My favorite is an immersion blender. I have a cord free model. I like to use it making sauces and eggs.
Sauces to hide veggies from my toddler who doesn’t realize the veggies are there for fortification and health.
Eggs I like to blend/whip air into the scramble. Cheese is an easy add too. They are super fluffy and delicious.
As far as cleaning it, I wipe any missed chunks off, put warm water plus soap in a cup, and blend til stiff peaks, JK.
What is your favorite kitchen gadget?
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Haven’t seen it mentioned yet so I’ll throw out a digital scale. Ours isn’t any special brand, but I picked it specifically because it measured to the tenth of a gram and not all scales will do that. I use it all the time, for baking, brewing coffee, portioning things out, making consistent sized burger patties/meatballs etc.
Love my kitchen scale. Even a cheap simple once is amazing
A scale is great for baking, too. Volume measuring cups are a hassle and inaccurate. Scale is easy.
Immersion blender is great functionality for a small size / cost. But for a more gadgety choice, I’d go for my sous-vide / immersion heater. Got gifted it a few years back, but didn’t get round to using it for ages, partly cause I suspected that it was too much of a hassle and wouldn’t make a huge difference to quality.
In reality, it’s really not a lot of trouble, especially if you vacuum pack meat and stuff for storage anyway. And I’ve made all sorts of different meats and marinade and they’ve been reliably great. For something like a pork chop, that can risk be a little dry, but you don’t want undercooked, being able to precisely control the temperature has given me the best, most tender and flavourful pork chop/monkfish/venison I’ve ever eaten.
Similarly, stuff for the bbq, deepfried chicken or even chunky côte du bœuf, where I really want a crispy sear but still need the middle to hit the right temp have all been made so much easier. Really surprised how much use I’ve got out it!
I have a sous vide. Its a great kitchen gadget to have. Favorite use is vacuum sealing sausages like brats, and steaks. Cooking the protein perfectly and then finishing it when needed is reduces food waste and perfectly cooks it.
Bonus, sanitizing eggs so the kiddos can eat the batter or drink the egg nog
I got this knife sharpener recently. Cost €8 / about $9 USD. Absolutely incredible find. Every knife I own is now razor sharp which I love.
If you’re buying it yourself watch the video that they link in the instructions and have patience on first sharpen from dull.
Awesome
Victorinox Fibrox Pro Chef’s Knife, 8-Inch That thing is a beast. Only needs sharpening every few years.
I don’t know if I’d call it a gadget, but I absolutely LOVE the only round handled wooden spoon we have. Best. Utensil. Ever.
If we’re talking just electronic gadgets, I personally like using ( but Hate cleaning ) the food processor. That’s mostly my fault, though, since I almost never fully rinse it out because I’m usually busy doing a lot more cooking afterwards that takes away all my attention. Saves me from having to do things like chopping up onions.
Second in line would be a kitchen-aid stand mixer. Saves me time not having to shred chicken by hand.
I have a round handled wooden spoon. The left half of the head is a normal spoon and the right half tapers to a point like a spatula or turner. I use it in almost every meal I cook.
Not a gadget exactly, but I love my chef knife! It’s a Kan core chef knife. I have had it for several years now and enjoy using it every time. It is very sharp and is easy to keep sharp. It was not cheap, but not terribly expensive when compared to other professional quality knives. I use it almost every day and it has never disappointed me.
For actual devices in the kitchen, I would say my Kitchenaid stand mixer is my favorite.
Hard agree. I feel like you can cook almost anything with just a cast iron pan and a chef’s knife. It’s the essentialist’s gadget of choice
I’ve got a couple of really good chef’s knives, but I’ve been a terrible failure at keeping them sharp over the decade. I was trying to finely dice an onion yesterday and felt like I was back in a student flat with a blunt handmedown. I think they’ve gone past the stage of just using a regular sharpener, but I don’t know where I can get them re-edged.
I just posted a link to this sharpener which I love in another comment.
Some of the dull but high quality knives I had took a bit to get sharp first time (under ten minutes though).
Guh, I think I even have that sharpener. But it’s been in a box since I’ve moved house years ago an I’ve always assumed it was too late for it to save them. You’ve inspired me to find it and give it a go! Thanks!
Hopefully you find it. Make sure you watch the video that’s linked in the instructions. Some of it is a bit of a self-glaze but the correct pressure and direction etc. are shown in the vid.
If you don’t find it, definitely worth buying another one IMO given how cheap they are. Love a good sharp knife.
A good sharp knife is the best
My vacuum sealer, for sure. It’s not only great for prepping to sous vide, it gives me extra room in my tiny freezer if I seal stuff instead of putting it in a container or even a plastic bag. And bonus, I haven’t had a single case of freezer burned meat since I started using it.
This was one of the first things I bought as a single person. Buying meet in bulk was economical. I use to make salsa an freeze it in “pages”. I still use it for all sorts of food
What does freezing in “pages” mean?
Assuming he means the same as I do….
Freeze it in a baggie lying flat so it spreads out and gets thin. Then you can store a bunch of them upright like pages in a book.
It’s a great way to efficiently freezer space while having many accessible
Ahh that makes sense, crafty, I didn’t realize there was an expression for it. Thank you!
Upvote for freezing as “pages”. It’s good to see someone else thinking that way
Between my old school pressure cooker, mini toaster/ airfry oven, cuisinart food processor, kitchen aid mixer, scales, thermometers, kitchen knives, pasta machine, coffee and spice grinder, fermenting vessels, rice cooker or Ooni pizza oven I’d also rate my emersion blender with the mini food processor attachment one of the most used items in the kitchen. From 3 minute hollandaise to instant curry pastes it has changed my approach to so many things.
Ive got an old cuisinart from the 90s that is pretty much exactly a 1/2 scale model of a robocoupe with a 2 cup bain. Love that and my stick blender.
Fave commercial appliances? The heated robocoupe, (that could be a chilled in the freezer or maintain a hot temp electronically) that could whip and aerate sauces at temp, like holandaises and chocolate sauces, even make singlenservings of sorbet ala minute.
Tha and a bakers oven i had when I was working on the size of a mountain. It had humidity and pressure controls, allowing me to simulate baking at anywhere between -2 mile below to 5 miles above sea level. Raising the altitude all the way up and running high humidity for like 20 mins made a perfect creme brule.
Setting it to 4 miles high meant a water boiling point of ~160°f, so mixed with a high humidity, I could 'boil the water out, without drying it out and barely cooking the egg.
Awesome, these are some serious gadgets, love the concept of that bakers oven.
Yeah, it was a apparently a $50k+ investment. Went great with the blast chiller. This was working for a country club in Aspen.
defenately not the mandolin slicer. Asshole appliance.
Ninja Foodi combination pressure cooker and convection oven. It also incubates yogurt. Fucking love that thing
Wait, they have a combo device doing both convection and pressure cooker? What black magic is this??
not at the same time (that would fucking rule though)! basically it has 2 lids, a pressure cooking one, and one with a heating element and fan in the top for convection. between those two lids it also has fermentation incubation, broiling, dehydrating, slow cooking, steaming, air frying (convection baking but it runs the fan fastest), and sear/sautéing (no lid) functions
Pressure ovens are a thing; I know someone with one. I think it has potential to really do some interesting stuff, but since they aren’t common, I figure it’s a lot of trial and error.
My Benriner mandoline slice. Given how much I use it, and sometimes isn’t careful enough, it’s a surprise I still have all of my fingertips
We got a Kevlar glove for just that reason. Still has most of its fingertips
Plus one for the glove. I always lived in fear of the mandolin but I got a microplaner that included the glove. Now I use it for the mandolin, the grater and the microplaner. Life changing.
I don’t own a mandoline for this reason. The finger tips are he arguably the worst cut to have.
Finger webbing is the worst IMO
Corner of the mouth is terrible as far as tiny cuts go.
Highly underrated, but a good thermometer can help a lot with cooking meats. Getting the right temp is much more accurate than cooking by sight or feel, and having one that reads in under a second is super convenient.Typhur makes some quality ones that I like to use
I have a regular thermapen as well as the thermoworks “dot” leave-in thermometer. Both are invaluable. I can’t imagine roasting anything substantial without a reliable way to check the temp.
Seconding, I use my instant read thermometer alot. Whether it something from the oven, airfryer, or stove, especially for fish and chicken, it keeps me from over cooking the meat
My mother in-law insists on cooking for a time vs to temp. Dried pork and chicken don’t taste great
Meat is an obvious good use case, but i also use my thermometer to check the doneness of bread. Recipes often tell you a time/temperature, but it’s going to really depend on your oven/pans/the rise/etc, which is why recipes will tell you to insert a toothpick or something like that. It’s way easier to just stick a thermometer in.
I’ve found that you need to use an instant read for this, though, not a leave-in thermometer because bread has much less thermal mass and thermal conductivity than meat (which is mostly water), and the probe of a leave in thermometer will conduct heat into the bread, giving an arbitrarily high reading.
I also use my thermometer for checking the temp of leftovers because I hate when something is cold on the inside, and I don’t like jamming my finger into like 5 different spots to test to see if I heated something up enough.
Kenwood Kitchenaid-type thing. Pretty heavy duty, because it’s mostly used for bread dough.
I learned to make breads without it and still occasionally do (well… Mostly when I’m somewhere else, I guess), and there is nothing wrong with kneading by hand.
It’s just so much more convenient and so much less cleanup to let the machine do it. Especially the cleanup part is huge.
Silicone rubber spatula, for sure. In Germany it’s sometimes called a ‘Geizhals’, because it perfectly scrapes off every rest of doug or sauce or dressing or whatever you’ve put together. Oh - and my ceramic knife sharpener. Can’t decide which to put at the top.
