Growing up, I never understood why some people found it necessary to use a bagel guillotine. It’s easy enough to cut a bagel with a sharp knife, and it avoids squishing the bagel the way a slicer does. Part of my rejection of the tool is probably New York Jewish snobbishness (coupled with fear that if I ever embraced such a shanda, I’d be required to return my virtual circumcision and fountain pen). But it also comes from a sense that using such tools makes the whole process of bagel eating less sensual and more antiseptic.
As such, I’m agnostic about the Oxo mango slicer until I actually get a chance to try one out for myself. On the one hand, if you watch the video below, you’ll see that it makes very quick work of a mango, turning it into two halves and the seed in no time flat. And honestly, I’m better at and more interested in mango eating than mango cutting.
On the other, I wonder if the tool exists because of the big deal that non-desis make about how messy mango eating is. I remember once somebody on the radio solemnly intoned “mangos should only be eaten naked and in the ocean.” My mother scoffed and replied “White people don’t know how to eat mangos, otherwise they wouldn’t make such a mess.” Sometimes I lose the fruit under all of the “exotic” subtext going on and I don’t know how much of this machine’s appeal lies in this myth of the messy, untamable mango.
Will any of you admit to having used a tool to (ahem) split the mango? If so, did it increase or decrease your pleasure?
Related Posts: Mmmmmmmangoes!, Flesh for Fantasy
This won’t work for juicy Indian mangoes. The one she cut was hard as a rock.
wish indian mangoes would arrive here too…
Agreed with Gulti Girl (damn! I missed the first comment)
Ennis, I’m leaning on siding with your mother on this one. On the other hand I’m told about one incident when I was MUCH younger – me naked in a tub eating my beloved mango. Apparently that was the only way to contain the mess 🙂 Ok. Feel free to make fun of it now. Cheers.
Booooooooooo!!!
It’s wrong, it’s all wrong! Sure, it makes the gutli easier to handle, but the two side slices would be so messy. Because of the size, curvature and amount of fruit on slices, you will have mango all over your face.
I prefer traditionally sliced mangoes.
If no one is around to slice it for me, I halve it along along the girth so that I can eat it with a spoon.
You’d score and invert them, they demonstrate in the video clip.
thumbs down: it would squish the heck out of my mango
I’m a fan of more sensual mango eating.
Like 99% of specialised kitchen gadgets, this looks like junk. Mangoes are not THAT messy to eat, no more so than say fried chicken. The gutli is the best part, you have to sink your teeth into a mango to really enjoy it. And if you’re in polite company, then you just eat the phaaris and scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Is that really so hard? Meh.
that mango was hard as! unless the blades are super-sharp, it wouldn’t work for an over-ripe mango at all. though my favourite way to eat an over-ripe mango with perfect skin is: squeeze it all over, gently, so that all the flesh goes mushy but stays inside the skin. then bite a tiny hole in the skin at the pointy end, and you can pretty much suck out the mango pulp through that. then when that’s all gone, tear the skin in two and go the gutli. yum… i miss a good, ripe mango. all the ones you get in the supermarket here (australia) are as hard as the one in the video.
I’ve used apple corers, and I’ve certainly used bagel guillotines, though I’m temporarily in my non-bagel eating phase right now. The apple corer saves time. The bagel guillotine prevents serious injury, which can very easily happen if you aren’t careful (I speak from experience). But a mango slicer does nothing for you, really. You don’t save time, there’s no risk of injury, so why do you need one?
Yeah, I’m with the junk-kitchen-gadgets, hard-ass-mango, and ferengis-be-stoopid contingents on this one. What’s so hard about slicing off the seed? This thing leaves so much yummy mango wasted since, I assume, they expect people to discard that whole middle seed part? You could also just score it directly ON the mango, they way she does at the end, and peel pieces off…
That picture in the post is very suggestive! The fingers add to the effect. I did not even think ‘mango’ when I first saw it.
I live in Hawai’i, where mangoes are common as dirt. Get ’em free, by the bag, in season. I don’t like them that much 🙂
I read this article and I laughed. I was sure the thing that would finally prompt me to post would be a) a nitty-gritty socio-political debate and b) in the distant future.
Confession: I’m Caucasian, and I just learned how to properly eat a mango earlier this evening. An alphonsos mango, to boot. There was a lot of laughter at my conversion to both the varietal and the mode of eating.
Having learned how to eat a mango without dribbling juice all over myself, the table, my clothes, and any electronics or books that happen to be nearby, I have to say I wouldn’t buy this device. I’m competent with a knife, and two vertical slices are well within my capabilities.
You know it! Naked in the tubby tub tub.
they totally stole that from “the thorn-birds”. flashes back to frustrated teenage years spent reading aunt’s copy, wondering why all the priests i came across were so un-hot
All this mango talk has me acting all hot and bothered. Such a tease.
squiahy mango?
squeeze it all around… cut a hole in the top.. slurp it all out…
I feel like a mango virgin. I actually slice it properly (well, I have someone else do it because it’s too difficult to do myself), and always laughed at my mom for slurping it out. And I think they’re very messy!
I’m so ashamed …
But..But… mess is part of the fun. You haven’t really eaten mangoes unless your lower jaw is tinged orange. I hate it when people cut up a mango and serve it on a plate with a fork. Give me the mango, and give me a knife and let me do my own thing.
Ha, you need knife! Silly virgin, us promiscuous mango peelers need nothing more than fingers. I repeat, the proper place to eat a mango without being harassed by the cultural police is the tub. Treat the mango bits that are stuck underneath your finger nails as dessert.
As a kiddie, I loved spraying whip cream in my mouth but I’d always get jhutian so I snuck the whip cream canister into the tub and slobbered myself silly straight from the can. Sometimes you gotta be a pig.
THANK YOU! I’m so glad someone else has a dirty mind, too, Kurma. I saw that before I read the post, and immediately thought, “someone’s come up with a way to cut a mango so ornately that it suggests…well…
What Taz and I are thinking. Too bad you’re not in DC, Taz. I know a great little place where you can get your fingers dirty.
I’d never use this gadget. Two slices from both sides is the best way to get it open. Mess is a very important part of eating a mango. I’ll never eat a mango with a fork, the way I eat fruits from the cafe at work. It’s insulting the mango. Same goes with eating frozen / canned mango.
Mangoes always remind me of the summers I spend in my grandparents’ house. The first thing we kids did every morning was to wait outside the house for ox-carts full of mangoes to arrive. My grandparents lived closest to the river, so we were the first to see the best mangoes that came from villages across the river. (It was summer so the river was shallow and the carts could easily go across.) Every kid got their own kilo or more of mangoes to finish by the end of the day. We did it for 2 months each summer, for atleast 10 summers, till I finished school. Who cares if we didn’t take fancy holidays like the other kids?
I haven’t eaten a mango in three summers now :-(.
OK, everybody, describe how you cut your mangos. If you say “Two slices from each side” what does that mean? How is that different from this machine?
I’m going to go with the anti-machine folks on this one for the following reasons:
It’ll end up being just another piece of useless crap you have lying around the house
It won’t work on ripe fruit
It might detract from the from the most fun part of eating mangoes which is, clears throat, sucking the flesh off the seed.
OK, everybody, describe how you cut your mangos
It depends on what variety.
The juicy ones, you squeeze the heck out of, pinch the “nipple”, suck the flesh out. But it doesn’t end there. Peel the skin off and scrape remnants with your teeth, and leave enough time for the seed too.
Fleshy, but firm ones, two large hemispheres from the sides, which are then cut into half so they fit in the mouth, two slices off the sides of the seed, which still leaves enough on the seed to make it worthwhile.
You know, the machine would be really handy for cutting unripe (green) mangoes…you know, the kind they sell on the beach in India, with salt and chili powder.
Learned from my pasty secular-jewish Moms in Central Illinois: 1. Use sharp knife to slice skin off entire mango in strips 2. Continue slicing large strips off mango. Mango is held as vertically as possible. 3. Slice until tough hairy pit is hit. 4. Hand pit to kid (me) if available. Remove remaining fruit from pit with teeth.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
Having had my share of mangoes as a kid, I am kinda done with messes. Here is how the mangoes were cut during the World Cup finals : mango, meet knife. mango gets cut into cubes mango cubes, meet fork. Finis.
Enjoying Mango Solo: 1-take sharp knife and cut vertically down the mango twice, on either side of the stone 2-suck mango stone dry 3-suck out sweet mango flesh with lips, teeth and tongue
Preparing Mango for Friends/Famiy 1-same as above 2-cut mango (gride-like) w/o piercing the skin 3-Remove diced chunks of mango from skin.
Mangoes have made it to Central Illinois? When you were little? I remember offering mangoes to my (WASP) roommates once – one of whom was from Palatine (I know, not quite central Illinois, but still) The other was actually descended from one of the Mayflower families someone listed earlier this week. No kidding. None of them wanted any, and inspite of repeated attempts to get them to try a tiny piece, they just wouldn’t!
I worry about mangoes from India coming to North America in a big way, though. There was a big promotion two nights ago in the Indian Embassy, with Ambassador and US trade officials, and I’m not sure I want Indian mangoes to be totally mainstreamed in the US, it could end up raising prices in India and putting good quality mangoes there out of reach for most Indians, if it took off here. I’ve had Brazilian mangoes and they’re quite good too.
My comment is totally unrelated to the slicer but has to do with consumption tactics. My sister has a neat trick that she described to me:
She’s a total pro.
I have a personal boycott on all things Oxo. I hate them and their rubbery handles.
Occasionally, but memorably. I think they were from Mexico. Also my Moms was the most adventurous culinary explorer in town, if something “exotic” appeared at the store, she’d try it. My tastes were extremely conservative back then (all I wanted was grilled cheese sandwiches) but my first taste of mango got me hooked. As a teenager, my sister brought a South American college friend home to a Summer meal where my Moms served fresh homemade mango sorbet for dessert. College friend explained that mangoes in her country were as ubiquitous as apples here, and they used them to make “mock peach pie.”
My first introduction to mangoes happened one Thanksgiving (in the early 80’s) my uncle made homemade mango icecream. It was the best part of the meal! I’m lucky enough to live in an area where mangoes can be grown in the yard.
What’s with all the fruit posts lately?? If you’re gonna pull this food network shit, we at least need a substitute Rachel Ray.
Anna??
Thats the way to eat the juicy ones.. hmm..
Indian mangoes to be available in the US:
http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/01/news/international/indian_mangoes/index.htm
I am SOOO curious.
I miss mangoes. I need mangoes. I prefer to cut them two side, slice into cubes (with the skin still attached) and invert the skin so you have this porcupine effect. Then you eat it. No fork need. But my mom always made us eat the seed over the sink. So it’s habit now. And floss- must follow up mango eating with floss.
So many useless inventions in this world. None greater then the “Sanitation toilet seat cover”
It takes 5 damn minutes to use the thing and make sure it doesnt just slip into the bowl before you can sit down. On the other hand it takes 10 seconds to just use toielt paper to make your own seat cover.
Cat mops come in a close second. You put these little mops on the feet of cats and when they walk around they mop of the floor at the same time.
And by the way, I have this awesome invention for cutting mango’s. I call it “mom”
so. my girlfriend is a food journalist and she gets all these gadgets for free. She got this useless p.o.s and it does nt work. not even a little. The blades arent that sharp and its just a pain in the ass to force the thing all the way through. What you need to do is the old desi way of getting a really ripe aamba, smoshing it up in your hands withthe skin on, like you are giving it a massage, the bite the top off like a cigar or grenade and then suck the goodness into your gullet. wawawawaawawawawawa
I prefer using a knife. I cut off two main pieces, off of the wider sides of the pit. Then I cut off the slices off the narrower sides. 4 slices to consume + the pit, which is the most fun. 😀
the device might be useful for folks who love mangoes but are allergic to the oleoresin found in mango rinds–which can cause a rash similar to poison ivy. this device would allow them to cut mangoes without fear of getting a rash. more here; http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc98/8_8_98/food.htm
the faster i can get to a mango the better! right now the fastest way from mango to mouth is my mom. she peels, cuts, and serves it to me nicely chilled. damn, my mom is the best gadget in the WORLD!!! but if i lived on my own… i’d get this thing.
I have tried this Mango slicer on a juicy mango and it did not work. Rather I almost ended up cutting myself and squashing the mango. The above comments stand correct, you would need a really rock-hard, firm mango, in order for this gadget to work. Honestly speaking it’s not that hard to cut a mango!
I personally love eating the flesh around the seed… but I don’t think non-desis would like it very much. way too messy. and like someone said above me, the mango-slicer leaves too much fruit in the middle! oh and I love bagel guillotines, mostly because I’m absolutely useless with knives.
wow! someone had a lot of time on their hands to make this “invention.”
1] for someone who truly enjoys kutcha [raw] mangoes this could truly be a godsend. but i have to agree with the fact it would massacre a ripe indian mango.
2] isn’t half the fun of a mango getting your hand all messy and then licking off the juice?? b/c that’s truly my favorite part!
Fellow mango lovers, I am so happy to be in the company of people who love the mango as I do!!
Thank you and keep writing about this King of fruit.
chick_pea (# 17) knows how to eat a mango without a mess. You turn it into mango juice within its own skin.
I’m neither white nor desi, but I do think mangoes are messy. (Hee hee, that kinda rhymes.) Having grown up in St. Thomas, I didn’t realize mangoes grew outside of the Caribbean until George W. Bush got them from India in exchange for nuclear technology.
I’ve never heard of a mango slicer. I wouldn’t use anyway, because I’ve never really been into mangoes. Not sour enough for me.