The reputation mandolines have for cutting people up isn’t really about the tool being unusually dangerous, it’s that most models are just a bare blade with nothing between it and your hand once the vegetable gets small. A slicer built with an actual guard changes that equation, and it’s the difference between a gadget you use often and one that ends up back in the box after the first close call.
The OXO Good Grips Handheld Mandoline Slicer adjusts between three thickness settings, 1mm, 2.5mm, and 4mm, which covers everything from thin cucumber for a salad to thicker potato for a gratin. The blade sits fixed in the frame rather than exposed on its own, and the large non-slip handle combined with a stable foot means you’re not gripping a small plastic tab an inch from the cutting edge.
It’s built to be used hand-held over a plate or bowl, or braced against a cutting board, whichever suits what you’re making. There’s also a small window in the body so you can see roughly how much you’ve sliced without stopping to check, which sounds minor until you’re halfway through a big batch of onions for caramelising and don’t want to over or under do it.
It handles more than vegetables too. Firm cheese and fruit slice just as cleanly, so it’s not a single-purpose gadget that only earns its drawer space during vegetable-heavy weeks.
If a flat blade and a bare hand have put you off mandolines before, this is built specifically around removing that risk rather than just warning you about it in the instructions.
