Unused kitchen gadgets

angeltreats

Useless gadget alert!

Hot on the heels of the Breville Pie Magic comes the Lakeland Electric Cupcake Maker!

Please someone tell me what the point of this thing is. Apart from anything else, the majority of cupcake recipes make 12, so you'd have to do two batches.

Primrose

cooking-mama Our large Magimax food processor has largely been relegated to a cupboard since we acquired a stick blender which has been so quick and easy to clean for purreeing soups and sauces. However, this week we dug it out and used the bread paddle to make our first home made loaves, and it reminded me how quickly it makes dough and pasty, so I suspect now we're in the mood again it may see the light of day more often.

janb5

QUOTE


ive been surfing the Lakeland website,mainly with the intention of ordering a Kuhn rikon pressure cooker,(after deliberating over an electric one which turns out only to be 11psi,therefore no use to me)..


Sorry- what is 11psi!


I agree with earlier poster re slow cooker- I found the recipes a litte bit ` samey` Anything I dont use goes to Freecycle or a friend,

morganlefay

It's partly a seasonal thing in my house, so in summer I only make mayo (not often at that) with my stick blender, but use it to make lots of thick nourishing soups in winter, whereas I use my Magimix much more in summer when I slice lots of veggies for salads, coleslaw etc. I HATED my slow cooker which I freecycled to a nice young woman who beamed from ear to ear and I have an elec steamer I have never used and ought to do the same with. I also have an addiction to silicone baking 'tins' of all sizes, which I buy (usually in Asda or Mr T quite cheaply) and then give away to my DDs who are mostly very grateful. One of my problems is reading on here how good people find things and then I get sorely tempted to 'save money' by buying something, which I then hate (SC a perfect example: it made everything taste the same and the house stank for days - nasty). But I'm getting a lot better about not buying things now.....

seraphina

janb5 wrote: »

QUOTE


ive been surfing the Lakeland website,mainly with the intention of ordering a Kuhn rikon pressure cooker,(after deliberating over an electric one which turns out only to be 11psi,therefore no use to me)..


Sorry- what is 11psi!


I agree with earlier poster re slow cooker- I found the recipes a litte bit ` samey` Anything I dont use goes to Freecycle or a friend,

pressure cooker pressures are measured in Pounds per Square Inch, or PSI for short. If you're thinking of buying a pressure cooker, the standard pressure that pretty much all recipes call for is 15psi. However lately some cheaper (and not so cheap!) pressure cookers will only reach a maximum of 12 or 11psi, which means they take longer to cook than at 15psi, which defeats the purpose...

Like morganlefay I'm getting better at reading between the lines. Although I do wish more people would pipe up when they don't like things - slow cookers being a prime example (I hate them!)

We have a for-sale email list at work and unwanted slow cookers are always popping up on there;)

missychrissy

When I was a 'stay at home mum' I loved my pressure cooker because it was so quick. I liked to get all my children home from school and then decide, together with them, what we were cooking for dinner. I cooked using other utensils of course but usually things that took within 30 minutes.

I live on my own now and as I work 60+ hours per week my slow cooker is now my favourite appliance. I can fill it and set it off either before I go to work or just before I go to bed (I work nights). I can throw in cheaper cuts of meat together with lots of pulses and veg. I cook in bulk and then freeze in one person sized portions and therefore my sc saves me lots of money.

Different circumstances favour different appliances and gadgets.

angeltreats

I know I posted in this thread (or a similar one) a while ago that I didn't like my slow cooker. Well it's come out of retirement this week and last week and I'm really getting to like it. It's definitely helping me eat better because I work funny hours and split shifts and normally snatch at food at work when I have a five minute break.

cooking-mama

seraphina wrote: »

But more importantly have you ordered your KR yet???!?! Mine had a bit of a work out today - it's been sterilising my jars and cooking my beetroot for the monster pickling session I've just done!

Yes...it finaly arrived today(was expecting it Thurs or Friday at the latest)..it isnt even out the box yet,ive been out for dinner with friends,so now i have my new "toy" to amuse me for the rest of the evening;)...I got a free burger press with it too.

I recently invested in a new slow cooker,a Crock Pot one ,with a digital timer and a crockpot that can go on the hob for browning(main 2 reasons i bought it)...But im findidng everything has a kind of overcooked taste to it....dunno if its over heating or just too powerfull for proper slow cooking...it turns out Low heat and High heat both reach the same temperature it just takes it longer on low..my old slow cooker had low and high,but they operated at different temps....wonder what Costco's return policy is like,cos im not as impressed with this slow cooker as i initialy thought.

morganlefay

Lots of people on here absolutely LOVE their slow cookers, and I'm pleased for them, but I've had several over the years and I just found that everything tended to taste the same (I'm a good cook normally, but not when I used the SC) and it mostly either fell apart or wasn't cooked. The mosr satisfying recycle I've done lately was to give my latest SC away. There are a few of us on here who don't like them, and there are remoska users, and there are pressure cooker users - both of which I use very happpily, so I hope you're finding your new PC good cooking-mama ! (We had a delicious beef casserole this evening - cooked in 25 mins in PC, with baked spuds done in the Remoska - soooo easy and economical with no use of big oven)

cooking-mama

Morganleyfay,I wa home too late to try out the kuhn rikon,but it looks very impressive...im a bit dissapointed at the lack of info with it tho....its a very large box with the PC in the middle of it,then there are 2 side "boxes",inside one was a white paged instruction manual in loads of different langauges,but nothing in the other...am i missing a recipe book or something?.im sure when i saw this instore there was a recipe book included???