Product Review: Waring Pro Food Slicer Model FS150

Wafer thin slices of cheese, meat and bread are simple to achieve using the Waring Pro Food Slicer. You can have deli-thin sliced food in a matter of minutes in your own home. The Waring Pro Food Slicer is a must for the serious home cook, for those who enjoy serving meat/cheese platters at parties or for those with large families.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer, model FS150 costs about $99 (on sale) at most retail stores carrying this product, such as Macy's. It can also be found online at Amazon.com. While this compact machine is not as large or heavy as a professional deli slicer, the power in its heavy duty 130 watt motor packs a big punch for the home kitchen.

This food slicer is made of coated steel and die cast aluminum. It is mostly stainless steel with some black trim, making it an attractive addition to your counter top. It takes up some space so if you have a small kitchen, you may want to store it away, but it is not much larger than a standing food mixer or crock pot. A cover is not included with this machine, so if you do leave it on the countertop, you will want to wipe it down prior to use.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer has suction cup feet which is a wonderful safety feature as the machine won't slip or move from the counter top during operation. This is extremely important because the 7.5" heavy, undulated stainless steel blade is quite sharp. A large, easy to turn knob controls thickness of your food slices with a simple twist. The Waring Pro Food Slicer has a stainless steel carriage and surface on which the food rests during slicing. This feature allows you to cut nearly the entire food item down to about 1/8 of an inch. This is difficult to achieve using merely a knife. It has a protective blade guard to keep the blade protected when not use.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer is easy to use. Once plugged in, you place the food item of your choice on the carriage, and simply move the carriage back and forth. The blade does all the work for you.

It is fairly easy to clean both food by simply wiping it down with a soapy sponge, by using a spray bottle or other household cleaner. You do want to make sure you get all the food particles from all the crevices, which can be a bit of a pain, depending on what you are cutting. You can simply remove the blade of the Waring Pro Food Slicer using a screwdriver on its one central screw. I recommend checking behind the blade in addition to wiping down the front as food, especially more moist meats will leave some debris behind during the cutting process. We have not had to remove the blade after using it for almost a year.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer saves time and money in the home kitchen. It comes in handy for preparing large platters of thinly sliced meats and cheeses, and can easily take a bagel and make homemade bagel chips from it. For large families who shop at shopping clubs such as Sam's or Cosco, purchasing whole meats in the deli section for sandwiches would be a wonderful way to get the most use out of this machine while also saving you tons of money as compared to purchasing pre-sliced and pre-packaged or deli-sliced foods. In addition, you know exactly what you are getting and can slice your food as you need it, keeping it fresh.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer is customized for home use to fit on the counter top and allow home chefs to prepare thinly sliced food that can't be made quite as thin using either a regular knife or electric one. Waring stands behind its product with a generous 5 year warranty. You can also purchase a replaceable blade should you need one.

I recommend the Waring Pro Food Slicer for harder meats and cheeses such as pepperoni, roast beef, ham, salami, provolone, bulk American or cheddar cheeses, vegetables and fruits such as apples, onions, eggplant (to get super thin slices for eggplant parmesan). I have not used it for softer cheeses, but soft cheeses typically do not need slicing, so I would not recommend taking a sharp blade to it as the Waring Pro Food Slicer would. This is a great machine for those who love to prepare antipasti, meat platters, vegetable platters and subs for parties as it will give you very thin slices of meats and cheeses with little effort, saving you time and money on pre-sliced items.

The Waring Pro Food Slicer is an excellent machine to help you get rid of your leftovers. When cooking meats such as roast beef or chuck, ham, and other large meats such as whole turkey breast, the Waring Pro provides super thin slices which are great for leftover sandwiches during the week. We like to use it for lunch meat after cooking a Sunday roast. We have used it for cutting pepperoni and sausage for pizza, to make philly cheese steaks from cooked low cost roasts which are delicious and melt in your mouth, unlike the frozen meat steaks you buy in the grocery store.

The one thing I do not like about this machine is that it does have a bit of a smell to it while you are cutting your meats, which is attributed to the lubricated gears in the machine. The Waring Pro Food Slicer can also be quite loud during operation and does not come with a cover. Cleaning can be a little bit of a process to make sure all the food is removed from behind the blade and in the crevices, but not much more difficult than cleaning an electric knife or a whisk from your stand food mixer.

It is probably not a machine for the professional chef who may have to slice meat in huge quantities or for those who rarely have the need to slice meats and would be better off sticking to a knife or electric knife. Overall, I recommend the Waring Pro Food Slicer for those who love to make homemade foods, meat, cheese and vegetable platters, for those who enjoy freshly cut lunch meat, for those with large families who like to buy meat in bulk and for those who like to use up all their leftover meats in creative ways rather than just reheating them. The Waring Pro Food Slicer will provide you with wafer thin slices of meat and cheese with very little effort and will pay for itself after several uses if you think of the money saved by purchasing prepackaged meats and cheeses that are just not as fresh as those sliced from home.