Vintage Appliances: Manual Food Processors – Slice, Dice and Julienne!

Here’s a look at some of the manual food processors in the Cavalcade collection. I’ll do a video in the future on electric food processors, but here we look at gadgets like the Mouli Salad Maker, Rema Ware Salad King, Rival Kitcheneer, Feemster’s Famous Slicer, Galloping Gourmet V-Blade Slicer, and Ronco and Popeil products Chop-O-Matic, Minute Chef and Veg-O-Matic. #vintage #vintageappliances #cavalcadeoffood #vintagekitchen

Well hi there food friends it’s Kevin and welcome to kavada food and today a vintage appliance video Appliance Gad it you could call it one or the other but uh a few weeks ago I did A bean dip video uh I’ve made it a number of times since then very good and it is uh something that is made in a food processor and so I used one of my good old trusty Quin art food processors to make the dip

And I mentioned uh that uh I could do a video an appliance video on food processors and some of you said yes please so I’m going to do that but it occurred to me that really I have to break it in two parts so I’ll do a future one on electric food processors

Like the qu and arts and the Le machine and uh some of those other ones because today I just want to focus on manual food processors in other words things that do a lot of the same stuff that the electric ones do but they do it manually they without electricity by

Hand um and food processor is actually something that uh in one form or another has been around for a long time longer than we might think but they really came into the Modern Age um say you know really in the in the 40s 50s and so on and um I want to

Talk about one that is a favorite of mine and has been used for a long time and that is a mly Mulan okay and look at that French chef right there okay what a seal of approval so these are food proc manual food processors uh uh uh I know that one of

These this one was made in France not sure if this one was made in France or not but uh they originate in France and and and here it says mie salad maker and that is sort of what it was designed to help with uh although it

Does a lot of other things of course but um you know raise your hand if you ever went to the state fair maybe you still go to the State Fair well when I was a kid we went to the Michigan State Fair every year and it was a big deal and a

Lot of fun and while my siblings were off at the Midway uh going on rides and playing games um I love to go into the agricultural tents and see all the stuff that was being made and manufactured in Michigan and look at the animals my mom and dad always went to

Sort of the big stage there was all kinds of great entertainment there and I always got hooked into water watching my mom always knew where to find me one of the husters on the off the Midway who was selling things particularly stuff related to food prep pots and pants and

Kitchen gadgets and they almost always had some sort of food processor I was fascinated I would sit in the front row and you know every half an hour the guy would do his Spiel and do his demonstration with you know all the vegetables and I would just watch it

Mesmerized over and over again so here I am you know many many many years later and I’m still fascinated by this stuff so anyways the mie um this is one of the older models from from the 1950s and I don’t know this could have been purchased at a department store uh

But it very well could have been purchased at a fair um a big you know a big show an expo of some sort uh these salesmen were all over the place selling these gadgets uh but uh what you have here basically is um the the machine and and

And look at I love how this is just all in its box you have the machine here now this is an all metal version and here it says oh mly salad maker it’s embossed on the front and then it says made in France well let’s face

It back in the mid part of the 20th century stuff from France had a bit of a cache to it um and uh France was certainly known for its cuisine so anything kitchen related from France just had to be good so here’s a later version but you can see also made in

France they went to a plastic body but the design is largely the same you’ve got three legs so that it sits here on the counter and then you’ve got here is the directions for the mie salad maker and recipes so it’ll tell you what each one

Of the discs are so this is a number two fine shredding disc as an example super fine Shredder what do we got here um this is a slicer and we got a a chopper and a chopper grater and one more that fell underneath and this is a shredding

Desk so this you would use for shredding cheese uh things of that sort and and it was a completely simple design you had a hopper here where you put the food but first you put the disc in and so um it just simply went like so fit right in

There and then you have your crank which goes through this hole and into the center and it has to fit a certain kind of way here that locks in there you go so you put your piece of your vegetable here say you’re shredding carrots or a chunk

Of cheese you put it in the hopper this you use to press down and you turn and basically it just presses the food against that blade and Out Underneath on a piece on a plate or a bowl or a piece of waxed paper you know this would fit

Over a bowl too it was had a pretty wide stance you would have um mountains of coal SLA right uh you would chop onions so fast there wouldn’t be time to cry I’m trying to think of all the um uh little Expressions that the sales guys

Used to to make but here it is um and basically was very easy to use very easy to clean um and the whole idea was uh you know a great way to save time in the kitchen uh you didn’t have to do all this cutting all this fussing it was a

Nice way to get your family to eat more vegetables because you could prepare them uh in sort of new and fanciful ways so this is the mie and like I said here is sort of the original all metal version and then later they came out with this plastic version but virtually the really

The same design again you had a series of uh came with five blades for five different types of tasks and again you know sat on the uh over a plate or over a bowl and all you had to do was put the food in the hopper

And turn the crank and out came all this wonderful stuff so that’s the mie okay um I’m here solo today so I’m going to move the mie and we’re going to take a look at the Salad King okay next up is the Salad King this was made by Irena Weare which made very

High-end um pots and pans very high-end they also made electric Skillets um that often had an oil filled base uh to ensure even heating but they were I don’t know if they’re still in business or not I will ask our friend Hans I’m sure he knows um but they made really high-end stuff

And this uh this was sort of usually done at direct sales so they didn’t always sell these in stores you bought them directly from the company or from a sales rep um they might have been Shilling them out on the Midway at at the State Fair too but this is what it

Looks this is the Salad King this and I’m going to tell you what this is a heavy unit it’s got suction cup feet okay so kind of sits secure on the counter and then you’ll see uh here it has a crank and here it has a mechanism by

Which you insert one of these cones really an ingenious method um and these cones are very heavy gauge steel and uh you have a cone for chopping and you have a cone for shredding and you have a cone for slicing um and so you put the cone the cone’s

Got uh these openings here on the back side of it and those interlock with the mechanism on the inside and you can see what happens so here’s your Hopper here’s where you’re putting your uh your cabbage your carrots your whatever it is that you are uh your potatoes okay and

You’re putting that up here here’s you get a bowl and you do you put your vegetable and here you go however you want to do it and it just uh it just pours it out again it’s not doing anything that an electric food processor wouldn’t do it it’s just sort of doing

It differently and it’s doing it um using you know just through the crank and and without need of an electric motor uh and here is the booklet which of course explains uh everything that there is to know uh about this Appliance and all kinds of um wonderful recipes in

Here potato pancakes cheese balls buttered turnips zucchini Skillet cabbage glazed carrots um vegetable chowder anyways all right here with your salad King okay stay tuned more to come okay folks here’s our next one and perhaps one of the most famous food processors and um State Fair gimmicks that was ever marketed

This is the fster famous vegetable slicer ladies and gentlemen you see that um excellent for slicing potatoes onions cucumber cumbers tomatoes and various other vegetables also for shredding cabbage for klaa um no screws to adjust no blade to insert high carbon blue steel blade caution blade very sharp made in

Cincinnati Ohio here you go so uh let me know if you or anybody you ever knew had one of these fster famous vegetable slicers the guys who used to demonstrate these were par exellant uh they really really sold it and this is here’s the box and this is what you got on the

Inside you got a instruction manual with a few recipes um and but not a whole lot of information here’s the slicer itself it’s got a a blade guard there very it is very sharp okay basically it’s a a razor then you’ve got this little Gizmo here this

Slides I mean gosh in terms of materials I you know if this cost at the time 30 cents to make it was is a fortune but this is how it goes folks okay you you adjust this blade based on how thick you want your slice to be very

Thin to to very thick okay and then you just swipe you just swipe your vegetables across the blade here and to whatever thickness you have it set on and that’s it there’s nothing more to it uh it’s really just a stationary knife blade uh and it’s

Um boy they these were not expensive I want to say that they were selling these for um 7.95 or 5.95 or something like that and believe me they made a lot on each one okay but very simple and straightforward uh the fster famous vegetable slicer so in the spirit of the Fester’s

Famous vegetable slicer same basically idea this is a world famous Galloping Gourmet raise your hand if you remember Graham cerr uh the Galloping Gourmet who had a uh very popular cooking show in the late 60s and early 70s well this is a mandolin and a mandolin is basically the same sort of

Idea as the um as the fers and if I can figure out how to get it out here we go so this is the mandolin it is meant to go over a bowl uh or a you know a dish or something like that and basically

Instead of a single blade it has a v blade and it has one of these so this is where you you stick that into your Potato by the way you want want to make scalloped or a grotten potatoes a mandolin is a great tool I mean unless you’re really good at

Cutting each slice exactly the same width with a knife which I am not I always use my Galloping gouret Gourmet mandolin and so anyways you had various blades that that you could stick in here here’s one for doing like Julien strips um and you would you could also adjust the

Thickness of the slice and you know you would just do this over a bowl with again with your potato your tomato your carrot your cucumber whatever it was that you were doing very much the same idea as what the Fe fers was although the fers was just a straight relatively

Small Blade the mandolin gives you a gives you much more um room uh much wider uh so it allows you to cut things in different directions I like to use something like this if I’m making eggplant Parmesan and I can take that eggplant and I can cut it lengthwise

Down the eggplant for some nice layers okay as an example so this is actually a gadget that you know go into a kitchen store or a kitchen Department in a department store or certainly online you could there’s all kinds of mandolins for sale this this is a gadget that really did stand

The test of time because it’s fairly inexpensive and it’s very versatile and it is a food processor so okay the Galloping Gourmet vblade mandolin slicer so here we have a Kitchener by rival so uh many of us will recognize the brand rival is makers of the crockpot

And rival made a lot of other stuff they made can openers and um all kinds of other small appliances and among them was the Kitchener and this box contains a Kitchener combination meat grinder and food chopper vegetable and fruit Shredder slicer grater rival Manufacturing Company Kansas City Missouri so here it is um

And actually there’s one in the Box this is a complete set and this one does have in addition to the shredding and chopping uh it has the meat grinder attachment that you could put on top so in addition to just slicing and shredding you could uh actually grind

Meats make your own hamburger other ground meat grind up vegetables for relishes fruits for uh jellies jams canning things of that sort so anyways the Rival Kitchener and it basically was a rotary kind of a food processor not unlike the Salad King that we saw earlier so in terms of uh

Processing foods with regards to slicing and shredding and things like that grating here you had very much like the Salad King you had a cone disc um or a cone shaped AP insert that you would put here and you had a food Hopper and you’d put the bowl where I

Put it you put the Bowl here okay uh and this one uh that’s on right now is for um it looks like sort of fancy uh slicing um making ridged uh designs in whatever it was that you were cutting um and here you have uh grating

Grinding here is a thick slice cone a thin slice cone these are very heavy gauge this is not chintzy these were very wellmade uh and they are uh you know really heavy gauge steel uh and you can see the bottom here has these suction cups uh

Meant to sort of really secure it to the countertop so that you had a good grip and you would just turn so for chopping and uh slicing this really was what you used then you would switch the top out and you would put in this Hopper here and then you had these

Round sort of concaved discs that would fit on here and in this case what you would do is you would put on a disc here’s um that’s for slicing here is uh large grade smaller grading and then what I’ve got on right now is very small grading uh for maybe things like

Parmesan cheese or chocolate or whatever you put it in the Hopper here and you’d press it against the blade and turn and it would come into the bowl again very heavy uh the bottom is sort of a a a powder coated pot metal but uh the mechanism is stainless steel and

Heavy gauge steel so that is the Kitchener from rival uh I I’ve seen a lot of those over the years and then sort of akin to this here’s another system works the same way except this one is all Chrome plated is that pretty uh again it’s got these very

Large suction cups on the bottom uh and this is called a food cutter uh the instruction manual has a copyright date of 1950 5 so this Baby’s almost 70 years old hard to imagine anyways but here I love there’s an illustration in the book here for the shredder number one uh cone and

It shows the person shredding bars of Ivory soap uh to use as you know laundry detergent or dish detergent or something like that um excellent for making soap flakes uh um and shampoo is made quickly and easily from harder soap well there you go so it’s not just for food so

Funny how they used to really think of every possible use and this one uh is pretty Deluxe because it has five cones a shredder a Stringer a thin slicer a waffler and a thick slicer so again same thing you have a hopper you have a a circular cone shaped

Insert uh that you can change out easily depending on the task and you go ahead and put in your fruits vegetables bar soap as it may be whatever it is that you’re doing and this is the food cutter another great man manual food processor and finally how can we talk about manual food

Processors without talking about the greatest salesman of all time Ron popel and uh the many gadgets that he was promoting uh over the years and this may not um I don’t know if this translates uh to so many of our food friends are in other parts of the world

But here in the United States there was a guy from Chicago Ron papel and he had uh a company called Ronco among other things that made all kinds of gadgets and he was one of the first direct consumer marketers on TV uh but his stuff was also sold I know at state

Fairs and other trade shows and things like that and boy he sold a lot of stuff over the years and I think some of his stuff was even sold in Department Stores um and so I’ve got a few examples and they were food processors uh they certainly

Qualify uh and they are they are in the food processor Department here at the cavalcade uh along with the other things we’ve seen so here is an early one of his early um gizmos inventions Contraptions whatever you want to call it and this is the chopomatic and the new Giant Food

Chopper stainless steel automatic rotating blade and uh it says chopomatic is the largest and fastest allpurpose household food chopper in the world and enjoy its food magic convenience in these suggested uses so it has on the side things that you can make Meats chopped liver okay um

Hash all kinds of seafood vegetables of course klaw relishes hash brown potato potato pancakes um desserts baking salads with fruits and dried fruits and nuts things of that nature check this out folks endorsed by the international Cooks Association an organization of culinary Craftsmen since 1906 this guy knew how to sell here you

Have the directions on the other side of knowing your choatic and how to assemble and um yeah manufactured by popil Brothers Chicago Illinois so most of his stuff consisted of a combination of metal and plastic so here’s the choatic here it is and you can see it’s a spring

Activated thing and when you when you push down whoops okay when you push down it turns and it just plunges down um so that you can essentially me put a cutting board here whatever you put under it is going to get chopped and I don’t

Know if you can see but that blade keeps turning kind of turns clockwise about a quarter turn and so to thoroughly chop it I’m not sure what this part is it’s a either a guard or an extension of some sort and I will have to have to read up

On it um but anyways this is the pil choatic and then here this is the popil minute Chef plain and fancy food cutter saves time saves work slices shreds Julian’s Ripples and Waffles okay um it’s got a copyright date of 1967 on the bottom and it’s got a price

Tag on the top from Yankee department stores and we didn’t have any of those that I know of in Michigan I think those were more out east but this had a price of $777 and then it has a sales sticker here $4.9 so someone got themselves a nice

Bargain on the minute Chef so let’s take a look at this minute Chef again it whoop is uh plastic and what’s in the box okay so who remembers this now we we’re looking at that um uh mandolin gallop Gourmet mandolin folks this is really a mandolin this is

Sort of the um the same idea you’ve got a very sharp Carbon Blade right here okay and then you’ve got this little dtic little dial on the side and as you turn it it changes the level of this blue tray so in other words it either puts it

Closer to the blade or further away from the blade so you could have different thicknesses of slices going through and you’ve got a little Pusher here that goes into the center Groove and kind of again because that blade is sharp and if you don’t want to lose a fingertip you

Know this is how you do it and that’s basically all there was to this uh oh and look it came with a frame garnishing tool garnishing cutter stainless steel remember how we saying about the mie anything French seemed uh try sophisticat uh especially with um uh uh Cuisine and cooking and things

Like this this is basically a waffle cutter or a crinkle cutter blade that fits in there as well very sharp I’m trying to be careful so I don’t cut my myself um you couldn’t sell this stuff today okay it would not it would not pass OSHA

Regulations and it a dollar value has a dollar on the so you were really getting something extra when you bought this and here is the recipes and operating instructions look who’s on the cover the French chef magnifi uh and it gives you all kinds of uh ways that you can use your popile

Minute Chef not sure what these went for um you know probably $9.99 something like that maybe they had well we know this one okay the retail was $777 so I don’t know I guess they sold about in that price range and then finally we have the PO vegematic slices dices

Chips makes Julian fries folks another great popile product it says on the top this is the vegematic food preparer um poile Brothers 1969 uh is the copyright date on the bottom and this one we will take it out again it’s just a big old plastic thing um this one’s a little whoever

Used it last didn’t do a very good job cleaning I will say here’s your use and care book um for the vegematic tells you how much time and money you are going to save in the kitchen um most women prepare one 95 meals a year so you know this is really going to

Help uh you could do thin slices Dice and french fry cut thick slices yeah anyways it gives you all the tricks and basically what the venatic was was a guillotine okay I see it has has two locking mechanisms wh here we go okay you put your potato your onion your

Tomato your pepper your whatever your okay and you can see this blade that’s in it okay has got uh it’s kind of a cross hatch style and it is going to you’re going to put it there and this is all you’re going to do folks you just

It’s one easy press down you’re going to push that uh piece of vegetable or fruit right through those blades it’s going to come out the bottom and uh your work is done how about that so um boy he sold a lot of these and I remember vividly seeing a demonstration

For one of these uh at a fair uh and of course I was trans absolutely transformed I might have suggested to my mom that she got one and uh she you know kind of rolled her eyes and said oh I think I’ll be okay she figured she could

Live without this but a lot of people just knew they had to have it um blade settings thin slice julienne dice french fries thick slice so that’s it right there you lock it down you’re all set keep it handy folks you’ll use it each and every day

So the venatic so we have the venatic the minute Chef the choatic uh these are gadgets and I guess essentially everything that we kind of looked at today was a gadget in some ways because if you’re good with a knife honestly you can do about all the food

Processing that is necessary some of these things make a little quicker work of it but you know you then you got to clean it all um and that is always my dilemma I love my quz and Arc food processor and other food processors but depending on the volume of what I’m

Chopping I have to make a call because there’s a lot of parts to those food processors and they all have to be washed afterwards and if I can if I’m just needing to chop an onion you know what I have my cutting board I have

Good knives and I can do it quickly so um but again what would this world be without inventors and marketing and all these things that have been manufactured over the years uh designed to make our life easier so I hope you enjoyed looking at this sampling of manual food processors

Here in the cavalcade collection I’ll do a future video and we’ll look at the electric food processors um but I just I just thought it would be fun to start with these uh because some of them are really iconic uh and I thought it would bring back

Maybe some memories for those of us of a certain age who might remember seeing some of this stuff and you know what they still make uh different kinds of manual food processors today I see them all the time in the in the kitchen Departments of stores and uh in

Specialty stores so nothing new Under the Sun really but I appreciate you watching um there is a website called COC food and I invite you to check that out if you want to connect to all the things that I do in my spare time uh as

Well I ask you if you haven’t subscribed and you like the videos please subscribe to the the channel it does help me out a bit when you subscribe share the video with any like-minded person you might know somebody who’s like us who enjoys seeing these vintage uh kitchen helpers uh and

Among other things that I feature here on the channel but most of all I appreciate your time and spending it with me I hope everybody is well and I will look forward to seeing you again real soon right back here on caval food bye everybody