Puts a new spin on washing salad! (Zyliss Smart Touch Salad Spinner)

Member Name: sakura8

Product:	Zyliss Smart Touch Salad Spinner
Date:	01/08/09 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Smart one touch design, looks funky

Disadvantages: Can take up cupboard space

Before I tried this salad spinner, I always though it was one of those gadgets that are nice to have in the kitchen, but not one I'd willingly pay money for. This view was further compounded when I had to use the awful salad spinners at the cooking school I'm attending. I have no idea what brand they are, but they are the old style where you have to turn the handle attached to the lid to make the basket spin.

The first problem with these old spinners is the lid doesn't fit properly and tends to come off before you've even started spinning. If you do manage to get the lid on, then once you start spinning the centrifugal force causes the bowl to lift off the kitchen counter as if it's about to take off, so you really have to hold onto it with both hands!

So I wasn't too enthusiastic when my fiancé's sister gave us the new Zyliss Smart Touch Salad Spinner as she'd bagged a freebie. I didn't realise that it had an innovative design, so I thought that it was bound for the back of the cupboard for many years to come. However, we had a BBQ with a good number of guests and I was put onto salad duty and the salad spinner was put to good use.

The Smart Touch salad spinner is available in a large or small size and we had the large one, which was handy as I had to prepare salad for about 30 people. It is also available in green or white.

The basket is rib free so it is easy to clean and it made washing the lettuce easy too. I managed to wash 2 heads of gem lettuce at once with plenty of room. We were told at cooking school that you shouldn't overfill the basket because when you spin the lettuce it can get damaged and bruised. The basket fits easily into the bowl, which is a simple design and good enough for serving. In fact, after the BBQ had been served and eaten, the bowl was the perfect vessel to put a selection of ice creams and lollies into to serve to our guests. The bowl is a transparent green colour so our guests could easily see what was on offer!

I found the salad spinner incredibly easy to use. The lid fitted perfectly so there wasn't any fiddling around. The innovative design of this salad spinner is the one-pump lever action. This folds flat for storage, so to release it you just need to slide the lock across. You then just need to press the lever down once to start the basket spinning, however if you feel the need for speed then you can press the lever twice! The mechanism works really well and is very smooth. You can easily press the lever with just one hand whilst you multi-task and do something else.

To stop it spinning there is a brake button, which is a good design feature as sometimes you don't want to wait for it to stop spinning. I did find I needed to give the lettuce a good few spins before it was dry enough to serve, but that is partly because the spinner was quite fun to use (OK I know I'm sad!). The non-skid rubber base prevents the spinner from sliding all over your kitchen counter, so it is very well designed. All the parts were easy to wash in the sink, but it doesn't state if it can be washed in the dishwasher (although you really shouldn't need to anyway!)

The diameter of the large spinner is 26 cm, so it is quite large and it will take up a fair amount of storage space. The small one has a diameter of 20cm.

I would recommend buying this salad spinner if you eat a lot of salad as it works really well and it makes light work of washing and drying your greens. For those salad dodgers then it's probably not worth it!

Currently around £25 from Amazon.

Comes with a 5 year guarantee.

Summary: Makes preparing salad a bit more fun!