Crank Chop Review: Does it Work?

Crank Chop is a small hand-operated food processor. Does it really work? Here is my Crank Chop review.

Where to Purchase

Although the older string-pulled version of Crank Chop is not currently sold as of this 2024 update, you can still buy the latest model of Crank Chop with a rotating handle on Amazon. I have not reviewed this latest model. The review below was written in 2017 pertains to the original Crank Chop with a string pulley. I have updated some of the text for clarity.

About Crank Chop

Crank Chop is a plastic container that uses stainless steel blades that spin when a nylon cord within the lid is pulled. The official product website is crankchop.com, which was registered in May 2014. The screenshot below shows how the product website looked in September 2017. As of September 2022, the website stated that Crank Chop was no longer sold, but the website returned by 2024 with essentially the same design as it was 7 years earlier.

Claims & Features

Sturdy manufacturing
Fast and user-friendly

Not noisy
Detachable stainless steel blades
Base is nonslip

Safe for dishwasher
Ergonomic handle
10 year warranty

Crank Chop Review

Although Crank Chop isn’t a new product, it re-emerged in an advertising campaign back in 2017, prompting me to give it a closer look. I originally picked up Crank Chop at our local Fry’s here in Las Vegas for $20 in September 2017.

Using Crank Chop is pretty straightforward. You simply add your ingredients, secure the lid, and pull the cord repeatedly until you achieve your desired results. If you’ve seen the commercial (which is part train-wreck, part humorous), you get a pretty good idea of how it works. However, having owned and used it, I can provide a bit of reality as compared to the idealized advertising.

I tested out quite a few foods for my video review of Crank Chop. I chopped tomatoes, celery, strawberries & blueberries, greens, cheese, and even ice. Crank Chop handled everything reasonably well. The tomatoes were probably my least favorite to chop due to the excess juice. The ice was crushed, but not uniformly. Cheese turned out more crumbled than shredded, which was completely acceptable to me. The greens, however, ended up too finely chopped for my liking. It definitely takes some experimenting to achieve the desired consistency with different foods.

One point worth mentioning is that most food will need to be cut down to size to fit into the container, as the instructions state that larger items like onions or potatoes need to be quartered.

The pull handle reminds me of my dad’s old pull-start lawnmower I used as a kid. If you don’t pull the handle all the way out, it may not retract properly. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of it. When the handle retracts, it makes a whirring sound as the cord is pulled back into the lid.

Cleaning is straightforward but similar to any other plastic bowl. Cheese left the most residue and required a scrub brush for proper cleaning. You can put the blades and the bowl in a dishwasher, but the lid can only be wiped with a sponge, likely because water can get inside the lid and wreak havoc on the cord assembly.

Crank Chop could be a handy gadget in some kitchens. After my initial series of tests, I didn’t find myself reaching for it often, though it did prove useful in certain situations, such as when I saw a YouTube video of an elderly lady marveling at how she no longer had to manually chop lettuce. While some will find it helpful, others might not see it as a solution to their kitchen challenges.

Over time, I’ve moved on to other kitchen gadgets that have proven more versatile or efficient for my needs. For those looking for a more robust solution, I recommend checking out choppers by Ninja. Here’s a link to a Ninja model I’ve found particularly effective.

Alternatives

Crank Chop definitely isn’t the only game in town. There are numerous pull choppers like Crank Chop, such as this $15 model with about 1500 consumer ratings. Or how about this $9 model that holds a 4.6 star rating? As stated above, the Ninja Express Chop is my current favorite and I can’t imagine another chopper taking its place anytime soon.