New Kitchen Gadget Part Two

nice even slices of garlic

The second kitchen gadget I obtained with my Christmas gift card to Macy's was a Martha Stewart Garlic Press/Slicer.  I have a garlic press...but it doesn't work very well.  It seems to leave more garlic than it presses.  My son has a great one he inherited from his fraternal grandmother and it really pushes the garlic all the way through.  Mine did not.  So, I tend to smash, peel, and chop - not a huge hardship...but I'm a big believer in tools that can make the job easier, faster, and neater.  I hate slicing garlic...I'm not one of those people that can bam, bam, bam, slice, slice, slice and come out with perfectly even thin slices of garlic <picturing Martin Yan....wow, that dude can chop!>.  I'm a great slicer on larger items...but not garlic.

When I picked up this product in the store and saw it did both pressing and slicing...and it had a little cleaning tool, well, I mulled it over ... picking it up, putting it down, picking it up again.  It was $19.99 at Macy's in Austin ($17.99 online) and I finally decided to go for it. 

I gave it a try Monday morning.  First, I tried pressing without peeling.  Despite many television chefs telling you to just drop the unpeeled garlic in the press and go to work pressing...I've not been so successful with that.  This one did press it through with a bit of effort ...but not as well as a peeled garlic clove.  That, it did quite well!

nice little bits of pressed garlic

The slicer did a great job (obviously I used a peeled clove for that).  Nice even slices.  It says on the packaging "as thin as 1/16th of a clove.  Hmmm, not sure what they mean by that...there seems to be a potential for 8 slices...no adjustment appears available.  Still, 8 slices is good and they are all uniform...which I like.

The cleaner attaches in the handle and does take a little tug to get it out

It's nice having a tool that does more than one thing.  The teen will enjoy using this as well because he has limited knife skills.  We love to slowly crisp up garlic slices in hot olive oil to use for bread dipping with some balsamic vinegar drizzled in....especially with homemade focaccia bread!  It's great to bite into that crunchy, thin slice of crisp garlic.  This tool will likely work very well for that purpose!  Yum...just thinking about that makes me hungry.  I might have to throw together a batch of dough to use this week for dipping and for Friday night pizza! 

a sleek, easy-to-clean multi-tasker...love it!

Obviously, I'm happy with my purchase.  Love it when a tool works the way I think it should!  Thanks, Martha!

Bon Appetit, Y'all!