Six ways to spice up your kitchen
LIKE your fellow time-pressed City denizens, you know you should be eating healthy home-made bread and organic frozen yoghurt instead of endless ready meals, but during that rare evening off who really has time to drop everything for hours of authentic home-cooking? Luckily, thanks to the wonders of human progress and the innovative genius of kitchen-gadget designers, you no longer have to spend hours kneading dough to enjoy fresh loaves upon waking, or carefully watch your Sunday roast to enjoy it emerges at precisely the right temperature. These labour-saving devices will do it all for you.
ICE-CREAM MAKER £279.00
This fully automatic ice-cream maker comes from kitchen gadget masters Cuisinart and means all you have to do is throw together the ingredients in its 1.5-litre bowl and press the right button. It can be used to produce a traditional creamy gourmet ice cream or, for the health-freaks among you, smooth frozen yoghurt.
www.divertimenti.co.uk
MEAT THERMOMETER £40.50
Put an end to the humming and hawing over the Sunday roast wondering whether it’s ready. This handy meat and poultry thermometer just requires you to stick a probe into the meat and it tells you whether it’s rare, medium, well-done, or just the right shade of in-between pink. And the whole device is wireless so that you can avoid tripping over cables as you pull open your oven on full blast.
www.divertimenti.co.uk
BLOW TORCH £19.75
Whoever said you must never play with fire? This cook’s blowtorch from John Lewis proves that there is a place for messing about with a 2,000-degree flame in the kitchen. How else are you going to get the sugary top of that creme brulee adequately crunchy? And what better way to crisp off an otherwise perfectly cooked joint of meat? This model comes with an 80ml butane capacity (though you have to buy the gas separately) and an adjustable head for reaching those hard-to-scorch spots.
www.johnlewis.com
ELECTRONIC GRILL AND RACLETTE SET £29.50
This electronic grill and raclette set gives a classic cooking technique a high-tech edge. The set cooks anything you can fit into any of its eight pans, holding the food close to an electronically heated slab of granite for a classic stone-cooked taste. Unlike with actual stone-cooking, this stone comes with a non-stick coating.
www.marksandspencer.com
MEAT SMOKER £80
If you are after a new, delicious way to cook meat, look no further. The Brinkmann smoke and grill has the answer. This purpose-built, multi-level charcoal smoker will gently smoke it to perfection. It comes with a heat indicator, a porcelain-coated steel water pan and an aluminium steel charcoal pan. And if you get tired of tender smoked meat, you can also use it for steaming and roasting. www.burford.co.uk
BREAD MAKER £110
This top-of-the-line Kenwood bread-maker makes producing freshly-cooked loaves as simple putting on a washing machine. With a choice of three sizes and 15 programmes, you can try out anything from fluffy white rolls to gluten-free loaves. It can take as little time as 58 minutes or delay cooking as long as 15 hours so that you can be sure to have the bread fresh for your meal. Its raisin and nut dispenser lets you mix extra treats evenly into the dough automatically as it cooks.
www.johnlewis.com