4 Cutting-Edge Kitchen Gadgets

From Jennifer on September 2nd, 2009 in Kitchen Remodel

Once upon a time, I was a kitchen designer. I saw lots of incredible gadgets and gizmos designed to make meal prep easier, but I never, ever saw the likes of these cutting-edge cooking pros.

The HurlyBurly Extractor Hood uses removable grease and carbon filters to keep cooking vapors, steam and junk from reaching your walls and air space. The extendable arm allows you to maneuver the device over each of your burners. You may need two of them if you do a lot of 4-burner cooking, since it appears that one hood covers two burners at a time. It’s definitely clever, but reminds me more of an over-the-desk mounted lamp than a range hood.

Prada does more than shoes and handbags these days. Manuel Perez Prada designed a stove called the Arcus, which looks like a freestanding island all its own. You control the heat by twisting the pan right or left. The glass backsplash is actually “built-in waterfall framing” meant to reduce and draw away steam from the cooking area. Sleek and modern, maybe, but possibly a dud. Tell us – would you buy this for your home?

Graphic arts have infiltrated our toast! Two manufacturers designed toasters that will literally burn images onto your breakfast bread. The Zuse, made by Inseq Design, can sense when there is bread in its presence and works like a dot-matrix printer to cook black and white images on it. Designer Sung Bae Chang invented a toaster that scans images onto your toast. All you have to do is pick any image from your computer, download it through your USB cable into the Scan Toaster and watch as your image is reproduced onto bread. (Don’t ask why – just accept that this is obviously what the people want).

This may not be for the kitchen, but I see it as a necessity for today – I mean, really, why wait? The Electrolux iBasket is a hamper that does the laundry for you. And for the mother of two sons, wife of a messy contractor and owner of a happy-go-lucky-I’m-gonna-jump-on-ya-even-though-I’m-muddy 120-pound yellow lab, this is a Godsend. I won’t pretend to understand how it works (kind of like my car – as long as it does what it does I don’t really need to know), but somehow the hamper’s WiFi capabilities allow it to determine when it’s full, simply fill itself with water and get to washing. Now, all if have to do is actually get the kids, hubby and dog to put their clothes inside the hamper.