Do You Like Garlic?

If you cook with garlic, this baby Cuisinart is a fantastic way to bring out more flavor in your dishes. It is lightning quick at mincing the mother of all herbs and spices. I cut garlic cloves into quarters, drop the pieces into the machine, and three seconds later, the garlic is minced and smelling great. To remove the little flavor specks from the side of the Mini-Mate, Cuisinart includes a special little spatula perfectly contoured to the sides of the machine's cup. Do you want to mince ginger? In three seconds it's done. This thing is so fast that the owner's manual recommends that you "think of time in a whole new way".

Another use for this little tornado of action is grinding your daily coffee beans. I have a separate coffee grinder that does the job just fine, but if you're setting your sights on just one chopper/grinder in the kitchen, the Mini-Mate can crank out the grinds for your daily brew. If you want coarse grounds (i.e., for use with a French press), the Mini-Mate produces a better, more uniform grind than my Krups Fast Touch. Unfortunately, the Mini-Mate takes its sweet time while grinding coffee beans; it can take up to 20-30 seconds to finish.

Although I don't do it very often, I've also chopped nuts in this junior Cuisinart.

The build quality of the machine is excellent. The parts feel very solid. At a price of $30 or less, it is comparable in price to many purebred coffee grinders out there. The Mini-Mate, though, has more functionality.

The big drawback with this machine is its difficulty to clean. For those of us without a dishwasher, the tiny blades are hard to maneuver and clean thoroughly and safely. Even if you have a dishwasher, the motor base must be wiped down by hand, and there are enough nooks and crannies to make this a real pain. The solution for someone grinding coffee daily would be not to clean it every day. However, if you also use this machine for mincing garlic and chopping nuts, you will want to clean after each use.