Is the Ninja Prepi Worth It? Testing the New Gadget Against Traditional Salad Prep
We tested the gadget against an 8-inch high-carbon steel chef's knife and an entry-level manual push-chopper, preparing five identical Mediterranean grain-and-greens bowls. The ingredient list included hearty red cabbage, firm Persian cucumbers, radishes, raw carrots, grilled chicken breast, and baby spinach. We tracked active hands-on processing time, container transfer efficiency, and total sink cleanup.
The motorized blades devoured tough produce effortlessly. A whole head of cabbage fell into whisper-thin ribbons in 22 seconds. Thick carrots vanished down the chute in moments without the wrist strain typical of box graters. The knife method lagged noticeably on these dense items, demanding 14 minutes of continuous cutting board work. However, the manual push-chopper jammed repeatedly on raw carrots, requiring knife intervention to cut the roots into two-inch segments first.
The machine stumbled on softer items. When feeding seedless Persian cucumbers and ripe Roma tomatoes, the spinning disc compressed the vegetables before slicing, pushing excess water into the catch basin. The knife retained clean, intact edges with virtually zero weeping juice, leaving cell walls undamaged.
