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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
No matter what you're cooking, there's likely to be a lot of chopping involved. You can of course use your chef's knife for this, but a food chopper can save tons of time, not to mention effort. Available in both manual and electric forms, food choppers are simple to operate and relatively inexpensive. They’re useful for cutting up everything from onions to apples to peanuts (they're particularly good for making salsa), and they're an ideal safer choice for someone with dexterity problems or for young kids just starting off in the kitchen. We tested more than a dozen models to find our top picks.
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Quick and efficient
Portable
Blades and bowl are dishwasher-safe
Has trouble with small amounts of food
Ultra-sharp blades must be handled with care
Lots of manual choppers have you push down to cut food, but the Pull Chop uses a unique method to spin its blades; it's a little like the pull-start on a lawnmower or chainsaw, only on a much smaller scale. After you load the bowl with food and seal the lid, you just pull the handle to chop. A non-skid ring on the bottom of the bowl keeps it from slipping, though you will need to use both hands at once with this model—one on the lid while the other pulls the cord.
The rotating blades work much like a food processor, chopping foods more and more finely the longer you spin them. In testing, the Pull Chop worked much quicker than expected, whizzing through everything from onions and carrots to tomatoes and mushrooms with ease thanks to its razor-sharp blades. It sliced cleanly through bell peppers as well, when many of its competitors simply crushed or mashed them. The vertically stacked blades had a little trouble, however, when loaded with only a few garlic cloves—we found it helpful to hold the chopper at an angle to encourage small amounts of food to fall into the blades.
This model holds about 2 cups, so it’s plenty for making a bowl of salsa or prepping individual ingredients for a recipe. Without any plugs and cords to worry about, the chopper is extremely portable: You can use the whole thing to carry finished dishes, or prep recipes at a picnic, campsite, really anywhere. The lid lifts off easily, so emptying and reloading with more vegetables is a breeze. Everything but the lid is even dishwasher-safe, but we're not kidding about those blades being ultra-sharp. One of our testers sliced open a finger when taking them out for cleaning; be careful!
Dimensions: 5.5 x 5.3 x 4.3 inches | Weight: 0.9 pounds | Capacity: 2 cups
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Can chop or grind
Dishwasher-safe bowl and blade
Multiple color options
Uneven chopping texture
Wherever the line is between food chopper and food processor, this little appliance sits right on it. It's surprisingly multifunctional for such a small, inexpensive machine, with a chop mode that uses the sharp side of the blade and a grind mode that spins it in the other direction, letting the flat edge crush and purée. The chop and grind buttons both serve as their own pulse modes, too, since the blades only spin with the button pressed down.
We tested the Mini Prep with onions, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, mushrooms, and garlic, and it made short work of all of them. It chopped everything cleanly, though the size of the bits were somewhat uneven, especially when we wanted to keep things in larger pieces. Grind mode was surprisingly effective, creating smooth tomato purée and even peanut butter. You could use it to emulsify salad dressings, or make fresh baby food.
On top of that, the bowl, blade, and lid are all dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning. And you can choose from lots of different base colors (try multiple retailers to find more options). Plus, they even throw in a tiny little spatula to scrape down the bowl mid-chop.
Dimensions: 5 x 7 x 9.3 inches | Weight: 2.5 pounds | Capacity: 3 cups | Power: 250 watts
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Compact
Chops quickly
Dishwasher-safe
Inexpensive
Small capacity
Plastic parts stain easily
You use this inexpensive manual chopper by tapping the "button" on top: Each press pushes the blade onto the food beneath, and rotates it a little bit to ensure more even texture. There are lots of similar models, but the Zick-Zick's big innovation is its zig-zag blade, which performs more cuts per push than the more common X-shaped blade.
In testing, this model did well with onions, carrots, mushrooms, and tomatoes, though it had trouble getting through the skin of green peppers. There's a "wiper" mechanism that scrapes bits of food off the blade with each cut, which was very helpful with larger pieces of food but didn't keep small bits of minced garlic from sticking. The blade is completely covered with a plastic shroud when in use, and we felt very safe around this tool.
You can use the Zick-Zick directly atop a cutting board, or with the included cup, which keeps everything very contained (there's even a cover included so you can use the cup for food storage) but is quite small. Either way, the process is very simple, and cleanup is also easy: Everything comes apart and is dishwasher-safe. We did note that the plastic parts of our test model got stained seemingly permanently by tomato juice; nonetheless, this didn't affect performance.
Dimensions: 3.3 x 3.3 x 8.8 inches | Weight: 0.8 pounds
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Even chopping
3 blade options
Large capacity
Doesn't work well with very hard and very soft foods
Can't chop super-finely
Chopping onions is one of the most grueling kitchen tasks, particularly for people who tend to get watery eyes—not to mention the annoying scent that clings to fingers. In testing, we found that this tool was particularly efficient at dicing onions: It takes one single push to turn a halved onion into a pile of neat, even dice.
The Big Mouth works a little differently than the rest of the choppers on this list, pushing food through a stationary blade into a plastic container beneath. This can handle more food at a time than other manual choppers, and it makes more evenly sized pieces compared to the whirling blades of food processor–style machines. The downside is that you can only chop items into the specific sizes of the different cutting grids you have. This model includes a quarter-inch slicer and large and small cube options, all of which are too big to get garlic or ginger down to a fine mince.
We got great results with carrots in testing, and we particularly liked how well the Big Mouth's slicing blade worked with mushrooms. It was also able to slice green peppers cleanly, though it took a bit of a smack to shove all the way through the blades. It had trouble, though, with soft tomatoes, just mashing them up, and with hard nuts, just smashing them to bits rather than really chopping.
The bin beneath the chopper holds a generous 6 cups, and there's also a separate lid included so you can use it for storage. Norpro recommends hand-washing the Big Mouth, but we honestly ran all the parts through the dishwasher during testing and didn't run into any trouble.
Dimensions: 4.3 x 4.3 x 11 inches | Weight: 1 pound | Capacity: 6 cups
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Multifunctional
Large capacity
Cordless
Expensive
Pretty much a full-sized food processor that's cordless, this KitchenAid machine is super-convenient to move around the kitchen, grabbing ingredients from the cutting board or fridge and moving them to the stove or oven (or even outside to the grill) without having to worry about plugging it in. KitchenAid says the unit can chop 40 full onions on a single battery charge, and we didn't run out of electricity during any of our testing.
This model did well with onions, nuts, tomatoes, carrots, and mushrooms. And despite its large capacity, its tall-and-narrow shape helped it thoroughly mince a small amount of garlic. We also used the faster of its two speed settings to purée tomatoes and grind peanut butter, and it did well with both. The only ingredient it had trouble with was green peppers; like a lot of the other machines we tested, it didn't always cut through the skin cleanly and wound up crushing some of the pieces more than chopping them.
There’s a handy pouring spout for dispensing liquids, and a drizzle hole in the lid that’s good for slowly adding liquid to emulsified sauces like Hollandaise. You'll also get a separate whipping blade for whipped cream or egg whites, which stores inside the bowl when not in use. And everything except the motor base is dishwasher-safe. Like many KitchenAid appliances, this one also comes in a variety of colors to match your kitchen or add a pop of color. The main downside is its cost; there are full-on food processors cheaper than this chopper.
Dimensions: 6.6 x 5.5 x 10.4 inches | Weight: 2.8 pounds | Capacity: 5 cups | Power: 60 watts
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Inexpensive
Easy chopping
Includes storage lid
Small capacity
Plastic stains easily
Great for ingredient prep, this compact chopper incorporates it own measuring cup, which is even printed with measurements in cups and milliliters. The cup includes its own cover, so you can store your pre-chopped items in the fridge until they're needed, no extra containers required.
Similar to the Zick-Zick above, the OXO chopper has a wave-shaped blade that chops and rotates each time you tap the button on top. You can use it directly atop a cutting board or with the cup, and it did a nice job with everything except green peppers in our tests. It's especially good for small items and small volumes, turning garlic cloves and nuts into evenly sized fine bits in seconds. Cleanup is super-easy, too: Everything disassembles and goes in the dishwasher. (You also get a little scraper/spoon tool that can remove any stuck bits if necessary.)
The problem is there's just not that much room under the blade. Whether using the cup or not, you'll have to pre-cut onions or other large veggies into small pieces before you can actually start using the chopper. (The chopper also comes with just a single cup, though you can buy extra cups for five bucks each.) Another less-major issue is that the tomato juice stained the plastic parts with an orange tinge that didn't come off in the dishwasher.
Dimensions: 4 x 3.8 x 6.8 inches | Weight: 0.9 pounds | Capacity: 1 cup
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
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Powerful
Multifunctional
Dishwasher-safe
Expensive
Bulky
SaladShooter is a very appropriate name for this machine: You load the chamber, point the barrel into a bowl, and press the trigger to get a steady flow of slices. It works by rotating a cone-shaped blade against the food, with a large chute that can accommodate whole veggies of many kinds and a plastic pusher to keep your fingers far away from anything sharp. It can handle a never-ending flow of ingredients, as long as you have room to hold the finished slices.
The ability to swap in different blades for different types of cuts makes the SaladShooter multifunctional, and this model comes with four: two sizes of shred, a standard slicer, and a ripple slicer that makes crunchy veggies like carrots and cucumbers look super-fancy. It's of course a boon for making salads, but the attachments also let you shred cheddar for a grilled cheese or potatoes for hash browns, or make perfectly even apple slices for tarte Tatin. On top of that, the blades and all the rest of the parts except the motor base are dishwasher-safe.
If anything, the SaladShooter might be too big of a chopper for someone who's not going to use it often or with large amounts of food. It's fairly bulky and heavy and has to be plugged into the wall, not really worth breaking out just for a handful of garlic cloves or a single cucumber. It's also pretty expensive compared to some of the others on this list.
Dimensions: 11 x 4 x 1 inches | Weight: 3.9 pounds | Power: 114 watts
The Kuhn Rikon Pull Chop 2-Cup Food Chopper snagged our top spot because its unique design that makes for easy, even chopping. If an electric chopper is more your speed, the Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus Food Processor not only makes quick work of chopping small foods from nuts to apples, but can also emulsify your salad dressings and even grind peanut butter.
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
How We Tested
The list above was compiled using data from two separate tests of food choppers that included a total of 13 different models. We used them to chop multiple ingredients, including onions, carrots, mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, and peanuts, observing evenness of chop size and ease of operation. We tested all the available speeds, modes, and blades for each machine, grinding peanuts into peanut butter, puréeing sauces, grating cheese, and trying out other functions as applicable. To come up with our final ratings, we also considered factors like size, capacity, and ease of cleaning. We only revealed retail prices and considered value for money after completing all other tests.
Other Options We Tested
- Mosaic Electric Food Chopper: We like this machine's large glass bowl, and its clever two-level blades did a pretty good job at handling both small and large loads. Its slightly-above-average performance and slightly-above-average price put it in the middle of the pack.
- Kwik-Kut Cutlery Serrated Food Chopper: This dirt-cheap chopper is very simple, basically just a sharp steel ring with a handle that you bash against ingredients on a cutting board. It did pretty well with mushrooms, but it's not sharp enough to effectively cut hard raw carrots and onions, and it's too big to chop small garlic cloves and nuts without bits flying around everywhere.
- Cuisinart CTG-00-SCHP Chopper: Cuisinart's miniature electric chopper did a great job in testing, but this manual model wasn't quite as successful. It's similar in design to the other push-to-chop devices on our list, but its dull blades didn't so much cut through ingredients as smush them.
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The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie
What to Look for in a Food Chopper
Design
There are two main ways a food chopper's blade can work: by spinning or by moving up and down. Spinning blades work much like a food processor, reducing ingredients to smaller and smaller bits the longer they run. This works very quickly but gives you less control. More common in manual choppers, the up-and-down blade lets you chop items into more consistently sized pieces (especially with larger pieces), but you can't chop as much as a time as with rotating blades. Both types of blade also come in different sizes and configurations that might work better with different ingredients and to do different jobs.
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Power Source
Many food choppers are manually powered, meaning you have to turn a crank, push a plunger, or pull a cord to operate them. Manual machines are highly portable and usually give you more precise control over chopping texture, but they're also usually smaller and can't handle as much food at a time. An electric food chopper, on the other hand, is pretty much the same thing as a small food processor. It'll work quickly—at the expense of even chopping—and it often comes with extra blades and attachments for shredding, grating, grinding, whipping, and other functions. There are some cordless rechargeable machines available, but most have to stay plugged into the wall. In terms of cost, manual machines are generally cheaper, but there are plenty of electric models with very low price tags, too.
Size and Capacity
Because they're made more for prepping individual ingredients than for putting together entire dishes, food choppers tend to hold less food than food processors. The ones we tested ranged from 1 to 6 cups in capacity, compared to up to 16 cups for a large food processor. A larger bowl obviously lets you chop more at once, but it's at a disadvantage with small amounts and smaller items: A mere handful of garlic cloves or nuts in a huge bowl can easily get caught out of reach of the blades.
With push-to-chop–style manual models often come with a custom-fitting cup, which keeps mess at a minimum and can double as storage but is usually very small. But you can also use these machines directly on a cutting board with the cup detached if you need to go through a large volume.
But there's also physical size to consider. A larger food chopper simply takes up more storage space.
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FAQs
How do you use a food chopper?
Before you put anything in the chopper, you should prep it just as if you were going to chop it using a knife. That means washing produce and removing any stems, peels, or seeds that you don't want to end up in the final product. Depending on your model of chopper, you may also need to slice large items into smaller pieces to get them to fit into the bowl or beneath the blades. After that, it's simply a matter of turning on an electric machine or chopping manually. The longer you chop, the finer of a texture you'll get.
Is a food chopper the same as a food processor?
Food choppers and food processors both cut ingredients into smaller pieces, and the line between what's a chopper and what's a processor is a little fuzzy. (Some of the machines above could be classified either way, to be honest.) Food choppers are generally smaller, less powerful, and less expensive than food processors, and they don't have as wide a selection of blades and settings. Almost all food processors are electric, while choppers come in both manual and electric styles.
How do you clean a food chopper?
To start with, you read your chopper's manual! Different models have different parts that can and can't go in the dishwasher or be submerged in water. Whether hand-washing or not, it's a good idea to clean (or at least rinse) the blade soon after use, as dried-on food is much harder to remove. If you do end up with bits stuck to the blade or other parts, a quick soak in hot, soapy water before scrubbing can help.
With electric machines, you should keep the motor base out of the sink and away from a lot of water. A wipe with a sponge can clean off any gunk.
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Can you grind coffee in a food chopper?
No. Coffee beans are very hard, and a coffee grinder uses dull blades that spin at high speed to crack them into pieces rather than trying to slice through them. The sharp, lower-RPM blades of a chopper can't break down coffee beans very evenly or effectively, and may actually get damaged in the process.
Can you use a food chopper on meat?
It depends on the application. A food chopper is great for cooked meats, especially something with a firm texture like chicken breast for chicken salad or ham for chopped salad. You won't get such good results if you try to use a food chopper to grind raw meat. After a lot of time and effort, you'll wind up with more of a gummy paste than a proper grind.
Why Trust The Spruce Eats?
Donna Currie is a product tester and writer for The Spruce Eats. She's also a prolific food blogger and the author of "Make Ahead Bread," which is aimed at demystifying the art of bread making. Donna loves checking out new kitchen gadgets—she's tested hundreds of products for The Spruce Eats, including eight food choppers for this roundup.
The Spruce Eats commerce writer Jason Horn updated this roundup with further insights and details. He's been writing about food and drinks for nearly 20 years, for outlets including Liquor.com, Serious Eats, Playboy, and Travel Channel.
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