Seven kitchen gadgets I can’t live without: ‘How does anyone make a salad without one?’
Keen cook Elizabeth Quinn opens her drawer to share the culinary tools that save her time, sanity and fingertipsThe Guardian’s journalism is independent.We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.What makes a kitchen gadget a culinary gamechanger? An indispensable item of the kitchen toolkit doesn’t have to be hi-tech or fancy – my most prized tool is a 50 cent plastic spatula – but it does have to earn its place in the cutlery drawer.The Guardian’s journalism is independent.
We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.The salad spinner comes a close second to my spatula.It’s the first thing I look for when I’m preparing salad in someone else’s kitchen.If my host doesn’t have one, I’m never sure how to proceed.
If the answer to “How do you dry your lettuce?” is patting gently with paper towels or performing some kind of frenzied windmill impersonation with a tea towel, I have an urge – which I (mostly) resist – to throw my hands in the air.At such times, I remind myself that one person’s favourite wooden spoon is another person’s spurtle, so I just look for the paper towel dispenser.The following seven kitchen gadgets may not change your life, but each one might enhance your enjoyment of meal preparation.Put them all together and you have the potential to save time, fingertips and your sanity.How does anyone make a salad without one of these? I have used every iteration of the Zyliss salad spinner (the Swiss brand was one of the first companies to make the gadget in 1978), from the pull cord through to the manual knob spin to the push-button incarnation.
There are many advantages to thoroughly washed and dried lettuce leaves, chief among them they require very little dressing.Wet lettuce leaves cause dressing run-off, which requires more dressing per leaf for an equivalent amount of flavour.These magic wands are excellent for zesting citrus fruit, “crushing” garlic and grating fresh ginger, whole nutmeg and parmesan cheese.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morningMy favourite is the Microplane dual blade zester.It has one fine and one slightly coarser grating end and a plastic sliding cover that allows you to grip one end while using the other – thus saving the tips of your fingers from being grated along with the lemon zest.
The Dreamfarm Ozest, as an alternative, is a single-blade self-cleaning zester with a plastic cover that doubles as a zest catcher.The Avanti lemon squeezer comes in three sizes and is colour-coded according to citrus fruit.The orange one can be used for oranges and large lemons.The yellow is the most popular size and is handy for squeezing lemon juice over a salad or making cocktails that require citrus juice.Speaking of cocktails, the Dreamfarm lemon fluicer is designed for minimal exertion.
Perfect for ageing margarita lovers with limited arm mobility.A bog-standard supermarket whisk is good enough for your average omelette, but for specific dishes, consider trying the following variations:Tiny whisk A mini whisk for salad dressing.Ball whisk Instead of having looped wire, each wire is tipped with a tiny ball to aid aeration.Sign up to Saved for LaterCatch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tipsafter newsletter promotionOld-fashioned mechanical whisk This is easier on the arm than hand whisking, with less noise, cleaning and storage hassle than electric.These are for gas cooktops only, but are an amazingly effective way of turning down the heat and reducing the likelihood of burning.
They are a flat, perforated metal disk with a handle, and when placed over a gas ring on its lowest setting it prevents scorching and burning of heat-sensitive mixtures such as jams, stewed fruit or toffee.The travel AeroPress coffee maker is a lightweight, compact one-cup coffee maker that takes up very little room in the suitcase or kitchen cupboard.The airtight cylinder reduces the time it takes to brew a coffee compared with a traditional single French press and minimises the chance of bitterness.When paired with an electric frother, your morning brew is transformed.If I’m keen for a cafe-quality coffee when travelling, I pack a lightweight stick blender or a manual frother and heat the milk in a microwave before applying.
The paper filters can be rinsed gently and reused up to 10 times, or you can also buy reusable stainless steel filters.If you’ve been wondering whether jars these days are more tightly sealed, I don’t have the answer but I do have three possible solutions.Adjustable jar opener or jar keyThis may look like an instrument of torture but is cannily designed to clip on to each side of a lid, turn and lift.I’ve had mine for years and they’re hard to find, but Appetito has a similar version.Silicone mat jar gripI held my one and only Tupperware party back in the 90s and it was worth all the fuss solely thanks to the “hostess’s gift”: a small square of soft ribbed yellow silicone with which I could grip any jar lid and open it with ease.
These are no longer available from Tupperware, but can be bought from Avanti at a fraction of the cost,Stainless steel butter knifeJust insert it under the lid, tilt and listen to the pfffftttttt of a tiny rush of air,Magic,
UK Steel warns that Trump tariffs would be ‘devastating blow’
UK steelmakers have warned that the imposition of new US tariffs would be “a devastating blow” to the industry, after Donald Trump said he would announce 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports into the US.Gold reached a record high and aluminium prices rose as financial markets were rattled by the US president’s comments, which caused concern in the UK and the EU.Gareth Stace, the director general of the trade body UK Steel, said: “The US is our second-largest export market after the EU. At a time of shrinking demand and high costs, rising protectionism globally, particularly in the US, will stifle our exports and damage over £400m worth of the steel sector’s contribution to the UK’s balance of trade.”Stace said it would be “deeply disappointing” if Trump decided to target UK steel, given its “relatively small production volumes compared to major steel nations”
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Fraud trial of Forbes ‘30 Under 30’ honoree set to lift lid on startup culture
Charlie Javice has joined an undesirable club struck by the “Forbes 30 Under 30 curse”, a term for the high-flyers identified by the business title as up-and-comers who ended up in legal trouble. The entrepreneur has joined a list that includes the pharmaceuticals fraudster Martin Shkreli and FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.The strength of the Forbes “curse” will be tested this week in New York as Javice, 31, goes on trial on four counts of fraud relating to the $175m (£141m) sale of Frank, a student financial aid application assistance company she founded aged 24, to JP Morgan Chase. The deal quickly soured, and has descended into a legal wrangle that has been compared to the case of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.Frank’s premise was simple – to help steer students through the complexity of applying for student loans
Trump’s latest tariff bid shows the old rules of trade no longer apply. Scraps of paper will not save us | Greg Jericho
News that the US president, Donald Trump, was going to place a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports in to the US came as it generally does with such things – out of the blue, with no reasoning, and little to no understanding of whether Trump even knows what he is doing.Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on the way to the Super Bowl, Trump talked about “reciprocal” tariffs. As an aside he said that “we’ll also be announcing steel tariffs on Monday” and when asked who they would affect he said “everyone”. When further asked about aluminium he replied “aluminium too” (because hey why bother to mention that upfront?).The headlines went crazy and we saw reports here of how $15bn was “wiped from the Australian share market” in the first hour of trading
Tech firms call for zonal electricity pricing in UK to fuel AI datacentres
Tech companies are putting pressure on the UK government to encourage an AI datacentre boom in remote areas of Great Britain by offering some of the cheapest electricity prices in Europe.A report paid for by the tech companies Amazon and OpenAI has called on ministers to overhaul the UK’s electricity market by splitting it into different zones so that prices become more expensive in areas where power is in short supply, and cheaper in those where it is ample.This market arrangement, known as zonal pricing, would make areas such as Scotland a hotspot for AI datacentres – which use vast amounts of electricity – because of an abundance of windfarms and low population density, according to the report by the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank.Keir Starmer said last month that artificial intelligence would be “mainlined into the veins” of the nation after putting in place a sweeping action plan to make the UK a world leader in the technology.However, the plans to host datacentres have attracted some scepticism, in part because the UK has some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the world and is pressing targets to virtually eliminate fossil fuels from the power system by the end of the decade
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