> Like 90% of all kitchen gadgets, this is a great idea which doesn't really work, or at least which doesn't work well enough to be worth the trouble of finding in your gadget drawer and cleaning afterwards. Like all those kinda kitchen gadgets, when you first try it, it doesn't work for crap -- so you might toss it in the trash and write a nasty review. But, if you persist, (because you really want it to work), and overcome the learning curve, you find that it DOES work in special cases --- and (inspired mostly by pride in your own hard-earned skill) you might write a glowing review, and never use it again. > It works, but only with firm cheese (I.e., chilled moderately-aged cheddar). It does NOT work at all with moderately-soft cheese, like Munster or American, nor with hard cheese like Parmesan. It won't even work with a room-temperature mild to medium cheddar. > It doesn't quite cut the last 1/16"-1/8" or so of each slice, so you've always got a ragged edge. The choice of slice thickness is very limited -- basically "thick" , "very thick", and "even thicker". The the Chef'n Slicester can only cut a block of cheese up to about 1 1/2" wide by 4" high. You can NOT cut a single large slice for a sandwich. Yeh, I know that it looks like it can cut a wider slice, but you can't force it through a wider block of firm cheese. A softer cheese will warp resulting in uneven slices (or just crumpled blobs) regardless of the size of the block of cheese. > The major reason for many of these shortcomings is that it does NOT have a blade. That thing that looks like a blade is a 1/16" thick strip of stainless steel with a square edge-- not tapered or sharpened at all. I guess it is dull for "safety". > Ironically, slicing 1 1/2" thick by 3-4" wide blocks of medium-firm cheddar for crackers (the one and ONLY task this slicer CAN do) is exactly what I want a slicer for -- but the Chef'n Slicester doesn't even do that well enough to be worth the effort of finding it in my "gadget drawer". My heavy (thick), sharp, chef's knife works well enough, with less hassle. > ABOUT SLICING CHEESE WITH KNIVES: I've tried thinner-bladed knives, and oddly they don't work nearly as well for slicing cheese as do thick heavy knives. It may be that the freshly sliced surfaces of cheese curl away from the concave ("hollow ground") surface of a heavy chef's knife, and therefore don't stick as readily. It may be that a heavy chef's knife retains its temperature. I have noticed that if I wash off (and dry) the blade of a heavy knife that has gotten a little "gummy" slicing cheese, that the clean blade does cut much easier. TIP -- If you need to slice a soft cheese, place the cheese in your freezer for 5 minutes (or longer as necessary) -- that will make it firm enough to slice. The firmer the cheese, the easier it is to cut into thin slices. > UPDATE -- I recently purchased an expensive Zwilling J.A. Henckels chef's knife --- which (although razor sharp) doesn't cut cheese worth a darn --- but that's apparently because it is NOT hollow ground (as is my cheap "grocery-store" chef's knife). A hollow-ground chef's knife is apparently the key for cutting cheese.
