What new kitchen gear do you hope to get this holiday?

Queezle Sister

I have already ordered a bigger mortar and pestle, and a six-sided box grater (can you believe I've never owned a box grater?). Will probably wrap them up and slip them under the tree.

What about you? Are you hoping to get some cooking gadgets, and if so, do you just buy them for yourselves?

bunyip

Funny, I gave up on the box grater in favour of a selection of Microplanes!

If you want kitchen kit, you've really got to buy it yourself unless you can specify the exact make and model. Anyway, going to the shop is fun in itself.

My latest gadget is a larger version made by Progressive of my Alligator veggie dicer, with a selection of larger grids. These things are very useful timesavers.

I'm a gadget tragic; they just love me at the market kitchenware stall. But I absolutely do not want one of those thingies that make zucchini spaghetti, a fad which I hope will pass if I ignore it.

Queezle Sister

I do have a mandolin, but some things do better with graters. I have two microplanes (which I dearly love), but I end up resorting to flat graters for things like cheese - these are 30+ years old, secondhand, and not sharp. But who knows.

And I know what you mean - its so hard to resist the promises of saved time/better prep.

And I completely agree on the zucchini spaghetti!

kaye16

I love my microplanes, but I still use my box grater sometimes. I prefer its longer shreds for some things.

When we moved last, I got rid of all my gadgets that weren't pretty actively used and haven't added many since. A friend recently brought me a cute little Chef'n garlic chopper thing that I use sometimes. Mostly I just find it faster to chop things up myself.

Also in the queue waiting for the spiralizing fad to go away.

vanessaveg

Uhg, I went to a talk at the local university's faculty club with a friend of mine a few months ago. The talk included dinner. My friend ordered vegetarian for himself, and vegan for me. He got a plate of pasta. I got spiralized zucchini. It. was. disgusting. Like one of the worst dishes I've ever had. I'm still traumatized whenever I see a recipe with poor, innocent little zucchinis, you guys {tears}

I still don't have a stand mixer. I think this is the year I take the plunge, but probably not at Christmas. I need new tires : \

Queezle Sister

After decades of wanting one, I bought a stand mixer while remodeling the kitchen 1.5 yrs ago. It gets quite a bit of use - and to echo something I read somewhere - its amazing to be able to step aside to get your next ingredient while the thing is sitting there mixing. Even my skeptical husband uses it, and perhaps does more baking.

friederike

I guess I'm a little later to the discussion (merry Christmas everyone!) - bunyip, does the Alligator veggie dicer only make dice, or can you also make fingers/french fry-sized pieces? I've got something similar (this one: http://i5.walmartimages.com/dfw/dce07b8c-7521/k2-_790ebf29-697a-4751-b024-efd66c20c069.v1.jpg), but unfortunately I can only load it with slices of vegetables as it would break otherwise (and I wouldn't be strong enough to close it).

And I have a really lazy reason for not much using our Magimix for baking - you can't really put the bowls in the dishwasher (the edges collect water and take up too much space), which means I actually find it faster to use a handheld mixer and then dump everything in the dishwasher vs. using the Magimix and then having to do the dishes by hand. The one big exception is when I have to grate large quantities of vegetables, i.e. carrots.

bunyip

The Alligator just does very small dice, looks very like yours. The Progressive has interchangeable grids and does bigger dice in two sizes, and slices about 1.5mm thick. I also have a mandoline (and one of those protective gloves!), and a rotary cheese grater. And I have a teensy little version specially for finely chopping or slicing garlic. Told you I was a gadget tragic, didn't I? But I hate garlic crushers, they are the devil to clean. I crush ga

For bulk slicing like potatoes for a gratin I use the food processor which is of course very fast, and it's just the thing for making breadcrumbs. Don't put the bowls in the dishwasher, just rinse them out.

I don't do much baking. Dad gave me a Sunbeam Mixmaster stand mixer when I got married - there wasn't any other make in those days. However I didn't use it a great deal, and when it died I decided not to replace it. You can cream butter and sugar and even whip small quantities of egg whites with the Bamix.

Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous New Year!

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