Customer Reviews

Microplane 35019 Home Series Black Fine Ribbon

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This particular grater is good at several things, but it is also in particular the finest zester ever made: hold the fruit in your off-hand and grate away on top of it with your good hand: the zest quickly and conveniently collects on the back of the blade. But even better: you can watch the grated area of the fruit slowly change from skin colour to white, so you know exactly when to stop before you start to get into the bitter pith.

An added bonus with the fine ribbon grater is that you can give it to your five year-old and have him do the job knowing that he cannot possibly injure himself. Oh, it's remotely possible he could hurt himself, sure, but one of the best early lessons I learned about child-rearing is that it's not our job to stop them getting hurt: we just have to stop them getting injured.

It's impossible to give a proper star rating to this particular grater, though, because the entire Microplane Home Series should be avoided like the plague because of the poor-quality, brittle, transparent plastic the frames are made of. The natural way to get the zest off the grater is to bang it on the edge of a bowl; unfortunately that's also the best way to shorten its life and ensure that your guests discover sharp-edged transparent, glass-like shards in their food.

I no longer own any Home Series graters, and Microplane currently doesn't make a fine ribbon in their Professional or Gourmet lines, so this one is unfortunately the only game in town at the moment. I was lucky enough to get an enormous job-lot of seconds and discontinueds directly from the Microplane site, and it happily included a Pro model of this one (with several different, replaceable blades: a brilliant design). Hopefully they'll reintroduce it, but in the meantime just go easy on this one.

We used this for a couple of years and liked it a lot. But it had a plastic frame which broke in two places so I replaced it with another model which has a metal frame. I will ALWAYS use Microplane graters and zesters.

I couldn't figure out where plastic chips were coming from in the food that I was eating!! After looking around, I found that the plastic edges of these "home series" graters will crack and break due to flexing after a couple of months use. The plastic chips end up in the food.

Additionally, the black rubber handle will slide off at the most inappropriate times and eventually get filled with food, which is impossible to adequately clean.

Avoid these "home series" graters. Look around for something more durable and easy to clean.

I bought this Grater about 6 months and it is so wonderful. My mom has basically eliminated the use of the traditional square grater. Whenever there is a need for anything to be grated, out comes the new grater. And its so slim it fits easily into our silverware drawer.