Cirillo Houseware Fruit Strainer Accessory With Plastic Attachment Hub

The Cirillo fruit strainer works exactly as advertised on tomatoes!Making tomato sauce is hard, messy work.Anyone that complains about this product is obviously new to the kitchen and has not toiled with any of the "traditional" saucers out there! I have used this strainer on four separate occasions and processed 25+lbs of plum tomatoes on each of those occasions. I am no fan of plastic tools but it appears that the right kind of hard durable plastics were used in the design, engineering & manufacture of this strainer.Not having to skald and skin the tomatoes first is a huge time saver.A few notes for the first time user:- At counter height & attached to your kitchen aide mixer, the top of the hopper is well above a comfortable working height. I am 6' and can barely see in over the side of the hopper. I would recommend sitting your mixer on a table or other low work area.- When pressing the tomatoes down into the throat of the hopper, I instinctively felt the need to support the weight of the strainer with my other hand. The strainer does protrude out unsupported from a somewhat small point of attachment & it is plastic after all. Perhaps the addition of legs on future designs to help support any weight from the downward pressure might help. But to be clear, at no time did I fell like the saucer was going to break. I did feel it was important to mention here.- After processing 25 lbs of Plum Tomatoes, the pores on the sieve screen were somewhat clogged. If I were doing more than 25lbs at a time, I would probably clean the screen between batches. The strainer does need to be dismantled but the screen cleans easily with hot water & a stiff bristle bottle brush of a larger diameter.- 25 lbs of Plum Tomatoes yields approx 36 cups of juice/pulp. Resist the urge to process the waste product a second time. This will clog your screen & render the juicer useless until cleaned. I put a colander in a bowl to catch the waste. A fair amount of clear liquid will pass thru the colander & collect in the bowl which I do add back in to my juice & pulp bowl.As someone who has twirled a wood pestle around in a funnel shaped metal sieve for hours on end, the Cirillo strainer is a huge time saver, creates less mess and is a welcome relief to old aching joints & muscles!Update Aug 30, 2022: I processed 300+ lbs of San Marzano tomatoes this season. Each 25lb batch took approx 30 minutes to process. The Cirillo strainer continues to work flawlessly & I stand by my earlier review. When attached to a kitchen aide mixer the total height, mixer & juicer, is 26". This year I set it up on a knee high table & the height of the hopper was a perfect working height.

I don’t normally write reviews on Amazon, but I love this thing so much that I feel I had too.First, the strainer is primarily made of a tough feeling plastic. And no point during assembly or use did I feel like any part was stressed or in danger of breaking. Speaking of assembly, it’s super easy to do!Contrary to the product instructions, I ran cooked tomatoes through it to get a more juicy product, rather than the saucy product shone in the videos/pictures. Despite what their instructional videos say, I had no issues with this, and had very minimal leakage (cleaned up with 1 paper towel).I was able to run about 20lbs of tomatoes through in just a matter of minutes!! If you are trying to process a large quantity this thing is a must. I’ve used the hand crank version of this style strainer, as well as a traditional food mill, and the speed/effort level isn’t even comparable. Also, this is far superior to the actual kitchenaid strainer (or it’s knockoffs) for making tomato juice. The hopper is actually large enough to hold a useful amount of tomatoes, unlike those kinds.For the MOST part, cleanup is pretty easy. The only thing that is difficult to clean is the screen. The remaining pulp is a real bugger to get loose. I ran them through the dishwasher and it got a lot loose, but I had to use a bottle brush to finish the job.All in all, an absolutely excellent product!!

Update** I contacted the seller and they were extremely friendly and understanding. They offered to either refund or replace the strainer. I opted for replacement and had it within 3 days! Thank you!!I bought this in June of 2021. I’ve used it 3 times to make tomato sauce. It worked great, until the last time I used it. The metal grate popped out and bent, breaking the plastic brace. Not good for heavy use.

The screen surface is too small. It does not allow enough surface area or time for tomatoes to be juiced. Then it gets clogged. This is all despite following “tips” in the manual to use speed 4 (tried several different speeds) and by cutting tomatoes fairly small. Then the auger gets lodged inside and it’s nearly impossible to remove and clean. I am VERY disappointed as I purchased this for my wife for Christmas. She makes a lot of spaghetti sauce every fall. So now it’s past the return window by the time we used it and discovered these downfalls. Very disappointing.

This device did puree a batch of tomatoes, and I would recommend it, with caveats, for small batches. The plus side is that the manual describing how to put this together and how to use it is easy to follow. The device is also sturdy enough for ocasssional use. I was unable to finish 25 pounds of tomatoes. The throughput decreased after about 15 punds of tomatos and after 20 pounds it didn't work at all. When I disassembled the device for cleaning I found the problem - the seeds did not expel and the screen got clogged. The most negaetive comment is that getting the auger out of the screen tube after use was very difficult. I had to ease it out bit by bit using a pliers on the end of the shaft.

I really like the product and it arrived very well packaged with nice instructions. I debated between the Cerillo and the kitchen aid attachment, in the end I went along with the Cerillo and I’m glad I did. It took me a few minutes to make tomato Passata sauce with it. This was my first time making tomato sauce but I’ve watched ton of videos on how to do it. I opted to blanch my tomatoes for a few minutes until the skin cracked, but the instructions state it is not necessary. The attachment cleans up really, really well, I made practically no mess when using it, you can put it in the dishwasher, and the attachment seems good quality. I ran my tomato “waste” through the device hopper a second and 3rd time just to squeeze out every last ounce of juice. Only thing I am not happy about is that after I ordered the product on Amazon, I saw it online at 2 other online stores and the product was $39.99 or less. I paid around 1.5x the price on Amazon.