckets of fries and it couldn’t be done without it. Tomato smasher can suckle on my ball cheese tho
I haven’t used one of those since I was at a deli 21 years ago and hated it then
Depends on your quality/quantity ratio. For a tomato slicer to be practical you need to 1. Go through and absolute fuck ton of tomatoes 2. Keep those tomatoes in the fridge and 3. Those tomatoes should always be under ripened. I used to do 6 ea 6 in deep 3rd pans of thinly sliced tomatoes every morning during the busy season at one spot, and it was hell if the tomatoes actually came in fresh, ripe, and weren’t fridge cold… But we did 50k days and nobody cared about a table or 3 complaining about the lackluster tomatoes, we just comped it. On my last menu I did 3 ea 6 in deep 6th pans of thick cut vine ripened never refrigerated heirloom tomatoes every day. You better believe I heard about every single comp thoigh.
One called for a slicer, the other we used knives. There’s no bad equipment. Just equipment and the right time to use it and the wrong time.
It’s easier just to slash at them with some knives like the Gordon Food Service version of wolverine.
The tomato slicer is fine as long as it’s cleaned promptly and maintained properly. I always kept a spare blade assembly on hand for when they finally got dull. The guides on the pusher get bent easily so then they bind on the blade and my 18yo openers would try to muscle the tomatoes through and that’s where the fun starts.
I like using the dicers vs using the big hopper-fed food processors, you get a better quality and you get to work out some frustrations. I once had a prep cook decide to defeat the safety on a robocoupe using a magnet, which saved a bit of time until an onion got jammed in the blade. Predictable outcome was all the flesh on the tip of his finger was remove and the bone was left exposed from the last knuckle onwards. HR loved that report.
I kid you not the tomato slicer will save you if you take care of it, had one at the cafe, I commissioned a blade smith to make good quality blades for it, low carbon steel so it wouldn’t warp, kept em sharp and had them professionally sharpened every year,slices better than the Chinese at excutions.
Fuck those. I will not.
If the blades are sharp, it is all good on the first pic. I would prefer this than doing it on a slicer (takes forever to clean). Using it for a potatoe, come on, that has to be gaslighting.
Ok, seriously now: there’s a bowl of carrots in the photo but has anyone ever processed carrots with one of these? You’re not gonna get this picture-perfect bowl, ever.
I did a lot of high-volume kitchen work, like where 2 days out of the week every week it was just cutting veg. Full 8-10 hour shifts of veg and only veg with a chef knife, and we didn’t use these tools (budget wasn’t an issue, either). You get some guys used to cutting toms by hand every week like that and they could match the timing of someone using the slicer. If at that point you calculate the cost of the device, the replacement blades, the time to clean it, the time to sanitize it, etc, it didn’t add up. I used them a lot in corporate, “every-item-is-the-same-down-to-within-a-gram” settings, where I understand they’re useful, but in smaller kitchens these tools are just *illusions* of savings. (Well, sometimes, not all the time.)
Back to that promo photo. Bro, who does potatoes like that? You ever see *short* fries? I swear, when I hit management/head and I had to deal with these catalogues they’d send, nothing spoke to me because their material didn’t line up with the actual *work*. On one end I’d have to make calls based on salespeople who didn’t know shit about kitchens, then on the other hand I’d have complete dunces working for us that would suggest informercial shit like slap chops and Magic Bullets. Fuck, man – I’m glad I’m out, sometimes
I worked at this deli for a few years and we used an old deli slicer for tomatoes, cabbage, and iceberg. Best way to prep those, in my opinion.
I used one of those tomato slicers at Quiznos like 20 years ago. If the tomatoes were at all soft, it just splattered them all over the wall
They get dull so damn quick. I literally tool out every other blade and use it for onion rings
Jesus murphy all the hate for the tomato slicers when yall never replaced the blades. I worked a fast food joint that used these on the regular to prep big fuckin plastic bins of em, if it started struggling I’d just tell a higher-up and there’d be a new blade on the way within a week or two.
Only issue I ever had was when I was new and stupid I got a little too careless with it an cut into my finger bout an eighth of an inch in, was right on the tip of my index finger too so was a bitch to chuck a bandaid on.
On the other hand can’t really say nothing one way or another about the fry chopper, our shit came pre-frozen in bags, but the slicer we used for onion rings was always a bitch to work
When you clean them and don’t slam them around, they’re great. But can you trust your people to use it is always the question.
The Onion King was an absolute time saver
Fun story: when I was 16 the spot I worked at had just gotten a new tomato slicer. I was in the back doing prep and it got knocked off the counter. Me being a dumb kid ..I went to catch it. I did. But blade portion across my hand and fingers. Went to the office to bleed it out. Lesson learned: let shit fall. Don’t catch blades. Yadda yadda.
Punch dicers are great when you have a large project. But they also suck balls if they’re old and the blades are worn out. We got a robot coupe cl50 and holy shit it has a dicer function. That thing is the shit.
To this day, the best way I’ve found to slice tomatoes is an actual meat slicer. Even when they are super-ripe you can get the exact thinness that you require. A bit of a pain to clean though.
The second best way is with a bread knife. I would pick one or the other depending on how many tomatoes you need and how thin.
These things are great right up until the second week when they’ve been abused to all hell and the blades are bent, chipped, or dulled.
I love the tomato slicer. Efficient & it’s fun to use lol
With sharp blades and fresh tomatoes. They’re great
Well, they have their place, i suppose. I’m not a fan.
But i also have good knives i tend to keep very sharp
I have scars on 2 knuckles from that bad boy. But man, new blades were the best.
Spray the fry cutter with cooking spray when it gets hard to slice, then it’s perfect. I work at a restaurant with, along with other fry-based dishes, Pittsburgh-style sandwiches, salads, wraps, and bowls. For those who don’t know, Pittsburgh-style sandwiches and wraps come with fries and coleslaw. A bowl is the same except no bread/wrap. And the Pittsburgh-style salad comes with fries on top. We go through so many fries in a day that we make at least 10 storage bins of cut potatoes in water every day. If we didn’t have a fry slicer we’d be fucked.
Another useless gadget in the kitchen for those who refuse to learn knife skills.
The slicer is a pain in the ass. I’d rather use a deli slicer honestly. The chopper can be quite useful though
Shit for tomatoes is great for lettuce
Wall mounted potato chippers are much better than that piece of shit.
The tomato slicer works great but really only used them at high volume burger/sandwich places and places with inexperienced staff.
Sidenote, slicer really only works with tomato varieties that are typically more firm, like beefstakes (sp. *beefsteaks, lol). Good luck if you are trying to slice Romas or the like. At that point, it’s a piece a shit too.
If you know what you’re doing, it saves tons of time.
I remember my 16 year old coworker dropping the tomato slicer and trying to catch it and it fucked up her hand. Dunno how the fuck she was using it to end up dropping it.