Mangoes are brilliant right up until you try to get the fruit off the stone. The stone is big, flat and slippery, it’s hard to see where it starts, and most attempts end with a knife skidding sideways and juice running down your wrist.
The OXO Good Grips Mango Splitter is a ring with a handle on each side and a stainless steel blade running across the middle. The blade bows out into an oval, roughly the shape of a mango stone. Stand the mango upright on the board, line the blade up with the narrow side, and press straight down. You end up with two cheeks of fruit, and the stone stays wedged in the middle of the tool.
Pressing it through
The press takes a bit of weight, especially with a firmer mango, which is why the handles matter. They have soft, non-slip grips, so you can lean on it with both hands without your palms sliding off. The blade is stainless steel and sharp enough to go through a really ripe mango cleanly, and a really ripe mango is exactly the one that turns to pulp when you go at it with a knife.
After that it’s the usual routine: score each half in a grid, push the skin outwards and slice the cubes off. The splitter won’t do that bit for you, and it doesn’t peel. All it does is the fiddly, slightly dangerous first cut, and it does that well.
Odd-shaped mangoes
Mangoes vary a lot in size and shape. A very large or oddly flat one won’t always line up with the oval, so you might leave a thin strip of flesh on the stone. For an ordinary supermarket mango it’s fine, and nibbling what’s left off the stone is half the point of eating a mango anyway.
Mine would live in the drawer next to the garlic press, which is to say it’s a one-trick tool, and the trick is mangoes. If mango goes into your smoothies most mornings, that trick gets done a lot. It’s dishwasher safe, too.
