Kitchen Gadgets – What Do You Need To Know Before Making a Purchase?

(A Philips/Jamie Oliver HomeCooker has been provided to me by Mouths of Mums for review. All opinions are my own)

I love kitchen gadgets. I love to browse through the kitchen appliance pages of the junkmail we receive and wander along the appliance aisles at BigW and Harvey Norman when I get a chance, just picturing all those shiny gadgets sitting on my kitchen bench making my life so much easier.

Of course, the reality is that so many kitchen appliances fulfil very specific functions and take up more room than the average kitchen can justify. More money too, as many are quite expensive when you consider their limited functions or the availability of less expensive alternatives.

My Kitchen Gadget Wishlist is a mile long. Currently it includes an electric kettle with multi-temperature settings (so that I can heat it to the perfect temperature for different types of tea). I’d also love a proper bench mixer. I love to bake and only just retired the handheld mixer that I was given as an engagement present, replacing it with another handheld mixer. I’d love an ice-cream maker too. I’ve even been tempted to buy a coffee-pod machine, which is evidence of my gadget addiction since I don’t actually drink coffee.

There are two reasons that I don’t have wall-to-wall appliances in my kitchen – limited bench space and limited budget. As much as I would love to have everything that blends, chops, dices, freezes, boils, mixes, grinds and froths, I simply don’t have the bench or cupboard space to store them. I generally can’t spare the money to buy them either. So, I continue to muddle along, indulging in the occasional appliance purchase but generally just longing for them from afar.

Taking all that into account, I was very excited to be selected to test drive (test cook?) the new Philips/Jamie Oliver HomeCooker. It looks great and promises to make it easier for me to prepare delicious meals. Sounds good, but at $529.95 for the HomeCooker and Cutting Tower ($429.95 for the HomeCooker alone), the price would cause me to hesitate until I knew more if I saw it on one of my kitchen appliance reconnaissance missions.

Since it is now my responsibility to find out more about this appliance and let others know, I’ve put together a list of questions that I would like to have answered if I was considering buying a moderately expensive new kitchen appliance.

HomeCooker Questions
•    Is it easy to operate? Do I need to study the manual or is it reasonably intuitive to use?
•    Is it versatile? Will I be able to easily adapt my own recipes or will I be limited to the recipes in Jamie Oliver’s HomeCooker recipe book and the additional recipes on the Philips website?
•    How often will I use it? Will I be using it daily, weekly, seasonally or occasionally?
•    How much space will I need – both bench and for storage.
•    Is it easy to clean?
•    Will my children be able to use it safely to prepare meals given the inbuilt hotplate function?

Do you have any questions to add? What you would like to know about the Philips/Jamie Oliver HomeCooker? I have the HomeCooker and Cutting Tower, so I’m happy to answer questions about either or both.

You can find an overview of the HomeCooker at the Philips website or check out the review posts by myself and the other MoM HomeCooker reviewers at the Mouths of Mums website. (I’m the one holding the big pile of cookbooks). You can also see the HomeCooker in action on YouTube.

I’d love for you to let me know what you look for or ask when you are buying appliances yourself. I’ll aim to answer all those questions, yours and mine, in the coming month in my reviews at Mouths of Mums and I’ll probably write one or two summary posts here at Reading Upside Down as well. I’d also love any recipe suggestions if you have a particular dish and you’re curious whether it could be adapted for use in the HomeCooker.

(A Philips/Jamie Oliver HomeCooker has been provided to me by Mouths of Mums for review. All opinions are my own)