JANUARY 2022 T 3 27Opinionechnology, like late-
stage capitalism, is all
about reducing choice
so that we can have
nicer things and happier lives. So
just as the number of corporations
in the world is gradually reducing
to about six, products take on more
and more tasks that used to be
done by a multitude of gadgets.
Consider the smartphone. Twenty
years ago, to do all the things that
your iPhone or Android do now you
would have needed a pager, a fax
machine, a sat-nav, a computer, a
credit card, a personal organiser, a
bus pass, a portable games console
and a man who follows you around,
poking you with a stick and
‘reminding’ you to do things. Oh,
and a telephone.
However, one brave area of
technology is fighting back against
this homogenisation, and taking a
stand for specialist devices: kitchen
gadgets! Oh yeah.
Long before there were
microchips and screens, there were
funny little devices for taking
stones out of cherries; pans
specifically for cooking asparagus;
those things for thinly slicing eggs;
a knife specifically for absolutely
every task, including at least six
types of cheese knife.
The obsession now is with
having a high-tech device to do
things that you could, in theory, do
perfectly happily with your oven
and hob. Again, this is hardly a new
idea. You don’t need a toaster to
make toast or an electric kettle to
boil water if you have a grill and a
hob. Although admittedly you do
need something to boil water in,
and something kettle shaped, witha lid and a spout,
does seem like the
obvious candidate.
The two big kitchen
winners during lockdown were
Instant-Pot-style multi-cookers – I
would call them ‘instant pots’ but
I’m worried that Instant Pot might
have the same lawyers as Hoover- and air fryers. While both of these
things ostensibly have lots of
functions, they are basically for
making stews (multi-cookers) and
roasting things but in a more
low-fat, healthy way (air fryers,
despite the presence of the word
‘fry’ in their name).
As part of my quest to try out
every type of tech product that
ever appears, I’ve finally started
using multi-cookers and air fryers
works. So
I felt obliged to
get a rice cooker as well. Then I
found that having to pour soup,
made on the ‘soup’ setting into the
blender to give it a nice, soup-like
consistency was rather arduous. So
I got one of those soup makers
where it’s like a blender with a
heating element in it. Believe it or
not, you can actually make bread in
the multi-cooker I tried, so I gave
that a go. The results weren’t bad
at all, but I felt they could be even
better, so I bought a bread maker.
Then I started to find only eating
pressure cooked and air fried
things a bit limiting. So I got a
‘health grill’ – the generic name for
what everyone in the world still calls
a George Foreman. Mmm-mm.
Now I was cooking. Unfortunately
at this point I realised my kitchen
was so heaving with small
appliances that I could no longer fit
myself in it at the same time.
These are all fine products in
their own way. However, at the risk
of sounding like an old git, an
Instant Pot is essentially a pressure
cooker mixed with a casserole dish,
and an air fryer is basically a small
oven. Oh and a bread maker is, at
heart, a small oven shaped like a
loaf of bread, with a stirry thing at
the bottom. So I got rid of it all and
went back to using the oven and
hob. Sometimes, less is more.“I started tofind onlyeatingpressurecookedand airfried things abit limiting”recently. I can see the value of them
for people who are cooking for the
family and don’t want to have to
split their time between watching
the hob and oven and making sure
the kids aren’t covering the front
room with crayon again. They are
convenient bits of kit – and addictive.
The problem is, I hit a problem
with using the ‘rice’ setting on the
multi-cooker. It kept coming out a
bit mushy, which is hardly surprising
given the way that a pressure cookerTDuncan Bell
is multitasking
It’sgetting hot in the kitchen –
thanks toan array ofnew gadgets