Seven kitchen gadgets I can’t live without: ‘How does anyone make a salad without one?’

Daftar Isi

– but it's gotta earn its place in the cutlery drawer.

The salad spinner's a close second to my trusty spatula. When I'm making a salad in someone else's kitchen, the spinner's the first thing I look for. If it's not there, I'm not sure how to go on. If they tell me to dry the lettuce by patting it with paper towels or using a mad reckoning with a tea towel, I feel like doing – which I (mostly) manage to – catch myself yelling out.

So I just look for the paper towel dispenser.

Eight under-the-radar kitchen tools every home cook should have: "You'll struggle to imagine how you managed without them"

The following seven kitchen gadgets may not overhaul your life, but each one might add to your enjoyment of meal prep. Put all of them together and you could be looking at saving time, relieving pressure on your fingertips, and hanging onto your sanity

Salad spinner

The Swiss brand was one of the first companies to produce this gadget back in 1978. The gadget has evolved over time, from the original pull cord through to the manual knob and more recently the push-button model. One of the benefits of using fresh, thoroughly washed and dried lettuce is that it requires much less dressing. Wet lettuce leaves cause the dressing to run off, which means you need to use more dressing to achieve the same flavour.

Microplane

These magic wands are right for zesting citrus fruit, "crushing" garlic and grating fresh ginger, whole nutmeg and parmesan cheese.

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," is a single-blade self-cleaning zester with a plastic cover that doubles as a catcher for the zest.

Lemon squeezer

This citrus press comes in three sizes and is colour-coded to match different citrus fruits. The orange one's suitable for oranges and big lemons. The yellow one's the most popular and's great for squeezing lemon juice over a salad or makin' cocktails that need citrus juice.

It's designed for minimal effort. Perfect for ageing margarita fans with restricted arm movement.

A good whisk

A run-of-the-mill supermarket whisk is good enough for your average omelette, but for specific dishes, consider trying the following variations:

A small dish-sized whisk for salad dressing.

Ball whisk

to aid aeration.

Old-fashioned mechanical whisk

This is a lot easier on the arm compared to hand whisking, with less noise, cleaning and storage hassle than an electric whisk.

Heat diffuser

These are suitable for gas cooktops only and're a top way to turn down the heat and stop you from burning dishes. They're a flat, holey metal disc with a handle, and when you put it over a gas burner on the lowest setting it stops scorched messes on heat-sensitive mixtures like jams, stewed fruit or toffee.

Travel-size coffee maker

This little bloke is a no-fuss, space-saving one-cup affair that won't take up too much room in your suitcase or pantry, mate. The sealed cylinder gets your coffee done quicker than a standard single serve pressie and reduces the risk of bitterness getting in the way of the flavour. When you pair this lot with an electric frother, your morning cup is a real ripper!

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Jar opener

If you've been wonderin' whether jars these days are more tightly sealed, I don't have the answer but I do have three possible solutions.

has a similar version.

At a fraction of the usual cost.

Just put it under the lid and tilt - listen to the pffft sound of a tiny rush of air. Deadset magic.