Let us now praise our kitchen gadgets:
If you really think that laborious food prep is that elevating, you should go back to the methods of your grandmother. Buy whole nuts and crack them by hand, picking out the meats and hoping you don't accidentally get a bit of shell. Throw out the powdered gelatin and use calf's foot jelly. Make your own confectioner's sugar with a food grinder or a rolling pin. Pluck your own chickens. Render your own lard.
If you think that doing these things would be ridiculous--which it would--then why is it ridiculous to have a machine chop your onions or make your bechamel? There's no particular reason to assume that we have reached some sort of technological plateau where the things that we happen to do by hand right now represent the best possible methods for accomplishing those tasks.
In other words, the "one knife, one pan", "I don't need kitchen gadgets" snobs aren't a better, purer sort of cook; they're just ignoring most of the contents of their kitchen. How many of them cook over an open fire, rather than using one of those high-faluting fancy stoves with their automatic temperature regulation and their electric lights? Why are they storing all their food in a cold box rather than shopping for each day, the way people do in India? Who needs a special pot for coffee when your great grandparents just boiled it up in a saucepan and settled the grinds by dropping eggshells into the resulting brew? Why own a blender instead of putting the food through a grinder and then a chinois? Wouldn't the dishes get cleaner if you boiled up water and washed them by hand? And hey, what's that toaster doing there?
I love messing around in the kitchen, and I confess to a love of gadgets. It's not just that they shorten the time on the prep chores so more time can be devoted to real cooking. They're fun to use. I'd hate to get rid of the ones I only find the need for on rare occasions. I think I picked up this attitude from my mom, aunts and other Appalachian cooks, who used a lot more raw ingredients and a lot fewer shortcuts than most cooks today. Despite that, they loved their Bisquick. Flour with the shortening and baking powder already in it? How utterly cool is that?
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On the other hand, the government taught us that we should switch from butter to margarine, from lard to Crisco, for reasons of health. These days, we've learned that margarine, Crisco and other hydrogenated foods inevitably have trans fats, which are deadly, as well as not tasting as good. We have the expression, "best thing since sliced bread" even though the only real difference is that sliced bread goes stale faster. We get sold varieties of tomatoes that ship well - more meaty - when it's the gel that has all the flavor.
I have no problem with mixing lard with flour, but if you don't want to keep it in the refrigerator, other things have to be added - and and do you REALLY want to be eating insecticide? A food processor makes it as easy to make drop biscuits from scratch, without all the recipe compromises needed in refrigerated "thwack" biscuit dough.
My Christmas present is a mandoline cutter, which makes veggie prep SO much faster and easier, and a quick "shower" in the sink is almost instant cleanup. The more fun it is to cook, the fewer restaurant meals I eat, which not only saves a bundle, but I suspect my food safety beats the heck out of theirs.
I've started using my old bread machine to make pizza dough. You'll never eat another delivery pizza or, worse yet, a frozen pizza once you try it. You can make enough for three pizzas and refrigerate what you don't immediately use.
Leo:
Of all the kitchen gadgets we have (got a few here and there) , I've got one of those ORIGINAL Boerner V-SLICERS from the early 1980s...an 2-blade version of the common mandoline slicer...and it's got additional slide-in blades for thick and thin slices, hash browns, and even julienne slicing and paring implement.
Makes REALLY thin slices of tomatoes or pickles for sandwiches!
(the way they were meant to be)
One of the BEST uses for $39.99 I can recall (it was expensive back then, but Mom was worth it).
Can't do without it, now.
(for that one pan gig...lol)
I've yet to uses that bread maker we got years ago (collecting dust in the basement)...maybe NEXT year?