Gadgets Good, Gadgets Awful

I confess it! I’m a gadget freak. If there was a 12 step program for gadgetaholics, I’d be testifying every night.

But there are good gadgets and godawful gadgets. So I was wondering, what would you choose as the one best gadget in your kitchen and the one worst of the bunch? Finally, is there a gadget that intrigued you, but which you never acquired, and wish you had done so?

For me, a good gadget is one that makes a kitchen task easier, faster, or more efficient. It literally should be an extension of my hand. A bad gadget is one that makes the job harder, rather than easier, or which brings nothing to the table by way of extra efficiency.

The worst gadget in this house, bar none, is the shrimp peeler Friend Wife insisted on. This is a molded plastic device with a knife-like handle, and a long, slightly curved, tine. The tine is about six inches long.

The idea is that you push the tine into a shrimp, and it simultaneously peels and deveins the critter.

Um, huh! I have to admit, it sort of works, if you don’t mind wrestling the peel off the shrimp. But I can do the job faster just by hand, or, if I need a tool, a long-tined fork is a lot less awkward, and doesn’t break as many shrimp in the process.

There is a second place, also one that Friend Wife bought. This is a gadget for slicing avocados. Basically, it’s a net of wires, supported in a ovoid frame. Mechanically, it “cuts” the way a cheese wire does.

But picture this. You start by cutting around the avocado with a knife, to separate the halves and pull the seed. Then you put the knife down, pick up the gadget, and with a push-down and pull towards you motion, cut the fruit into nice even slices---that is, providing you’ve managed to use the skin as a guide for the gadget’s frame, and that the gadget doesn’t twist in your hand as it’s prone to do. And while you’re doing that, without putting my knife down, I’ll have completed at least two avocados.

Who dreams these things up? Surely nobody whose ever worked in a real kitchen.

As to the wish I’d gotten one gadget: years ago I read a British cooking magazine. One of the recipes was for mushrooms baked in a lattice-like pastry cage. Apparently, there was available in England a gadget that let you cut the dough so it would open up into that sort of net. I searched all over for one, but, apparently, they weren’t being imported to the U.S.

What about the good gadgets? This is the hard one. There are so many great gadgets it’s difficult to choose just one. But, if I had to, I would award the honor of best to the microplane. There is no other tool or gadget I know of that does the job as well, as quickly, or as efficiently. And the ironic thing, of course, is that is wasn’t designed to be a kitchen gadget in the first place.

What about the rest of you?