Kitchen Machinery

I am like most men in that I like gadgets - as I also like cooking, I have amassed a set of gadgets for use in the kitchen as well.

I am not one for silly little 'labour-saving' gadgets, but I do like my big kitchen machines.

My only specialist gadget is my bread maker. This has proven invaluable over the years, although these days I use it less and less.

Mine is a Russell Hobbs "Breadman Ultimate", which I can thoroughly recommend. As with most of my major kitchen gadgets, I picked it up from Nisbets clearance sales. I think I paid about £85 for it about 5 or so years ago and it has proven to be a very worthwhile purchase.

It has a range of settings from quick white to Pizza Dough and a number in between. It can drop in things like seeds or fruit at pre-programmed times and it can be programmed with your own personalised settings. It makes a good half-kilo-sized loaf in just over an 2 hours, if pushed, so can be pressed into service just before I go down to the shops on a saturday morning and I can rest assured that there will be something to accompany my soup at lunchtime.

I have never used it to its' full potential, however, but for all that, I think it has been a bargain and I certainly don't regret purchasing it.

That being said, I have outgrown it for anything other than its' automatic churn-out-a-loaf abilities.

My next major gadget was a Magimix Cuisine 5200 - in my opinion one of the best, if not the best, kitchen processors available. The 5200 is the largest of the range and is big enough for the most demanding of kitchen jobs and easily able to handle even semi-pro quantities with ease.

I have often surprised myself at the abilities of this handy benchtop device. Everything from chopping ingredients for a soup or salsa to making pastry, kneading dough, chopping breadcrumbs - I have found it to be a really great product.

My latest acquisition is my Kenwood Major KM800 Professional - a Kenwood Chef with a big 6.7L bowl, metal body and metal gears. It does a fantastic job of kneading dough, mixing batters, whisking, making pastry (the best!) and all those jobs you find tedious and tiresome! It isn't as powerful as the non-professional range, which made me wonder... but I guess it is of the "under-stressed to last longer" design school. As there are still Kenwood Chef's from the 1950s for sale in working condition, they seem to know how to make things that last. 

I particularly like that it takes all the attachments for the regular chef's, so Ebay has been a source of many cool extras - like a mincer/sausage stuffer, continuous slicer, continuous juicer.

I did contemplate a KitchenAid, but after reading the reviews comparing it to the Chef, I just had to go with the Chef.

The other gadget that I just couldn't do without is my wand mixer - I have a cheap and nasty Philips, but the great thing with that one was that it had a seperate stainless steel wand, so you can leave the body plugged in, take the wand off - give it a quick rinse and you are back to work again. It is about 5 or so years old and has performed admirably - I think it is the only Philips product I have ever had that gets my seal of approval, mostly they are shoddily made and last about one month past the warranty.

The last thing I have in my kitchen that I couldn't do without is my Gaggia Baby espresso machine. If you know coffee, you will know Gaggia and will know why it is on my list of kitchen must-have's.