 WProfessional chefs have what the French call a batterie de cuisine that is devised to keep cross-kitchen traffic to a minimum. This foreign ‘item’ (specifically the batterie de cuisine) comprises all the tools of the professional cook’s trade, including pots and pans, sharp knives, bowls and dishes, and a whole bunch of useful kitchen gadgets that make their life easier in the kitchen – because all these items are kept close to where each chef is working.
But what exactly is a gadget? Strictly speaking, according to the dictionary, it is a small mechanical device or appliance – although the exact definition does depend on which dictionary you refer to. Generally gadgets are smaller items (not appliances like cookers and refrigerators), and they are developed to make things easier to do. So kitchen gadgets are, very clearly, quite small devices that help us to do things more easily and quickly in the kitchen. There’s a huge selection from which to choose. You will find that they range from appliances that make it easier for us to chop, slice and grate vegetables, to small squeezers that we push into citrus fruit (oranges, lemons and so on) to instantly extract just a few drops of juice that you can add to a sauce to sharpen it, or drizzle into a drink or over a salad.
Gadgets are fascinating because they always seem to do things a bit differently – and usually more efficiently – than the gadget that came before. In fact, one of the most fascinating things about gadgets is how clever inventors are able to reinvent them over and over again.
Many of the devices they have come up with over the years do the very same basic tasks we need done in our kitchens, especially chopping, slicing, grating, squeezing and mixing, indifferent ways. Every new gadget looks different, and quite often it fulfills its function, chopping for example, a little differently too. Furthermore, those who market every new gadget usually manage to convince us that it is the best thing that ever happened – usually since sliced bread!
Other gadgets take us up to new plains of cuisine experience, offering us the opportunity to make our own yogurt, bread, smoothies, milkshakes … If you can think of something you want to make to eat, you’re likely to find a gadget that will help you do it. But the newest versions aren’t always the best. Often, good old designs do the job just as well, if not better. Always remember to bear this in mind when you go shopping.
Historically, it is very likely that it was professional chefs, rather than homespun cooks, who initially provided a need for kitchen gadget. It makes perfect sense, simply because it made their lives a whole lot easier. Nevertheless, today gadgets make every cook’s life easier, and they can also provide really nice gifts.
They are easy to market and sell, but there is one potential problem: they can quickly clutter up your kitchen. So before you buy a new gadget, make sure you need it and that it will achieve exactly what it is you want to do.
The different kinds of kitchen gadgets you might find for sale relate either to what you need to do – cut, chop grate – or what you need to make – egg dishes, pasta, ice cream and so on. So, unless you are looking for a gadget as a gift (and they do make wonderful presents, especially the cheaper ones), rather think function. In other words, search for gadgets that will make it easier for you (or the person you are shopping for) to, for example:
• cook better,
• barbecue more efficiently on an open fire,
• crush garlic effortlessly,
• poach perfect eggs,
• make your own ice cream effortlessly,
• measure precisely,
• whisk or beat ingredients beautifully, to perfection,
• open tin cans quickly and easily, or
• mix, roll and cut pizza effortlessly.
There are so many gadgets available today, you won’t have far to look. Recent really clever gadget designs include toasters that will toast two slices of bread, or a muffin, bagel or croissant while you poach or scramble an egg. Then there’s the gadget that lets you monitor food on the barbecue and in the kitchen to make sure you co-ordinate your meal and get it all ready at the same time. It’s basically a timer that uses a wireless transmitter probe from a handheld receiver, and it tells you – with a voice alert – when the food is done. Poachers, garlic crushers and whisks come in so many guises it’s difficult to keep track.
Watch out for find new chopping machines that will give you exactly what you need in terms of little bits of herbs, onions and so on. Some are available as manual (hand operated) devices and others are operated with electricity. One quite new chopper is the “veggiechop” and it will demolish about three onions or a bunch of herbs in a few movements using a hand-powered rotary blade.
Food processors, in particular, are electrical machines, and they don’t necessarily qualify as gadgets. But the British design icon, Terence Conran, in his once ground-breaking book about kitchens (first published in 1977) labeled all mechanical aids “electrical gadgetry”. He also described gadgets in general as “controversial additions to the kitchen”. His argument wasn’t particularly convincing: “Some people despise them, others collect them compulsively and the majority become attached to a few,” he wrote. But his business, including the Habitat store chain in the UK has made a not-so-tiny fortune from home products, including gadgets.
Ordinary kitchen gadgets Conran highlighted in the 1970s included a traditional egg timer, a freezer thermometer, a rubber ice-tray, a salad spin drier and the Kenwood Sodastream that we could use to make cheap fizzy drinks. Some of these types of gadgets haven’t changed too much, and they still cut out what Conran called “unnecessary drudgery” in the kitchen. In other words they make our lives a whole lot easier.
Conran’s electrical gadgetry included many products manufactured by Kenwood, including the much-loved Kenwood Chef, pop-up toasters, hot trays (Salton tops that list) that we use to keep our food warm and coffee makers.
But do yourself a favor, just pop down to your local store to see what is on the shelves now. And watch out for new kitchen gadgets because new entrepreneurs are rediscovering them all the time.
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