Food Strainer

I didn't buy my Victorio from Amazon; actually it was a gift from my aunt. If you can tomato sauce or make jelly or otherwise process juice/pulp, you NEED one of these. It's not that expensive, and it is such an improvement over the old cone-shaped strainer with a wooden pestle/roller. The Victorio is simple: put in the spring & the food-screw; twist on the strainer cone you need & lock it. Put on the clear plastic cone that lengthens the strainer (this helps the waste come out into a bowl.) Screw the Victorio to a side of your table or counter. (You DO need a kitchen table or counter edge. I put mine on the edge of my counter with a tall chair beside it holding a stock-pot for the juice) Put on the shield/spout and the big funnel, and your stock-pot under the shield/spout for the juice, and you're ready to go. This may take you a minute or two at most. Then it's intuitive: scoop your tomatoes into the big funnel and turn the handle. Juice and pulp come out the side of the strainer-cone, down the shield/spout and into your pot. When finished, I carefully take off the shield/spout and scrap the remaining pulp on the outside of it into the stock pot as well. In maybe 5 or 10 minutes I can juice/pulp a 16 quart pot of tomatoes, usually getting around 14 or more quarts of juice. I don't can like the Mennonites do, but I have about 50 jars of tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and hot sauce in the pantry this year, in addition to whole tomatoes. We don't use a lot of jelly, but I have also made a little jelly using this strainer. I like this product because it is simple, fairly easy to clean, and requires no electricity. (I think you can buy a motor now, which might be convenient if you're putting up hundreds of jars, or if you have really bad arthritis.) A child could safely operate it except for the fact that you're often using very hot fruits/juice/vegetables. The skins/waste is good for chickens or compost.My chickens love the waste as a treat! I can't say enough good about this little device. It actually does what it is supposed to do, which is saying something.

I promised someone I'd come back and review the model 250 when I got mine. Here's the update--it works just as well as the old model. The table clamp is better, but the way the screen attaches is worse, since you have to grab onto it to take it apart now. It leaks just as the old model did, but a little less. All in all though, it works like a charm and turns out a beautiful job with little work. The review below still stands for the newer model. I can a LOT of tomatoes. This year I did 30-50 pounds a week, all summer. My old process: wash tomatoes. Cut slits in the bottom of tomatoes. Dunk tomatoes in boiling water. Once the skins split, dunk in ice water. Peel the tomatoes. Cut out the core. Cut off green shoulders. Cut off bad bits. Put tomato in saucepan. Crust tomatoes with potato masher. Cook down the tomatoes, process in water bath canner. This takes ALL DAY. Then a friend took pity on me and loaned me her Victorio Strainer. It's at least 30 years old, probably older and still in great shape. The first time I used it, it was like the heavens had opened and angels began to sing. Here's my new process: Wash tomatoes. Cut off bad bits. Cut tomato in half or quarters. Run through the strainer. Cook down and process. DONE. The resulting puree is gorgeous and seed and peel free. I can use tomatoes with blossom end rot--just cut that bit off. I can use all my cherry tomatoes that I could never preserve before. There is almost no waste--after you run the tomatoes through once, dump all the peels and cores back in and run them again. You'll be shocked at how much more juice and pulp comes out. The resulting waste is almost dry. I had a gallon of waste from 50 pounds of tomatoes. This thing is completely amazing. It does leak a bit. Don't know if that's because it's old, or it's the nature of the beast. I DO NOT CARE. The screen is a bit of a pain to clean. I DO NOT CARE. This thing is so much faster and so much better than doing it all by hand, these small annoyances are nothing. We also did 100 pounds of Concord grapes for juice with this, and it was awesome. I'm here to buy my own so I can return the one I'm using. Oh, just save yourself the aggravation and buy the accessory pack while you're here. Once you start using it for something like tomatoes, you'll look around and want to do grapes, or salsa, or pumpkin... better get those accessories now.

It works well and comes apart easily for cleaning. Few things I wish were made more durable--the cup for the discard. Its a cheap thin plastic. Even though I have tried to be very careful with it, I still got a crack down the side. I have only had it for one month. Once it breaks I don't know what I'll do to prevent discard from falling into the sauce. Secondly, the handle comes off the base easily. Nice feature when you are storing but not in use. The handle slides off easily while I'm turning it. Not a big deal, just frustrating to keep picking it up and worry that it's going to land on my toes (this part is heavy duty). so overall I feel it's a good product and fairly priced but disappointed in some parts--feel it could be a really quality tool that would last for years. As is I think I'll be buying something else in a year two.

Absolutely the best product on the market for making tomato puree. I was a bit hesitant because it's expensive, but it's absolutely worth it. It gets out every last bit of Pulp and so the discards that come out are pretty dry. Easy instructions and easy to wash afterwards. Clamps securely to the counter.

I wanted a nice middle of the road grinder, strictly for tomatoes. While this product isn't fancy, it performs exactly as advertised. There is a total of about 6 pieces that fit together, so it isn't complicated. The only part that is remotely challenging is pressing and twisting the screen into the crank housing. It isn't horrible, but for people with less hand and grip strength it might be frustrating. But once it's assembled (<5 minutes), it works like a breeze. You don't need much strength to turn the crank, and it processes the tomatoes pretty quickly. I was pleasantly surprised at how effective it was filtering the skins and seeds out from the pulp/juice. At most, a few stray seeds might sneak through, but not enough to mention. So unless you need to process a LOT of tomatoes, this is a nice choice. It's not deluxe by any means, but it's not going to fall apart after a few uses. My sole criticism is that the screen isn't dishwasher safe. Make sure you have a bottle brush or something similar to aid in cleaning.

This sauce maker is fantastic for apples (haven't yet tried it with anything else). I suddenly had well over a hundred apples to process and this device made it ridiculously easy. After washing them, I just cross quarter each apple and pop off the stem. I then cook the apples in about a 1/2" of water until they're soft stirring often. Takes about 15 - 20 minutes per pot load. Then the cooked apples get moved into a very large bowl to cool. While that's happening, I start another pot of apples. Once that next batch is cooking, I run the apples through the Johnny Applesauce. Really easy cranking and the sauce comes out perfectly. I got about 25 quarts of applesauce made and bagged for freezing in 2 hours. The device is easy to put together (but read the directions as there are nuances you don't want to miss) and take apart. Care must be made to how the gasket is seated in the collar of the sieve. The gasket is thin and made of a weird material (silicone?) and can creep or fold over if not very carefully seated. Worth paying attention to. Also, definitely oil the spiral auger tip as instructed. Good tool. Would have loved a more robust version (all metal) but that's just not done anymore. Hand washed in a few minutes. Good purchase, especially when on sale. Mine doesn't leak at all and was quite tidy to use.

I planted six tomato plants this year and we have tomatoes coming out of our ears. I have a couple of different ways I can tomatoes - either quartered in juice (hot pack) or crushed in juice (hot pack). But skinning, coring, and prepping the tomatoes for packing takes awhile, and sometimes, I would look at my bowls full of tomatoes and think, ugh. Then I saw an Internet tutorial from someone who used this food strainer to make tomato sauce and I thought, aha. Maybe this would make processing bushels of tomatoes a little faster. Setting up the strainer takes very little time and learning how to use it takes even less. Once the machine is assembled, you take washed, quartered, unpeeled tomatoes and put them into the hopper and then crank them through the strainer. The strainer separates out all the skins, seeds, cores, etc. What comes out of the strainer is an extremely smooth, seed-free, thin tomato puree, and out the other side comes a nearly dry mash of the "leavings." I take the puree and simmer it down into a thicker sauce, which I can in quarts. I take the "leavings" and put them in the compost pile. The worst part of using the strainer is cleaning it, which takes some work. The instructions say not to put parts in the dishwasher, but I don't see much harm in putting the plastic parts through, on the top rack. Cleaning the metal cone filter takes some effort and I wish they included a stiff conical brush to assist with this. Also, the small steel spring that you need to make the strainer work is easy to lose - we've already lost one, and had to order a replacement. All in all, though, this is a GREAT tool and makes processing tomatoes into cannable product fast and easy. I LOVE not having to skin tomatoes, my least favorite task of canning them. I got the salsa screen as well, and while the screen allows for a few more seeds to get through than I would like, it produces a nice, chunky puree that is great for both fresh tomato sauce and for salsa. If you have a lot of tomatoes to can, I highly recommend this item. I plan to put it to use making applesauce from baked apples later this year - apparently you can core and bake the apples and then toss them into the strainer almost whole, which will be a big improvement over the multiple hours of cooking down my current recipe requires.

So... after using this to process about 15 lbs of tomatoes out of our garden to can tomato "sauce" I can say that it is VERY GOOD at pulverizing tomatoes and removing skin, seeds, and cores. However, I can say that if you would like anything other than a VERY FINELY processed juice/pulp mixture, this device is not for you. If you want to reserve the juice of the tomatoes separately from the pulp that it puts out, you can pretty much forget about it. It does a great job separating all of the solids from the tomato "pulp" and juice. That being said, I tried to use a fine mesh colander to further separate the solids from the juice, to no avail. This is because the machine so finely processes the tomatoes that it is impossible to further separate, because the pulp clogs any screen that the juice might run through. Also, if you intend to make any type of sauce with your tomatoes that you would desire any real texture derived from tomato solids, you can forget about that, too. If you are making tomato sauce... in the very TRADITIONAL sense of the word, meaning a finely pureed, no chunk, cooked tomato liquid, then this is what you are looking for. If you want any tomato chunks WHATSOEVER then you should skin, core, and seed your tomatoes another way. I had better luck with the traditional method of scoring the X on the bottom then boiling the skins off, cutting the tomatoes and squishing and washing seeds out through a colander. I then put them through a traditional food mill. I also did this once without seeding them and it was okay... just a few seeds, if that is acceptable to you. It was not a lot more work to do this, especially considering the amount of work it takes to clean the Victorio machine when you are done. WHAT A CHORE. If you are making traditional Italian "tomato gravy" or "sauce" as we Americans would find it in the can, then the Victorio is what you are looking for. If you are looking to make a textured tomato sauce like you might want to put on any number of American dishes like spaghetti or lasagna, then you may just want to take the time to break it down by hand, and reserve the juice for soups and pot roasts, instead of having to cook it off for hours, which is what I had to do with the product from the Victorio. It really just depends on what you need. This machine puts out one specific product... tomato puree with juice combined. End of story.

Fácil de armar en cualquier superficie, muy práctico

This device performs MIRACLES. It takes 80% of the work out of making Pasta Sauce, and 75% of the work out of making Applesauce. It makes processing those pesky little crabapples a pleasure. I also purchased the 4-piece accessory kit, and look forward to trying it out on grapes, later this fall. The device is brilliantly designed, well made, and of sturdy materials. It is easy to assemble from memory, after following the directions the first time. It is easy to wash. Yes, it does unavoidably leak a little at the bushing at the base of the handle, however this is easily managed by putting a small container on the floor or counter beneath it. There may be no way to design this small leak out, because of the need to be able to access all parts to clean it thoroughly. While others complain about these few drops, I find it is no biggie. Yes, when processing a LOT of fruit or vegetables, one does have to remove the screen & spiral to clear the screen, every once in a while, however this is part of any screening process (no fault of the machine), easily done, and a small price to pay for the amazing work it performs & the time it saves. My only regret is that I didn't buy a Victorio decades ago. I certainly would have done more canning, if I had had one.

Disappointing I had to purchase optional extra screens. But have produced some great pip free berry jam with this device. Occasionally have to use small amount food grade oil if it seizes.

It‘s a great and handy tool, works pretty well. But it‘s cheap made, way to cheap. The inner parts start to rust right after the first use. That‘s because the parts are simply galvanized, not stainless steel. I did it right as shown in the manual, hand wash it and dry it. To be honest it‘s nearly impossible to dry out alle the little spaces and edges and surprise, surprise, rust.

This device works, but not as well as the original Victorio strainer. It has a lot of dead space behind the auger that wastes a lot of fruit.