You can stock your entire kitchen with Aldi’s seasonal rotating selection of Special Buy (ALDI Find) products, ranging from dishes to stand mixers to this Crofton Salad Spinner. Let’s take a look at Aldi’s salad spinner.
First, if you’re unfamiliar with salad spinners, these products are great for rinsing and quickly drying fresh vegetables and fruit. Most people just use them to rinse and dry salad greens. You place your greens in the colander bowl, rinse them under running water in your kitchen sink, place the colander into a solid plastic bowl, put the lid on, and push a button (or with the Crofton Salad Spinner you crank a handle) to spin the colander around inside the solid bowl. You now have salad greens that are not sopping wet. You can then empty the water from the solid bowl and serve your salad in that, if you choose.
I own an Oxo Salad Spinner that I received from my grandmother as a bridal shower gift 11 years ago. It works well but has developed some mold or other dark discoloration under the small rubber ring on the bottom of the solid outer plastic bowl, where the ring attaches to the bowl, and I can’t get it clean. No food comes into contact with that part of the bowl, so it’s more of an aesthetic issue than a matter of functionality, but it does look a bit gross.
So when Aldi sold the Crofton Salad Spinner as a Special Buy or Aldi Find item, I picked it up. It was about half the cost of most new Oxo Salad Spinners.
Also of note, the Crofton Salad Spinner is identical to the HULLR Premium Salad Spinner on Amazon. The HULLR product refers to a spout on the lid as a dressing/oil spout, while the Crofton Salad Spinner says the spout is for adding water during the rinsing process. Basically, the Crofton Salad Spinner is a rebranded HULLR Premium Salad Spinner. The reviews for the HULLR product on Amazon are good, and any issues reviewers there have are similar to some of my concerns that I share later here.
The HULLR Premium Salad Spinner. It looks exactly like the Crofton Salad Spinner.
Right away, I noticed the Crofton Salad Spinner is large, holding 4 quarts. It’s larger than my old Oxo Salad Spinner. You can rinse a lot of greens with this thing. As is typical with salad spinners, this set comes with three pieces: the solid bowl, the colander that goes inside the solid bowl, and the lid. The colander (Crofton calls it a basket) and bowl are dishwasher safe, while the lid is to be hand washed only. The product is BPA free. There are no directions on how to use the salad spinner, but it’s fairly easy to figure out.
There are more moving parts on the Crofton lid compared to my Oxo spinner. Most notably, the Crofton lid has a spout on top if you want to add water that way during the rinsing process. The lid also has a small strainer on one side so you can tip the bowl and drain water out. To operate the spinner, you turn a hand crank on the lid, and two small buttons on top of the lid serve as the brake.
The Crofton Salad Spinner seems slightly inferior to my Oxo salad spinner in a few ways. First, the Crofton hand crank is a little harder to grip while it’s moving. In contrast, my Oxo model spins at the push of a simple button. Second, the Crofton spinner does not have the rubber coating on the bottom of the solid outer plastic bowl, so the whole device is more likely to slide around on the counter top when in use. On a positive note, because the rubber part is missing, there is no place for mold to grow like it did on my Oxo spinner. Third, the inner colander or basket seems to be more flimsy on the Crofton spinner. The plastic is flexible, and I can’t speak to whether it will hold up with long-term use.
The Verdict:
Aldi’s Crofton Salad Spinner is basically a rebranded HULLR Premium Salad Spinner sold on Amazon, a product with good reviews online. It is large, but the hand crank is a little difficult to grip while spinning, and the entire thing slides around on the counter top a bit. The inner colander basket is flexible and I’m not sure how durable it will be with long-term use. Considering the low price, though, this salad spinner is likely a good bargain.
I used mine for the first time, and it did not dry the salad at all.????
It’s not supposed to completely dry the salad; it just makes it so it isn’t sopping wet and dripping everywhere.
We use ours all the time and love it. We cracked the bowl and are now waiting for it to show up again at Aldi’s to buy a new one.
I was cleaning my cabinets and found two salad spinners. One as described here and another one that looks like a large measuring cup with a top that spins also. Does anybody know what it is? Is it just a smaller salad spinner? It has a handle and its clear with a white top, round spinner that says Crofton and inside is a green basket.