A few years ago my mum thought she would like a meat/food slicer, she's a vegetarian like me but was convinced it would be useful for bread as well, after I moved into my own home and got a bread maker she fished it from the back of the cupboard, dusted it off and thought it would be ideal for me. I personally think she was trying to get rid of it, but not wanting to sound ungrateful I took it and thought id give it a try. My husband was pleased, he's a big meat eater and thought this would be ideal for us but I wasn't convinced.

The food slicer in question is the Kenwood SL250, it comes in quite a large box which takes up a good chunk of cupboard space. The has very little information on it, just pictures really apart from a little bit of electrical information which says:- 220-240V, 50/60Hz and 100W.

Inside the box the slicer is in 5 separate parts which when all put together ready for use measures approximately 28 x 21 cm's. It doesn't have a very long cable in my opinion, it measures just 100cm's which is fine if you are working near a plug but if not this may pose a problem. The slicer is easy to put together, it consists of the main unit, the blade, a plate that fold up for storage, a plastic handle to side the food across the blade and a little plate that has small plastic spikes on to grip the food you are slicing. All the plastic pieces are white on colour and feel sturdy and well made. The blade is like a little circular saw and quite vicious looking.

The blade is made from stainless steel, is 17cm's and has a serrated edge, it fits into the slicer easily and quickly, you don't need to touch the actual blade there's a small plastic screw in the middle that turns and locks the blade in place. Once this is done the plate needs to be folded down, you then pop whatever you need to slice on the plate, attach the handle to the unit and push the little spiked plate onto the food.

There is a small wheel on the back of the slicer that you can turn to determine the thickness of the slices, there are 7 settings for this ranging from wafer thin to 1.5cm's. To operate the slicer there's a side button which has to be pressed all the while you are slicing, before you can do this though there's a small safety button on the top that needs to be pressed at the same time, you don't need to hold this button down continuously its just a safety aspect, ideal if you have children as they cant come along and just press one button and start it up. These buttons are a nice size and east enough to operate. When in use the slicer isn't overly noisy sounding no worse than a food mixer.

Once you are all set up to go its just a matter of pushing the meat or cheese or whatever food you are slicing backwards and forwards over the blade using the handle. The slices come out of the machine at the back, and here is one of the problems with this appliance. There's nothing there to catch them. On the occasions I have used this I have laid a clean tray behind the slicer to collect the food.

Another problem is that despite the slicer having 3 rubber non slip feet the unit doesn't feel overly stable when slicing. I'm sure if you didn't have to keep pressure on the button to keep the machine working it would very slowly slide along the work top.

How good this slicer works depends on what you are slicing, if its a nice square piece of cheese then its fine, if its a joint of meat then in my experience you don't get any nice slices until you are getting well into the joint. The first and last slices are just little bits of meat, the same as slicing with a knife really and it hardly seems worth setting the whole thing up just for a few nice slices from the middle of the joint.

Bread is another thing that doesn't really work well in the Kenwood slicer, I find you need to have the settings on the thickest to stop the bread breaking, I hate thick slices of bread and find I get on much better with my electric knife.

When it comes to washing the meat slicer its a case of taking it all apart and washing it in a bowl of hot soapy water taking care with the blade. This is another negative with this appliance, its such a pain to wash. There's so many nooks and crannies for meat and cheese to get into, its quite time consuming making sure its all clean and hygienic, of course you cant put the main piece in water as it is electrical. This needs to be wiped with a damp cloth. Once washed drying is the my next bugbear. Obviously its not advisable to put the whole thing away damp so I usually leave it all laying out over the work top till its perfectly dry.

All in all I don't think I would recommend the Kenwood meat slicer, it has some nice features like a safety button and a little area underneath to store the cable but to be honest its not worth the hassle of getting it out, putting it together and then having to wash and dry it for the average results you get from it. I find an electric knife just as good and it takes seconds to wash.

If you still fancy a slicer then the Kenwood SL250 is available from several online stores such as Amazon or 247electrical where they cost £36-40.00 depending on where you buy from.

My slicer is now languishing in the loft where it will stay until I get round to putting it on ebay, I will stick to using an electric knife!