July 19, 2019
The Kitchen Tech you Need in your Life
Our list of the cookery gadgets and gizmos we need right now
Every kitchen has different bits of kitchen tech. We all have the old favourites (could NOT live without a microwave to reheat that tepid tea) – but then lots of people have different, life-enhancing gadgetry bits. Some of them are used, and some of them are resigned to a dusty kitchen drawer (RIP spiralizer). Here’s our own list of the kitchen tech you need in your life.
Pasta Maker
Ok ,this will have some of you eye-rolling as a first choice, but this is a total gamechanger if you love 1. fresh pasta and 2. showing off to your mates with fancy dinners. Because, frankly, nothing is more impressive (…ly tasty) than fresh pasta. It’s not going to stop you buying dried pasta (lots of Italian recipes use pasta without eggs, which may as well be dry, anyway) but playing around making your own ravioli, or rolling out fresh pappardelle for that homemade ragu sauce is going to take your levels of self-chuffedness up one massive notch. (Also, it’s a great gift for your favourite budding chef AKA partner…and one you get to reap the carby rewards from, too).
Coffee Grinder
Once you’ve had freshly ground coffee at home, you can’t go back. What’s the point of buying fancy ground coffee if you leave it in a tin for a few weeks (or even worse, put it in the fridge! Don’t do that!), so that it loses all of what made it so special? Buy your fancy coffee and grind those beans right before you make your cafetiere, or however you like to imbibe. It takes less than one minute to whizz up, and you’ll be shouting about how tasty your coffee is, promise. Choosing between blade and burr grinders is a matter of price point really, depending on whether you want to spend less than £50 or more than £100 – though this burr grinder from John Lewis seems on the money.
De’Longhi KG79 burr grinder, £32.99
Amazon Echo Dot
As kitchen tech, I hear you ask? Will she spy on you? Will you regret giving your every kitchen conversation over to creepy AI in the future? Yeah, you probably will. Link it up to some decent speakers and you’re set (don’t bother buying the Echo, it costs more and the speaker is pretty terrible). But seriously, not having to touch anything to turn the radio on, play a new album whilst you cook, or convert a recipe’s measurement from gas mark to celsius, or cup to grams…that’s worth selling your soul for. Right? Probably.
Slow Cooker
Ok this isn’t modern tech in any way. But if you don’t yet know the joys of a slow cooker, you are about to have your mind BLOWN. Chop up a few bits of veg (carrot, onion, celery), get a cheap cut of meat (usually the cheapest cuts – from a good animal though – are the best for slow cooking, like ox tail or pig cheeks), and pour over a tin of chopped tomato. Maybe stick some herbs in. Turn it on – and come home to amazing smells, and an amazing dinner, basically already made for you. You are so welcome.
Thermometer
Whether you’re roasting meats or making jams, a thermometer is the easiest way to know you’re all good. It gives you the ability to be mega-precise with your cookery, and also allows you to know what a joint is like inside (cooked yet?) without slicing in. Worth it.
Sous Vide
Sounds like a fancy pants gadget you’ll never use, right? Wrong! If you love your cooking (and also are into slow cooking stuff), this is a great buy! Basically, you package things in plastic (the bags can be reused many times if you’re careful) and cook in a water bath, set to a precise temperature, which is usually low, giving the protein a lovely soft texture. Perfectly cook the insides of your meat before finishing on a barbecue, cook a joint to perfectly medium rare before finishing quickly in a pan, or even make the perfect soft-boiled egg. If you like playing about with some kitchen wizardry, this is a goer.
