Kitchen gadget over the years
Chefs just love equipment and gadgets. Quality equipment is essential in any trade, but in the kitchen, the love of hardware runs very deep. The main difference with many other professions is that chefs tend to make a distinction between general and personal equipment; everyone can use the oven, but you keep your hands off your colleagues’ knives! Are there any discernible trends and hypes in kitchen gadgetry? Which were short-lived, and which tools are still used today – and will be for a long time to come? Let’s find out!
TOP 5 KITCHEN GADGETS
The gadgets that every chef has in their personal kitchen arsenal. Each of them a tool to be cherished!
1. Good knives. The No.1 gadget for every chef, always and forever!
2. Tweezers / tournetout. For precision work on your dishes, and never puncturing meat again.
3. Meat thermometer or cake tester. A simple but effective way to check the cuisson of meat or fish.
4. Small flick knife. Always have a knife in your pocket; handy for opening boxes or wild-picking.
5. Microplane graters. Razor-sharp graters for adding the finishing touch to your dishes.
You may still stumble across some of these appliances in the caverns of a kitchen storeroom; others are on the verge of joining them.
- Fakir grill. A moment of madness from the molecular gastronomy movement. A grill with spikes that grilled meat from the inside out.
- Freeze-dryer. For removing all moisture from foams and fruits, resulting in an incredibly brittle texture. Too expensive and does little for the flavour.
- Rotary evaporator. For extracting aromas from moist earth, making transparent beetroot juice. It was fun for a while...
- Liquid nitrogen. Incredibly spectacular, and a short-lived hype. Adds nothing to the flavour, unfortunately.
- Gas stove. Hardcore gas aficionados finally kicked the habit due to the outrageously high price of gas and increasingly hot summers.
Unheard of in kitchens a generation ago, now almost impossible to do without.
- Drying oven. For drying vegetables, fruit and herbs for processing into garnishes or powder.
- Sous-vide. For cooking fish or meat to perfection.
- Siphon. For turning liquids into foam.
- Chiba. Peel-S mandolin For cutting long sheets of hard fruit and vegetables.
THE LATEST KITCHEN GADGETS
Do you already use them in your kitchen? Will we embrace them, or will they end up in a corner of the storage room? Either way, it’s definitely worth finding out what they can do for you!
1. Flame spreader/broiler
Seal or grill meat to perfection using the Doragon attachment. For adding the ultimate grilled flavour to meat, fish and vegetables For more information about the Doragon, visit bernzomatic.nl
2. Silicone moulds by Moldbrothers
Create spectacular garnishes using a traditional tuille batter. For more information, visit moldbrothers.nl.
3. Vacuum container by AeroVac
A container for making brittle chocolatey textures and supremely airy parfaits with the vacuum machine. For more information about the AeroVac, visit frankhaasnootshop.com
Read our article about fusion and molecular kitchen!
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