Mouthing Off | Why most kitchen gadgets are a waste of space, used so rarely – hello, sous vide bath machine – we wonder why we bought them
- Is your kitchen a mess, with the ice-cream maker you used once and the bread-making machine that hasn’t seen any dough since you paid for it?
- Many of us buy ‘time-saving’ gadgets, only to leave them to rust or gather dust in a cupboard or drawer. An air fryer and a salad spinner are all I need
My girlfriend has a shopping problem. It’s not handbags or shoes, though. Her fixation is with kitchen gadgets.
Her latest object of pursuit is a newfangled pasta maker. It’s not one of those classic roller machines used for generations by Italian nonnas, but a new device where the dough is stuffed in from the top and spaghetti or tagliatelle is extruded like minced meat below.
She is convinced of its convenience, but I have my doubts. Wouldn’t it affect the dough’s elasticity and density? Anyway, my real concern is not that it might be a waste of money, but that she has no storage space already. You know the last scene in Raiders Of The Lost Ark? That’s her pantry.
All of us have fallen prey to impulsive buying, especially products and appliances we thought would make cooking easier and quicker. The portable mini bread oven is now an underbaked space waster. The savage-looking meat shredding claw is now relegated to back-of-the-drawer junk. All of it disposable detritus made redundant by the regular oven and two forks.
I also know people with electric salt and pepper grinders – which makes me want to ask: “When did your arthritis get so debilitating that you can’t mill a little pepper?”
But we’re all susceptible to such unnecessary tools. I admit my own kitchen runneth over with unnecessary junk, too – rusty can openers I never use; garlic presses that don’t press very well, and a mini-George Foreman copycat grill that fits a single chicken breast.