Customer Reviews

Microplane 40020 Classic Zester/Grater

5 star:		(383)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased this after spending 2 hours zesting limes for a gourmet cookie recipe with the traditional potato-peeler+ food processor method. The most time consuming part is carefully scraping way all the white pith on the inside of the peel. The pith is very bitter and can ruin your recipe. This zester did the same job in 30 seconds and didn't even touch the pith. Just pure, perfect lime zest with no effort. Totally worth its weight in gold. Now I can make those cookies again without my hands cramping up after hours scraping the peels. Who has time for that?

I've also started using it for grating parmesan. Definately takes Ceaser salads and pasta up a notch. I'm purchasing several more as gifts for my friends. Would make an incredible (and cheap) holiday/birthday gift for anyone, even the casual cook. Please note that the size of the grated zest or cheese is very fine and not ideal as a garnish. Parmesan or Romano grated with this tool melts quickly into the pasta, and doesn't lend much to the presentation. Tastes great, but hard to see. If you're looking for a garnishing tool, this is not it.

When I received this wonderful product I placed it in the drawer and mostly forgot about it until it was time to grate some parmesan cheese. I remembered I had bought it, brought it out and pressing the cheese hard against the grater I ran it down. To my absolute amazement the cheese came out the underside of the grater with total ease. I ran the cheese across it again, this time, pressing lightly and the same thing happened. Whenever I had grated cheeses before the job was ardurous, very time consuming, and the result was usually more of a powder then nicely sectioned flakes of hard cheese.

This grater is made of the very best material and extremely sharp! I can see owning this tool for many years because of its quality. I am very pleased with my purchase and encourage others to buy one.

The grater came with the manufacturers "slip cover" over it and I decided to keep it on the grater when not in use for two reasons:

1. The grating surface is very sharp. It would be easy to cut yourself pulling this out of the drawer. Ouch!

2. I want to preserve the grating surface's blades for as long as possible because this is now one of my favorite tools.

This is probably the only tool in my kitchen that I've also found in my dad's workshop. I use it for a variety of grating tasks including hard cheeses, chocolate, nutmeg, cinnamon, and citrus zests.

For hard cheeses such as parmesan, you'll get a nice, light fluffy pile of cheese as opposed to the grittier result from a traditional box grater. This is because the Microplane actually produces tiny, thin strips as opposed to hard little granules. Your cheese will melt faster and will actually look somewhat elegant perched in a snowy mound atop a bowl of pasta.

Hard spices such as nutmeg grate quickly and easily, and it's a snap to run the Microplane over an orange or lemon for just the right amount of zest and no pith (unless you press to hard or work the same spot too long). With wetter foods like zest, you will have to slide the resulting product from the backside of the plane as it does tend to stick, but this only takes a quick flick of your finger. Chocolate will need to be quite cold so that it's hard enough to grate without melting or slipping.

Finally, the Microplane is extremely easy to use because you can grate right into the pot or onto a plate. It's long enough to rest on the lip of most bowls, and it's elegant enough to bring to the table. In fact, we recently had a dinner party and we passed around this tool so that our guests could grate just the right amount of bittersweet chocolate into their black-bean chili.

Cleaning can be a bit tricky with this tool, since its sharp holes will catch on a towel when you try to dry it. Personally, I find that a few hard taps dislodge any gunk and I seldom need to actually wash it. But if you do get it wet, be sure to dry it thoroughly as you would with any fine kitchen knife. If you wipe toward the handle, it shouldn't be a problem.

The entire Microplane line is a marvel of culinary engineering. The well-stocked kitchen will have several Microplane graters, but this one is perhaps the most versatile.

Just a few quick and easy passes around your favorite citrus, and you've got a nice neat pile of zest, pith-free, suitable for your angel food cake, dessert souffle, or fruit cookie. You will never again buy pre-grated Parmesan cheese, nor will you ever again waste your money on the cardboard specks your grocery store calls pre-grated nutmeg. (And trust me, you haven't had eggnog until you've had it dusted with fresh nutmeg.) Need chocolate dust? Not a problem. Takes a couple of seconds.

Buy a whole set of Microplanes and throw away your uncomfortable, unsafe, and hard-to-clean box grater. One of the best low-tech kitchen innovations in years.

Since receiving a Microplane zester and grater as a gift, my old tried-and-true box grater has been living in the dark. This thing is incredible. It's especially impressive when you think of how long it's been since something new in grater "technology" hit the shelves. I love the Microplane's shape--it's like a wand with a big comfy handle, so you just hold it with one hand over a dish or a pan or with the tip pressed on the countertop. The hardest cheese shears into grated fluff with almost no pressure. Storage is a no-brainer. It's about the size of a baster, so it lives in my flatware drawer. I'm in puppy love.

Based on the very enthusiastic review from Cooks Illustrated as well as seeing most of the FoodTV chefs using and raving about this tool I bought the grater about 6 months ago.

At first I was of the same opinion as the other reviewers here. Piles of Parmigiano-Reggiano just seemed to appear after a few effortless strokes. Zest was very fine and dispersed well in recipes. I have changed my opinion of the grater on several fronts however.

Safety: After 1-2 months I noticed the teeth getting duller. It required more pressure to grate the cheese. With the grater being only about an inch across, barely wider than the parmesan, it is easy to have the cheese slip off and your hand come down on the grater edge. They have made the problem much worse by having the teeth wrap around the edge of the grater rather than there being a rim. If you click to see the enlarged image of the grater you can see this clearly. Why in the world would you have teeth on the edge of the tool? Sure enough I gouged the edge of my index finger deep enough that it took several days to stay closed and I thought I might need a stitch or two.

Cheese Grating: The Cooks Illustrated review touted how light and fluffy the cheese was when grated. That sounds great but does that lead to the best flavor for $18 per lb cheese? I don't think so. The amino crystals that break on your tongue of fine Parmigiano-Reggiano are destroyed. It is more like taking a bite of salted dust.

The Microplane is great as a zester but because of durability, design and safety issues I'm looking elsewhere.

I bought this grater on the recommendation of Cook's Illustrated magazine. I must say that this is truly a great product for your grating and zesting needs. I love the way it makes mounds of wafer thin parmesan cheese curls that melt into warm pasta. It grates effortlessly and produces a very fine zest when used with citrus. It makes the perfect lemon zest for my New York Cheesecake recipe. But be forewarned. This is one sharp tool with dozens of razor sharp cutters. It might very well be prudent to wear cut-proof gloves just for safety's sake. Otherwise, it's a wonderful tool for cooks.

Highly recommended!

I have been a long time fan of this grater. I have the whole line but I keep gravitating towards this one for most of my jobs. Besides being good for hard cheeses like parmesan and pecorino romano it works well for zesting fruit. Which is great since the fruit zester in this line has no handle.

But be warned -- the softer the cheese the more difficult it can be. Also, for the asian cook who needs ginger grated super fine to extract juice or for more traditional ginger paste this is not the tool of choice. You are better off using the specialized Japanese ginger grater which will handle more fibrous roots better.

This grater will produce a very fine shred so if you are hoping to get the larger shred try another cheese grater in the line or fall back on the more traditional methods. Because of the fluffy nature of the shredded product you must pack firmly if using a measuring cup or else you are measuring more air than expected with the more traditional larger, heavier shred.

This is one of the most useful gadgets in the kitchen and is a necessity for anyone who needs to zest anything . This grater will save you alot of time zesting any fruit and make super fine grating of cheese easier. A great introduction on the product line. Highest recommendations.

The Microplane grater was origionally designed as a wood rasp and found its way into the kitchen. The teeth are sharp, stay that way and don't clog up the way other fine graters do, so it's a snap to clean. It works spectacularly with hard cheeses like parmasan, shaving it effortlously into tiny curls. Because of this unique shape, the cheese melts almost instantly on hot pasta. When measuring parmasan cheese grated with the Microplane, make sure to press down on it in the measuring cup or measure by weight, because it's curled shape increases the volume of the cheese substantially compared with cheese grated with a conventional grater. As was noted it is a terrific zester and worth the price for that function alone.

I already own a more traditional zester, the kind with 5 or 6 little holes across the top. It does a great job when I want bigger pieces of zest for an accent or a garnish. But when it comes to things like recipes calling for the zest of one lemon to mix into other ingredients, I would have to take all those little strips of zest and chop them up. Now I have microplane and life is wonderful. Zip, zip, zip and I've got a lemon's worth of perfect tiny zest. I'm looking forward to trying it on things like chocolate, nutmeg and particularly ginger. Buy this. Really.