Home » Latest » TRENDING NOW » 7 Slicing Kitchen Gadgets Improved by Design Expert | Epicurious

7 Slicing Kitchen Gadgets Improved by Design Expert | Epicurious

8

37 0 TRENDING NOW

7

SaveSavedRemoved 2

Dan Formosa takes a red pen to the kitchen drawer everyone owns.

Epicurious’s “Well Equipped” series has built a following by handing real gadgets to real experts and letting them say what actually works. In the episode “7 Slicing Kitchen Gadgets Tested by Design Expert,” that expert is Dan Formosa, an industrial designer whose résumé includes shaping the ergonomics behind OXO Good Grips. He runs seven common slicing tools through hands-on tests, then sketches out how he’d fix each one.

• Formosa, an industrial designer who helped develop the ergonomics of OXO Good Grips, tests seven slicing gadgets — including mandoline slicers, electric carving knives and the Slap Chop — for ergonomics, efficiency, safety and mechanical performance.
• He runs each tool on real food first, then breaks down specific failures: awkward hand positioning, poor leverage, exposed blades and messy cleanup.
• After critiquing what doesn’t work, Formosa sketches practical design modifications meant to improve safety and leverage for home cooks using each device.

A Designer’s Eye Built at OXO

Formosa isn’t a chef reviewing gear for taste or speed — he’s a design and usability specialist, and that distinction shapes the whole episode. His background contributing to the original OXO Good Grips line means he’s spent decades thinking about grip diameter, wrist angle and how a tool behaves in a hand that’s wet, tired or arthritic. That lens is what he brings to a countertop full of mandolines, peelers, choppers and electric blades that most home cooks have used without ever questioning the shape.

Rather than rating gadgets on marketing claims, he tests them the way a product-development team would in a lab: watching where a user’s fingers actually go, where the food fights back, and where the tool’s geometry works against the person holding it.

Limitations of Popular Kitchen Gadgets

The episode’s most memorable moments come from tools everyone recognizes but few have scrutinized. Formosa pushes each device — mandoline slicer, electric carving knife, manual choppers like the Slap Chop — through real food, then walks through exactly where the mechanics break down: blades left exposed near fingers, handles that force an unnatural wrist angle, and parts that trap food debris and make cleanup a chore.

Seven gadgets, one test bench: mandoline slicers, electric carving knives and the Slap Chop all get the same treatment — used on real food, then picked apart blade by blade.

It’s the kind of scrutiny that kitchen gadgets rarely get once they’re already in a drawer. Formosa’s point isn’t that these tools are useless — it’s that most of them were designed around a single feature (a ratchet, a spring-loaded blade, a wire grid) without much thought for the hand operating it.

Sketching Fixes on the Spot

After each critique, Formosa doesn’t just complain — he sketches. He works through concept modifications aimed at improving mechanical leverage, reducing blade exposure and making the tools easier to hold and clean, translating his usability notes into rough design changes a manufacturer could actually build. It’s the same problem-solving instinct that shows up across the broader wave of test-and-build content that’s found an audience online, the sort of format that’s turned channels built around picking apart everyday objects into a genuine trend.

That format — expert critique followed by a real proposed fix — is what separates “Well Equipped” from a standard product review. Formosa treats a $15 apple slicer with the same rigor he’d apply to a consumer product headed for a patent filing.

Testing With Real Food, Not Just Specs

Every gadget in the lineup gets used on actual ingredients rather than judged on paper. That hands-on approach is what surfaces the small, specific failures — a peeler that slips on wet skin, a slicer guard that doesn’t actually protect fingers, a chopper that needs both hands to fight the lid instead of the food. It’s the kind of detail-driven content that keeps finding an audience in the same corner of the internet where viral gadget and lifestyle testing has become its own genre.

By the end of the segment, no gadget escapes unscathed — even the Slap Chop, the internet’s favorite as-seen-on-TV punchline, gets a redesign sketch aimed at giving it real leverage instead of just a satisfying smack.