I Tried 12 “As Seen on TV” Kitchen Gadgets — Here’s What’s Worth Buying | Allrecipes

Have you ever wanted to try the products as seen on TV, but you're scared to buy them before you try them? Well, I've got you covered. I am trying 12 of the most popular kitchen products as seen on TV. I'm gonna start with the product that inspired this whole video, the Slap Chop. Now, I think the benefit to this is that you can cut up multiple things at one time. Okay, now it does say to avoid countertop scratches, do this on a cutting board. Oh, and if you have smaller things, you can chop it right in the cap. This is it. It chops and turns. I'm assuming this just stays sharp. Don't do that, just doing it for you. If you've got good knife skills, I still feel like this might be an extra step and an extra appliance, because it's not like you're gonna go like that. You still have to break out a knife to get it to fit under there. All right, here goes nothing. I might've done too big of a piece. Did I already break it? Well, one cut makes sliced onion. Probably did too much. It works. They're not like perfectly diced. I would like to say I have better knife skills than this, but if you just don't like to cut things, it's pretty good, and it is kind of fast. What we should've done is gone head to head, you and me, Sam, who can cut like this piece of bell pepper faster. Okay, this is my friend who self-proclaimed doesn't have the best knife skills. We know. But we're gonna see if it's worth it for you and worth it for me to use the Slap Chop. This could solve all my problems. It could. Okay, one, two, three. She might be done first, but. I think I made baby food. One of these things is not like the other. This is applesauce. Okay, if you know me, you know the one thing I do hate chopping, though, is garlic, and it says if you're doing just small things, you could do it in this cup. So this could be cute to just chop up your garlic and then it's already in its little container. This takes less time and your hands don't get sticky or stinky. For those reasons, fine. However, this is gonna take up less room in my drawers and cabinets. So, it's a no for me. While we're chopping, let's try the Crank Chop, as seen on TV. Now, this one kinda does look like it's gonna pulverize it. See, I'm like a perfectionist when it comes to my chopping. I like things orderly. The example it gives is salsa, and I'm trying to think of another example in which you would use this. I know I should wash these things first, but I'm not. I just don't like to mess up its beauty with water spots. So, right off the bat, it's gonna be small batch. Oh, it's startin' a lawnmower. We'll just start with one item. Oh, I feel like I should put the onion in there. It's about cutting multiple things. You still had to get out your knife. Let's keep in mind. Is that a blade cover? Yeah, I think that's a cover. Well, let's just read the instructions. Yeah, maybe that was a blade cover. Okay, sorry. Let's try that again. That's better. Four, five. Now, that works better than the slap chop, but it's still misshapen, you know? Okay, other than salsa, I don't know that you'd really use it a lot, but if you make a lot of fresh salsa, it's gonna be good. Let's just try. So, you still have to do it in batches, but if you just don't like to chop or you're not that good at it, and you want things more finely chopped, this one could work for you. I do like it, because you can add a little more food than like a slap chop, and it's already in a bowl. I would choose the crank chop over the slap chop, but for me, a knife is all you need. I may as well, while we're chopping, the garlic master. Again, my favorite way to chop garlic is a garlic press. However, at the end of the day, I just hate chopping garlic. It's one of my least favorite things to do in the kitchen, because it just gets all sticky in my fingers. So, this says perfectly minced garlic in seconds, and as a bonus, you get the garlic roll thing that peels the garlic, which I also hate doing. Aha, here's what's inside. Lots of little, tiny, perfectly square blades. It looks like a pepper grinder underneath. Put the peeled garlic cloves, so they have to be peeled before you can put them in here, contrary to the garlic press. Now, unlike a garlic press, though, garlic press, you can only do like two or three cloves at a time at the most, so it looks like maybe we can fit more in there. First, I have to chop off the hard end of the garlic clove. I'm still bringing out a knife. Drop them in, push it down, then lock it. Okay, maybe I'm not doing it right, shockingly. I think I got it figured out. We obviously can't put that much in there. Wow, seconds? So far, I've spent hours. I don't even think I can finish. I don't even think this one's worth going any further. There's the garlic. Oh my God, you can't even get them out. You're not even gonna be able to clean this. Does this have a money back guarantee? Don't waste your money on this one. Time for a little breakfast. Let's do bacon and eggs, starting with the yummy canned bacon. Yummy, crispy bacon from your microwave. This says you can fit eight slices. There's no splatter. It has a built-in grease trap. Perfect bacon every time with frying pan flavor. I hope this works. This is one I would probably purchase if it does work as well as it says. Unsnap the left and right locks. Remove the anti-splatter lid. Okay, that's cute. Now evenly place up to eight slices of bacon on the easy hang rack. The ingenuity is on point. I mean, it's really kind of like the bacon is a little long, so I'm worried about all these pieces hanging at the bottom. See, in their picture, it's like the bacon's not quite reaching the bottom, and mine is like pooling up at the bottom. Replace the anti-splatter lid and snap both the left and right. Safety like candles. Eight pieces, nine minutes. Smells delicious, just like bacon. It's sizzling. Steam kind of creeps on the bottom, so it's hot on the bottom. Woo! Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Even the long pieces, and you don't even have to drain it. Okay, this one is a winner. Now the thing is, at the bottom, I don't think it's just bacon grease. I think it's like got some water in there. How's the bacon? Mm-hmm. At $24.99, this would get a lot of use. I think this is worth the buy. Some eggs to go with our bacon. The ultimate Irish egg pod. Two in one, cook and peel. Perfect hard-boiled eggs in just minutes. Now I just learned a lot of ways to make perfect hard-boiled eggs. If you missed that video, go watch it. But is this even easier? This is the insert. Make sure it's here and locked. Fill the bottom with water. Place four eggs into the bottom insert. Lock it. Place the unit into the microwave. I was always taught not to put metal in the microwave. Oh, and then we're gonna shake it to peel it. I have tried that hack before and it did not work. Well, this one, this one's been around for a while, so maybe it does work. Nine minutes. Okay, done and rested for two minutes. I don't know why I'm scared of this thing, but. It says to run it under cold water for two minutes or put ice water with the water still in the pod. Replace the top and shake it vigorously up and down 10 times. Let me shake it a little more. Okay, says they would slide off easily. They feel perfectly cooked. That's a good looking egg. Very slightly jammy, but not really. Definitely beats overcooked. What do we think? It works exactly how it says it's gonna work. Nothing wrong with it. I'm not so sure it's any easier than doing it in a simple pot, which you already have. But maybe college dorms or somewhere where you only have a microwave. Hotel, I could see it. Never heard of this one before. The Robo Twist, the electric jar opener. Opens jars with the push of a button. I don't need that. However, I could see how this could be useful for the elderly who may have lost a lot of strength in their hands. Not gonna mention any names. Requires two AA batteries. Okay, it says take these little rubber things and point them down. Press and hold the start button for five to seven seconds. One, two, three, four, oh no. Did I not have it sitting on top of it? I don't know if I did this right. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Start over. Oh! I don't think that was right though. Let's try this jar. For $19.99, if you have no strength and nothing but time, this will work. This next one might be a selfish purchase. The Uncrustable Maker, because who likes spending $5 on four tiny peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the freezer section? Not this girl. However, my kids love the novelty of them. So we could make however many sandwiches a whole loaf of bread makes for the same price as one box. The problem I have with Uncrustables in general is what do you do with all the crust? I mean, as the mom and sandwich maker, I eat the crust as I'm making the sandwiches, but if I'm gonna buy this, I'm gonna make them in bulk and I can't eat all that crust. And I like that we can do wheat bread because the Uncrustables are white bread. My kids actually prefer wheat bread. So you have more control over the ingredients. Because it's gonna cut it off, don't waste your peanut butter and jelly by going all the way to the edges because that's gonna get cut off anyway. I put peanut butter on both sides, that way the jelly doesn't leak through. Plus, my kids really don't even like jelly, they like honey, peanut butter and honey. This didn't come with instructions because you're supposed to know what to do. Down we go. Don't you dare not work. It's like the old Play-Doh toys, that's what this feels like. My very own Uncrustable. I got a little crust in there, but. The wheat bread, probably a little sturdier. Oh, I see, you gotta kinda push the crust up under those little teeth. Cute, cute, cute, cute. I've always kinda refused to buy this thing, but it's only eight bucks. 10 out of 10, this works. And it's really not a ton of bread wasted. Your kids are gonna peel this off and throw it away anyway. But if you don't have this, just a little bonus tip. And if you buy big jars of peanut butter, just take that. This is how I've done it with my kids. They're not that amused. This is also the right size. And you're still sealing in the fillings for zero dollars. I mean, it might peek out a little bit, but just saying. I know your kids are gonna eat this one over this one, but still, just a thought. Next up, the chicken shredder. It's like a steering wheel chicken shredder. Never seen it in person, never used it, certainly. Thought it was gonna be red, it is green. If you don't like shredding chicken, which a lot of people don't, this could come in handy. Got the rubber grips on the bottom that is going to keep it somewhat stable. These are the handles. I like these kinda things that are self-explanatory. Now this one's gonna be like a time saver. Besides like not liking to shred chicken, if it really only takes like two seconds and you can throw it in the dishwasher, fine. Otherwise, it's gonna take up cabinet space. This thing's not staying in place. There we go. It doesn't work on wood, it's gotta stick to something. Huh, it does work. That is ideal for chicken salad. Okay, let's count how many shreds it takes. Ready, one, two, three, four. Okay, at $7.99, I think this is a pretty good purchase. And if you don't like to pick it out like I did, you can use the fork that it came with. We make a lot of chicken salad and like chicken dips and stuff at my house, so this could come in handy. Pretty good one and it's fun. If you're like me and you don't have a million dollars to put in an outdoor pizza oven, then this is next. Paisano Pizza Oven. Crispy crust pizza in less than six minutes. And now listen, they're putting these words in here. That's what I like. Crispy bottom crust on my pizza, period, paragraph. This one is a little pricey, but not near as pricey as building the real thing. Pizza stone, it will only look like this before you ever use it. Even just one little use on a pizza stone, you can take. Oh, this is pretty. It's like a shiny red engine. Little pizza peel. You get a lot of tools with it. I'm doing this in real time for you, which means I haven't prepared and studied all of this. Sorry for the delay, but I have to figure out how to use this thing. Okay, the instructions really are just about how to put the pizza on. The oven, all we have to do is plug it in. Now I'm gonna turn it to 800 because, I mean, do we start as high as it can go? And we just build our pizza. The key is to build the pizza on the little peels. You need at least a half an inch from the edges of sauce or toppings. Oh, I was also supposed to prick the dough. Apparently it's gonna be so close to the heating element that you don't want it to rise. This one will just be our cheese pizza. Now look, our oven is at 700. I feel like that's good for now. Then use both of these. Pretty good transfer. Spoke too soon. Okay, it says to check it after three minutes. In less than six minutes, the whole thing will be ready. So it did say if it's kind of cooking, we can rotate it. I think it's a little uneven, but also my whole pizza's a little uneven. It's pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. I told you, you can only get one use out of this, though. Okay, I'm gonna let it get hot again and make a pretty one. Let's see how our first one did. Does have a little crunch under there. We're not really gonna judge this book by its cover, though. I think Dave Portnoy would be proud of that one. Here we go, one bite, everyone knows the rules. Mm-hmm, pretty good. Better than what comes out of my regular oven. This is the pizza in just under five minutes. That is good looking. That's a good sound, okay. That is zero flop. Crusty. Mm-hmm. I will take this home. That's probably one of the most perfect crusts I've ever done for like a homemade pizza. In the world of Dave Portnoy's, I'm gonna give it like a 8.7, it's pretty generous. In the world of me, I'd give it like a 9.8. The Paisano, worth the buy. These next two products do the same thing, so I guess we'll determine which one is the better buy. We have the Better Breader and the Collapsible Batter Bowl. This is going to eliminate that three-step process, you know like when we're frying chicken and we've got two or three bowls, we've got a complete mess of the flour and the milk and back to the flour. This is supposed to eliminate all that. So, start with the Easy Shake Better Breader. It's also an onion blossom maker. Let's just call it a Bloomin' Onion. But how often do you make those? This comes in at $16.99. You can't batter and bread. Like, you can't do the wet and the dry in either one of these. You could batter or bread, though. Like, so if you do like a beer batter, like a wet batter on something, you could do that instead of the dry. So, it does eliminate one bowl, but I think more importantly, it's supposed to just keep your hands from being too messy. And then in this one, we'll put the flour. So, I'm just gonna do both of these at the same time and see which one gives us the better result. Seasoned flour in the bottom. And now this one is the Collapsible Batter Bowl. They both have lids, so you could always bread something and then keep it in the fridge stored. This one has a longer surface area, so you might can get more in it. Same amount. And you can do multiple at one time. So, instead of doing one at a time, which is typically how you bread something, I'm gonna do twice as many in the bigger one. Number one. Pretty good, pretty good. Let me just go ahead and double batter, because I feel like that's what you would do, for real. My hands are clean. Maybe it's not as useless as I thought. Pretty perfectly breaded. So, let's do this other one. Snap the lid on. Ooh. With this one, you may only have to batter it once, bread it once, but I feel like you want the excess to really drip off the bottom, so I'm really not sure who's performing better at this point. Let me just do an even match-up. It's shake and bake, and I'll help. Oh, I ran out of flour on this one. But I also have twice as much chicken. I don't know, guys. This one was getting a little gummy. I don't know, this one has a harder time separating the wet and dry. This one, I knew it was supposed to go out one more time. That's user error. Now I can give you a better comparison. Really, they function about the same. It's just a size preference, I think, at this point. I personally like this size better. I think it's just easier to handle. CWC Collapsible Batter Bowl really makes the job easy because you can bread twice as many things. But result-wise, you get about the same results with either one. So 30 bucks or 16 for doing just a few things. So if you're just doing this kind of stuff for dinner, this one might be easier. But if you've got the fryer outside and you're gonna be cooking big batches, this works. You can store it collapsed so that it doesn't take up so much cabinet space. So I think these are a tie. It's just a matter of preference. For my final trick, as seen on TV. However, this isn't really a kitchen product, but it definitely involves food. And I wanted one. The Sauce Moto Dip Clip. Raise your hand if you eat in your car. And if you didn't raise your hand, you're lying. But you know, you're always trying to hold the sauce dip or it's down in your cup holder, and then you spill it on the way back up. Not with this. It clips onto your air vent. Oh, you get two in a pack. Great stocking stuffer at 9.99. You can put your sauce in horizontal or vertical. McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's. You're gonna put it in vertical. I just don't have any right now. But for larger sauces, like these ketchup packets, fit in horizontal. Oh, we gotta at least try it out in the car though, right? Okay, so you slide it into the air vent. And you twist it until it's level. That looks good. It's probably safest to put the sauce in and then open it. Try it out. That would've been in there. That's sturdy. Okay, we're locked and loaded. Shall we take a dunkaroo? I didn't drip it anywhere. That keeps your sauce cooled down. This will be my daughter's stocking this year. When you're done, pop it off. I feel like we have just done an infomercial. However, this is hashtag not sponsored. But I hope you're inquiring minds no longer need to know what to buy as seen on TV. Is there anything else you're curious about? I'd be happy to try it.