Garlic Pro Chopper doesn’t cut it

Garlic. While we love to eat it, we will go to great lengths not to touch it. You can buy rubber tubes that peel the cloves with a roll of the palm, presses that crush the pulp with a mere squeeze, and even pint-sized mandolins that deliver wafer thin slices without leaving your fingers smelling like … well… garlic.

So when if found the Garlic Pro E-Zee Dice, complete with the endorsement of a trusted Food & Drink review, I was more than happy to hand over $20 for the promise of garlicy goodness and daisy-fresh digits.

According to the literature and video evidence, you just drop in the cloves, twist and voila! Chopped garlic. Coarse or fine.

Does it deliver? Yes, but providing you dice no more than four itsy-bitsy cloves at a time. Maybe we grow ’em bigger north of the border, but the Garlic Pro could only handle two good sized cloves from the local greengrocer. I tried four in one go and the blades — all 20 of the stainless steel suckers — wouldn’t budge. Okay, I have wimpy hands, but even my mitt-fisted husband found it a challenge.

Having failed with the garlic, I went on to try other items suggested in the video — nuts, cookies, peppers. Again, it worked, providing you dice a miniscule amount. And don’t expect to be able to control the size of the finished product. Sure you can chop coarsely or somewhat finely, but you don’t have the same control as with a knife.

On the upside, it’s dishwasher safe — not that I’ll be using it often enough to care.

So pass me a good chef’s knife and the hand deodorizer. I’ll be mincing my allium sativum the old fashioned way – by garlic-permeated hand.