These are the kitchen stuff that I will have a hard time living without:

Nespresso (currently have 2 in the house, a built-in and a stand-alone)
Global Knives
Cuisinart Spice/Nut Grinder
Wok
Silicone Ice Mold
Wine Aerator

Stuff that I probably will love to have:

Deep fryer
Indoor grill

Amazon has a great deal today on the .

Things I didn't think I needed, but now LOVE:

Kitchenaid Ice Cream attachment. We're really happy with the results and I like the idea of using a single appliance in multiple ways. Only hassle is remembering to put the bowl in the freezer several days before you're ready to churn.

Ditto on Kitchenaid meat grinder. Use it all the time, and not only for meat - my mother has an amazing gelatin recipe where you mostly use ground up entire oranges and apples. 2 minutes work with the Kitchenaid.

Kitchen scales. Now that I have one I use it all the time, especially for things where the recipe calls for something impossible to measure, like 2 cups bread cubes, but also gives the amount in ounces/grams.

Slow cooker. I remember when they were called "crock pots" and looked stupid, wouldn't have one in my house. The new cookers are amazing and do some things better than I could possibly do any other way. We have a recipe for slow cooked pork shoulder for pulled pork, perfection in the slow cooker.

Panini maker. Use it all the time for many things including open faced toasties, but also for things like reheating pizza.

Egg cooker. We've had this discussion before. I know how to boil an egg, but with the cooker I can just put them in and forget about them until the buzzer goes off, and they're perfect every time.

Silicone baking mats.

Hand cranked pasta machine. Ignoring the resting time, it takes less time to make and cook the pasta than it does to start with the dried stuff.

High quality metal measuring cups and spoons.

Now, what I really want is a wood-fired pizza oven, but I think the condo board would object.

Mistakes from the past:

Hand operated nut chopper thing - hard to use and bad results.

Kitchenaid pasta extruder. Hard to use and not good results.

Fancy corkscrews. In the time it takes to get the rabbit set up I can just grab old faithful.

This is why I lust after an ice cream / dessert machine with internal refrigeration. Like most pro-kitchen gadgets, consumer models are actually getting fairly affordable... now to clear some counter space.


Yep, this is a very useful attachment--of the various ones I have for my KitchenAid mixer, the meat grinder is the most frequently used. I've gotten to where i just buy Costco ground sirloin frozen burger patties rather than grinding my own burgers, but we make a ton of other ground meat with it. And, as you say, it works for other things, too.

2nd-most used is the pasta roller attachment, though I'd love to get one at least 24" wide instead of the piddly 6" one for the KitchenAid. (I think I posted about this in OMNI a long time back and got some good suggestions I've just never followed through on, FWIW.)


Absolute necessity if you use any pro baking recipes (and I cook a lot from The Professional Pastry Chef).


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Agreed. I used it ... once or twice. The pasta roller I use quite often, but the extruder just doesn't work well.


What's the "set up" for the Rabbit? I do find higher-quality Rabbit-style ones work far, far better than el cheapo models, FWIW (we have a decent one; my parents have the cheap one). I can open a wine in ~5 seconds, from grabbing the bottle and Rabbit to tossing the cork into the basket for recycling...

The rabbit is too big to fit in the kitchen drawer so I need to fish it out of a cabinet. I have a really easy European opener that's sort of a lever ratchet. 2 seconds and the cork is out. Not to mention that is makes me look like a nerd.

I'm a waiter's corkscrew fan and also have one (Screwpull, I think) with a two-step lever. A Rabbit requires me to find a separate foil cutter and I'm just too short to use it comfortably if the wine bottle's on the countertop. Plus I don't like the fact that the Rabbit requires me to have two hands on the Rabbit with no free hand to stabilize the bottle. With the waiter's corkscrew, I can grab the neck of the bottle in the same hand that holds the lever (fulcrum? physics was a long time ago). I always worry I'm going to spill the bottle when using the Rabbit.

Blindpilot - The Miele built in Nespresso - oh how I love. Unfortunately not an option as I'm renting in Singapore.

But we too have two Nespresso machines in the house and also a Delonghi fully automatic (which we now hardly use).

Of all the lists here two things are on my wish list - anything Pizza (a stone or a oven) and what is missing is a Thermomix (there is a separate thread on this so no need to argue its pros and cons ) - I still havent made it back to Paris, but its on my wish list for our next trip there.

We have three KitchenAid mixers at home as my wife is a home baker and a industrial chiller to place all her bakes (with a nice glass front so I can drool).
I have always toyed with the idea of getting the ice cream attachment - may do that now.

Pressure cooker is a must here too; as we cook a lot of Malay food the meat needs to be really tender and what used to be 3 hours of cooking has now come down to 30mins.

Sous Vide cooker from Anova! They got a few competitors already and suddenly sous-vide cuisine has become available for everybody.
#PerfectMediumSteak

I was a very early adopter of SV, and was initially totally won over but it really didn't catch with me long-term. I went back several times to it but eventually it became confined to the garage.



On the other hand very pleased with the latest Panny breadmaker range. Won't duplicate post and so there are some piccies in the other daily food thread.

The latest generation of cookers is really straight forward to use and extremely convenient. Especially in a diet it's a great way to prepare chicken breast without drying it out.

Yes, SV is extremely easy to use and it has upsides. I think the main upsides are it's ability to pastereurise potentially dangerous proteins using time rather than temperature and it's ability to soften tissue.

Oddly with chicken the fact that you can safely eat pink chicken with SV still never managed to cheat my mind out of thinking it was unsafe. When you have lived as long as I always viewing anything red in poultry as hazardous - for good reason, SV isn't going to take those subliminal messages away. So I cannot enjoy pink chicken however safe I tell myself it is.

Also in the end softened texture has it's place but sometimes it does so much that the meat loses it's inherent character. A steak should still be chewy and in the end when you have an inside lava grill, an industrial extracter and a fast temp probe - then using fire will always be the primeval way of cooking steak rather than SV and flash fry. I am a man after all and us blokes will alwaysd BBQ a steak rather than bathe it.

To me most of the other stuff I was using it for is better done by other methods but each to their own.

If I could buy one gadget for my kitchen right now, it would be the Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment. I have been saving ice cream recipes for quite a while in anticipation of being able to splurge on one sometime (not that they cost that much, but I am currently saving for something more urgent -- a new roof). If I had one, I would keep it in the freezer in the garage so it would always be ready to use.

Hi C.

If ever the funds become available don't hesitate to get an all in one ice cream maker.

There is something lovely about thinking of an ice cream recipe that plays on your mind and you have to make - and then making it. We'll never have enough discipline and keep enough space in the freezer for one of those more sensible solutions but it is great to fetch the Gaggia out in the summer to make some unlikely concoction.

So I guess youre not giving yours away...

If you're getting mushy steaks with SV, you're not doing something right.