Seven kitchen gadgets I can’t live without: ‘How does anyone make a salad without one?’
What makes a kitchen gadget a culinary game-changer? An indispensable item of the kitchen toolkit doesn’t have to be hi-tech or fancy – my most prized tool is a 50 cent plastic spatula – but it does have to earn its place in the cutlery drawer.
The salad spinner comes a close second to my spatula. It’s the first thing I look for when I’m preparing salad in someone else’s kitchen. If my host doesn’t have one, I’m never sure how to proceed. If the answer to “How do you dry your lettuce?” is patting gently with paper towels or performing some kind of frenzied windmill impersonation with a tea towel, I have an urge – which I (mostly) resist – to throw my hands in the air.
At such times, I remind myself that one person’s favourite wooden spoon is another person’s spurtle, so I just look for the paper towel dispenser.
Related: Eight unsung kitchen tools every home cook should own: ‘You’ll wonder how you lived without them’
The following seven kitchen gadgets may not change your life, but each one might enhance your enjoyment of meal preparation. Put them all together and you have the potential to save time, fingertips and your sanity.
Salad spinner
How does anyone make a salad without one of these? I have used every iteration of the Zyliss salad spinner (the Swiss brand was one of the first companies to make the gadget in 1978), from the pull cord through to the manual knob spin to the push-button incarnation. There are many advantages to thoroughly washed and dried lettuce leaves, chief among them they require very little dressing. Wet lettuce leaves cause dressing run-off, which requires more dressing per leaf for an equivalent amount of flavour.
Microplane
These magic wands are excellent for zesting citrus fruit, “crushing” garlic and grating fresh ginger, whole nutmeg and parmesan cheese.
My favourite is the Microplane dual blade zester. It has one fine and one slightly coarser grating end and a plastic sliding cover that allows you to grip one end while using the other – thus saving the tips of your fingers from being grated along with the lemon zest. The Dreamfarm Ozest, as an alternative, is a single-blade self-cleaning zester with a plastic cover that doubles as a zest catcher.
Lemon squeezer
The Avanti lemon squeezer comes in three sizes and is colour-coded according to citrus fruit. The orange one can be used for oranges and large lemons. The yellow is the most popular size and is handy for squeezing lemon juice over a salad or making cocktails that require citrus juice.
Speaking of cocktails, the Dreamfarm lemon fluicer is designed for minimal exertion. Perfect for ageing margarita lovers with limited arm mobility.
A good whisk
A bog-standard supermarket whisk is good enough for your average omelette, but for specific dishes, consider trying the following variations:
Tiny whisk
A mini whisk for salad dressing.
Ball whisk
Instead of having looped wire, each wire is tipped with a tiny ball to aid aeration.
Old-fashioned mechanical whisk
This is easier on the arm than hand whisking, with less noise, cleaning and storage hassle than electric.
Heat diffuser
These are for gas cooktops only, but are an amazingly effective way of turning down the heat and reducing the likelihood of burning. They are a flat, perforated metal disk with a handle, and when placed over a gas ring on its lowest setting it prevents scorching and burning of heat-sensitive mixtures such as jams, stewed fruit or toffee.
Travel-size coffee maker
The travel AeroPress coffee maker is a lightweight, compact one-cup coffee maker that takes up very little room in the suitcase or kitchen cupboard. The airtight cylinder reduces the time it takes to brew a coffee compared with a traditional single French press and minimises the chance of bitterness. When paired with an electric frother, your morning brew is transformed.
If I’m keen for a cafe-quality coffee when travelling, I pack a lightweight stick blender or a manual frother and heat the milk in a microwave before applying. The paper filters can be rinsed gently and reused up to 10 times, or you can also buy reusable stainless steel filters.
Jar opener
If you’ve been wondering whether jars these days are more tightly sealed, I don’t have the answer but I do have three possible solutions.
Adjustable jar opener or jar key
This may look like an instrument of torture but is cannily designed to clip on to each side of a lid, turn and lift. I’ve had mine for years and they’re hard to find, but Appetito has a similar version.
Silicone mat jar grip
I held my one and only Tupperware party back in the 90s and it was worth all the fuss solely thanks to the “hostess’s gift”: a small square of soft ribbed yellow silicone with which I could grip any jar lid and open it with ease. These are no longer available from Tupperware, but can be purchased from Avanti at a fraction of the cost.
Stainless steel butter knife
Just insert it under the lid, tilt and listen to the pfffftttttt of a tiny rush of air. Magic.
