Buy It And Try It: Magic Bullet

The Magic Bullet claims it can do virtually any job in the kitchen in
10 seconds or less. Let's see if that's true.

Scott Wilson is the chef of his house. The husband and father of two
says most of his time in the kitchen is spent chopping and preparing
the ingredients. "Could be anywhere from 15 minutes to a half hour."

He uses gadges like a blender, chopper, cheese grater and knives.

The Magic Bullet is supposed to chop, mix, blend, whip and grind.
Scott likes what he sees.

"Oh, a timesaver. I could spend more time with my family."

It comes with 22 parts, including some blades, a pitcher, a tall cup,
a short cup, five mugs and a couple lids.

We start by making margaritas. Scott throws in the ingredients and
blends them for ten seconds.

"Actually, that's good. Real good."

Scott likes the fact that you can actually blend drinks in the special
individual cups that come with it, in case everyone wants something
different.

Let's see how it works on coffee beans. "Actually, it ground it up pretty good."

How about salsa? We follow the seven-second recipe in the recipe book
but realize we have to cut up an onion and peppers before dropping
them in, which takes a bit longer than seven seconds. This time we
have to use the pulse technique.

It doesn't seem to grasp the onion, so Scott uses the tap technique,
which the directions state will help it along.

That doesn't work, so he eventually decides to cut up the onion. In
the end, everything is too blended. "That's no salsa," Scott says.

Let's grate some cheese. Just drop in your favorite kind and run it
for four seconds. "Actually, it grates pretty good."

Finally, the quickie chicken quesadillas. Drop in cheese, precooked
chicken and tomatoes, and Magic Bullet away. It doesn't seem to grasp
the cheese or the chicken.

"It's just grinding what's all down at the bottom, just grounding it.
It's not sucking it down to the bottom."

So checking out everything we've done, what does Scott think about the
Magic Bullet? "It works for some things, but not everything that's on
the commercials."

I paid $59.95 and I bought it at Costco.