Unitasker Wednesday: Karate Lettuce Chopper

All Unitasker Wednesday posts are jokes — we don’t want you to buy these items, we want you to laugh at their ridiculousness. Enjoy!

This is one of the more amusing unitaskers we’ve featured, and I’d like to thank reader Rosanna for sending it to us. I can’t stop smiling when I see this week’s selection, and my guess is you’ll have a similar positive response when you cast your gaze upon the Gama-Go Karate Lettuce Chopper, too:

Whack!

Growing up, my mom had a lettuce knife in her utensil drawer that I can’t ever remember using on lettuce. I remember chasing my brother around the house with it, but I’m not really sure that was its intended purpose when she bought it. I took to Google to learn why someone might want a lettuce knife, because I sincerely had no idea why lettuce might need knifing or, in this case, Karate chopping (I just use my hands when breaking up lettuce, I didn’t know this wasn’t normal). Turns out, promoters of using a plastic knife on lettuce say it keeps lettuce from browning if you plan to store the lettuce for more than a week in its chopped form. Interesting …

So, I turned to Cook’s Illustrated (my go-to source for all things cooking related) to find out the answers to the questions I didn’t have until just a few seconds ago: “Does a serrated plastic knife prevent lettuce from browning? Is it worth $11, or is it a scam?”

Cook’s Illustrated responded, don’t buy one:

The plastic lettuce knife might stave off browning slightly longer than metal knives, but it’s not worth the money or the extra drawer space. To prolong the life of lettuce by a day or two, stick to tearing by hand. Tearing allows leaves to break along their natural fault lines, rupturing fewer cells and reducing premature browning.

Although the Gama-Go Karate Lettuce Chopper is incredibly entertaining, I’ll keep using the hands at the ends of my arms to cut up lettuce in our house and save the ridiculous amount of drawer space this device would occupy for something more useful. It does make me smile, though …