Microplane 36030 Grater Gift Set

Pros: Very effective; superior design of grating holes; dishwasher-safe; useful slider/guard attachment
Cons: A little water can get in the handles, but it drains easily
Rating: 5 out of 5

First published 1/26/2006
Review item courtesy of Microplane Media Division

If you’re looking for a gift for your favorite cook, it’s hard to go wrong with the Microplane 36030 grater gift set. It includes two graters–a “medium ribbon grater” and a fine grater–as well as a slider/guard attachment that you can use to avoid grating your fingertips.

The ribbon grater is particularly recommended for softer things such as vegetables and soft cheeses, where you can best make use of its ability to produce wide, flat gratings, but I also like what it does to hard cheeses. It produces thin flakes that look nifty in a snowy pile atop a hamburger, and that melt well in an omelet. The fine grater produces very tiny shreds of citrus zest, chocolate, and hard cheeses. It’s wonderful when you need cheese that will melt fast, or a drift of chocolate to decorate a cake.

The graters are wide and flat with large, comfortable handles that are easy on the hands. The graters are edged in clear, hard plastic that doesn’t slide around like I thought it would when you prop it on a plate to do your grating; it stays in place quite well. The hand-guard can be slid onto the end of either grater; it has a square hole in the middle that you put the food to be grated in, and a plastic pusher that you put atop of that. It’s slightly awkward at first if you get the pressure in the wrong direction, but once you get used to it, it works quite well. I only rarely use the guard however; the holes on Microplane graters are narrow and low-angle, which makes it difficult to grate yourself on them despite their exceptional sharpness.

These graters are dishwasher-safe and remain beautiful and pristine wash after wash. We use ours daily to shred cheese for such things as omelettes and salads, and they’re every bit as beautiful as the day we got them. They even come with hard plastic covers that slide on and off easily, to protect both the graters and anything else you might want to store along with them.

The only slight negative I’ve found is that if you put them in the dishwasher and the handle isn’t angled upward, a small amount of water will get into the handle. This part is all plastic, so this won’t cause any rusting; it just means you’ll need to put it in a drying rack with the handle sticking upward to drain for a short time.