My favourite-ever kitchen gadget is a £1.50 small aluminium fish scaler in the shape of a turbot which I have never actually used to scale a fish but have cherished as a much loved back-scratcher.
I’ve never been much good at finding the right tools for the job. I’ve had other more productive forays into the world of kitchen gadgetry since, but good products are hard to find. Most gizmos were one-trick ponies, used once and then dutifully retired to kitchen graveyard at the back of the under-sink cupboard with the bundt tin and the juicer. Others, like the Egg Master and my hog-shaped jelly mould, are delightful grotesques designed to be gleefully revered and never, ever sullied by actual use.
Some things have wriggled their way past my curmudgeonly, anti-gadget reticence, though, to find a niche in my utensil drawer and even a place in my heart. Alongside the old-fashioned favourites that I know will always serve me well – a couple of heavy cake tins, a battered old wooden spoon, basic electronic kitchen scales – there are sturdy plastic dough scrapers and silicone baking moulds, a loyal oven thermometer and a coffee-grinder that’s made me everything from icing sugar to spice mixes.
They’re tools that align with the simple kind of cooking that I enjoy.
I’d never used an iPad before last month and my most shameful confession is that until recently I thought that app was short for Apple, so I can’t claim any authority as a gadget expert. What I do know though is cooking – when it’s better to get your hands dirty and when it’s OK to delegate to your supporting cast of mixers, blenders and machines.
If a change-averse, technology neophyte can get with the times and come to terms with, even see the good in, this new generation of kitchen gadgets – then so can you.
Thermomix
thermomix.co.uk, £925
If you’re looking for a kitchen gadget with the horsepower, heft and expense of a small car, you’re in luck. The Thermomix TM5 is sold as an all-in-one powerful food processor and with functions ranging from chopping and whisking to pureeing, kneading, weighing and grinding it lives up to that promise. Its heating capability is impressive, too, making a custard smoother than any I’ve had before. But this jack-of-all-trades feels clumsy. The touch screen display is crude compared with even the most basic recipe apps. And in its eagerness to do everything, the Thermomix leaves you powerless: my only hands-on involvement is via a plastic spatula thrust into a hole in the lid, stabbing in the dark for the joy of cooking I just lost.
VERDICT
Usefully, but joylessly, consolidates all your kitchen gadgets into one. Looks like a spaceship.
Lékué Kit BreadMaker
lekue.com, £30
When so much of baking relies on pricey tins and specialist ingredients, bread’s refreshing for its cheap no-frills experience. Surprisingly for a gadget, this breadmaker fits well alongside that less is more philosophy. It’s an all-in-one piece of kit: mix, knead, prove your dough in the silicone bowl, then fold the mould into a rugby ball shape to cradle the bread as it bakes. Because it hugs to the bread during baking, it creates the steamy conditions for a great rise and crust. The one-bowl concept also means much less washing up than usual, which I’ll admit earned it my vote. You’re limited when it comes to the size and shape of your loaf, though, and it’s only oven safe up to 220°C, so crusty baguettes and the like are out of the question.
VERDICT
Handy, compact and easy to use. Not one for serious bread-heads, though.
Joseph Joseph Adjustable Rolling Pin
ocado.com, £15.49
This is the first gadget to catch my technology-averse eye: a simple wooden rolling pin, satisfyingly heavy in beech wood, with a handy ruler guide along the length. Its selling point, and presumably the justification for that price tag, is a set of multi-coloured rings on each end, setting the body of rolling pin at an adjustable 2, 4, 6 or 10mm height from the work surface. When I test it out on a batch of buttery cookies, it rolls them to perfectly uniform thickness so they later bake to an even golden brown, rather than the thick-and-thin, doughy-then-burnt patchwork I’m used to. For anyone as clumsy as I am, it’s a joy to have that kind of precision within your grasp. I kind of like it.
VERDICT
A good-looking rolling pin if ever I saw one. Helpful if you’re prone to heavy-handedness with your pastry: it’ll make a Mary Berry of you yet.
DROP KITCHEN SCALE
getdrop.com, £79.95
I spend 10 minutes trying to peel the weighing platform off this when I first get it, so sure am I that there must be some display screen or some button that I’m not seeing. But this is a different generation of kitchen scale. Designed to be used with an iPad, it’s completely naked, sending its readings via Bluetooth to be displayed instead in the requisite Drop Kitchen app (downloadable for free). I’m impressed at what the scales can do when used with the in-app recipes: you can scale up or down depending on how much of an ingredient you have to hand and make easy substitutions. If you go off-road with your own recipes though, the Drop scale is just a scale and without the iPad, it’s not even that.
VERDICT
Exquisitely designed and perfectly intuitive, but sadly unusable as a standalone set of scales.
