Let me know what your thoughts are on these and which one is the best or worst! Also, be sure to see my are Japanese Knives Overrated video? ruclips.net/video/LgqoN2Duo5U/видео.html
I would definitely use the knife gripper because of my arthritis. I mainly use a knife and a mandolin every day to make chips, fries, pickles, etc. The poem you were reciting I always heard like this: "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. IF Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?" I did a lot of my own picking and pickling this year from my garden. My 2 little cucumber seeds yielded me 140 quarts of pickles. So, in my case, Peter Piper picked a peck of prolific pickled peppers! A peck of prolific pickled peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a prolific peck of pickled peppers (or cucumbers) Where's the prolific peppers Peter Piper picked? Answer: In my pantry!!
LOL, the pickle picker is just a repurposed piece of equipment you use for electronics to pick up tiny little dropped parts... I've seen that exact thing in cheap starter kits from china.
The 4 veg chopper is really good for people with various disabilities, whether that's manual dexterity issues, as you said re. another tool - arthritis and so on. I think when reviewing some of these items, while I can see some are generally useless, others are game-changers for those of us who have difficulty using regular kitchen equipment. Also, we're not all Michelin star chefs, for many of us the cuts done by the veg chopper are absolutely fine :)
This was what I was going to say. I have a family member who is partially paralyzed on one side of his body, operating a knife and holding the ingredients to chop food finely would be impossible for him. In theory he could use something like that chopper. While a robot-coupe might be a superior tool for home use it's too much and a home grade food processor doesn't really have a rough chop setting. That doesn't mean it's a perfect tool necessarily(the force you need to apply and stability could be big factors in how usable it is for someone with disabilities) but it's a bit able-ist to look at something be like "Oh I don't need this in my use case." and say it's useless.
Love the vid! I also used to mock the banana slicer until I was in a kitchen with a 4 year old who wanted to "help" with food prep. Colourful, blunt, task-oriented tools are a boon in the right situation. It does see-saw then, for me, as to whether it is a kitchen item or a toy. Kept the mini-chef happy.
My mother-in-law and I exchange useless kitchen utensils every Christmas, she may get a pickle picker this year. Banana slicer was one of the first things one of us gave the other, after 20 years it’s getting harder to find unique gadgets that are both cheap and utterly useless.
Please do more of these. The item I had for many, many years, and which recently died because I dropped it, was the push-down vegetable slicer with different blades. After 45 years of high speed data entry, my hands are shot...arthritis and carpal tunnel make it difficult to do any precise cutting and boy did I love my little machine. Mine was smaller than the one you used and only did the two sizes of diced items, all I really needed it for. I think I will replace it with the one you used, as it had a nice big catcher and on sale now for $19. I will tell you, when I went through my mom's kitchen drawer where she kept meat thermometers and such, I found only two of what I would consider "gadgets" and those were a radish rosette maker and a strawberry stem remover. Both she used often though a small paring knife would do just as well, in my opinion, though she liked them and used them when she had full bowls of the items picked from the garden to can. Maybe they saved her time...I don't know. Really enjoyed this. (What do you think of the garlic press rocker and the 2 in 1 Pepper Seed Corer Remover on Amazon?)
Its not, I have one and they suck. Try cleaning those blades after some use. Most of these things are just like that, cool ideas but not practical when it comes to using them long term and cleaning. You end up spening more time rather than saving.
The pickle picker can be used for olives and other small things inside jars. That's actually a very old thing. I have used in the past and it worked fine.
We have something like the 4in1 chopper. I like to use it when I have to chop a lot of red/white onions into nearly samesized dices quickly. It's usually when I'm prepping for cooking for multiple people/dishes the next day. I like it because it's convinient, faster for me, means less crying and it's sealed enough to not make the whole fridge smell like onions for days.
The vegetable chopper is a game changer for people who have all kinds of issues with motor skills! A nice chopped salad is just a few slams of the lid, and you can shake it up with the dressing inside, then eat it out of the container. Mandoline slicing is okay, but they're inherently more dangerous than the chopper, though I understand where you're coming from as a professional. But for folks who have fine motor skill limitations, that thing opens up the possibilities for healthier eating and home cooking!
Can I just point out the attention to detail in editing at 00:10 (... many different types of tools and gadgets that we chefs "knead" to use ...). Very nice!
The Evergrip is intriguing 🤔 It makes sense that there can be more ergonomic ways to grip a knife for chopping - disability/impairment or not All the other gadgets seem fairly useless though haha I grew up watching Good Eats with Alton Brown, and his message of only having one "unitasker" in the kitchen (the fire extinguisher) has always resonated with me Thanks for the video, great stuff as always :)
The Evergrip sounds like a great purchase for me. I love to cook and bake but sometimes my hand just can't keep up with the pace I want to achieve because my fingers will lock/tire easily. Thanks for the reviews!
That rubber band shooting took me back to when my brother did (or at least tried to) that with one of my hair ties. It was one of the ones that had a metal clip to seal in the ends of the elastic band. He was being an idiot and grabbed a hold of the piece of metal (to aim), which then hit him directly in the thumbnail. He yelled, I laughed! That pickle picker looks a lot like something completely different from the ...hardcore adult section, IYKIYKI
I have a veggie chopper, and I would say I am quite proficient with a knife, but it certainly has its use cases. The veggie chopper is good for mass-chopping veggies very quickly where you don't particularly care what they look like, e.g. for large vegetable soups. They're also great for pico de Gallo and other salads with loads of cucumber, tomatoes, raw carrots, etc. The uniformity you get from them is quite aesthetically pleasing. It has its downsides as well; namely, they're hard to clean because bits of veggies get stuck in the teeth.
Great video Chef James, this is an excellent idea. I think these handy dandy "crappy' kitchen gadgets were though up by a merchandising company trying to make a fast Buck. Counting on the old axiom "there's a sucker born every minute". LoL
@@ChefJamesMakinson the amount of cleaning that all these require especially around hinges like sheers and such is just instant disqualified for me, knives are so much easier and better to clean after using.
@@ChefJamesMakinson It really is amazing! We have a longer version of the "pickle picker" with a long handle we use to pick up dropped screws, nuts and bolts when working on the van, or stick down the sink drain to retrieve hair clogs and free up the drain. Ours is magnetic and is great for small things you can't bend over to pick up or got dropped down the sink.
This video had me laughing out loud! : ) I groan when I think of the stupid gadgets I used when I first was learning to cook. One of the dumbest gadgets I had was a garlic roller that was supposed to peel and chop garlic perfectly...it was horrible. I eventually threw it out and use mostly my chefs knife for food prep. Keep them sharp!
A fun video - I love "...if you use your hands, something that you already have for free.." A friend gave me a mushroom slicer, like an egg slicer only mushroom-shaped. It slices only one width, the slices get stuck in the blades, and if you have a large mushroom you have to cut it in half with a knife so it will fit. Much simpler to just continue using the knife, but I keep it because it was a gift and it's cute.
My favorite 'pickle picker' is a fondue fork that I bought at a thrift store for less than a dollar. Works better than that thing you had. When it comes to kitchen scissors, I have the Fiskars my mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment. I don't know if they were made specifically for kitchen use but they work great for a variety of tasks...including snipping herbs. Quality Fiskars (not knock offs) for kitchen use is something my mom discovered before lots of chef's tools were available to the general public. She always had a pair in her kitchen and made sure I had a pair for mine Not sure what to say about that banana slicer 😅 if you really wanted to slice bananas evenly without a knife I think a wire cheese slicer would work better than an odd shaped piece of plastic Thanks for all the quality videos. I love watching and learning here. So glad I found you via Uncle Roger
I have a veggie chopper pretty similar to the 4 in 1, works lie a charm. Getting the potato fries even thickness, finechopping an onion in 1 second..I have plenty of knives but that little gadget has become more useful than I first thought.
Oh chef you made my day! The Ever Grip I can see a use for. A lot of older people still like to cook and not everybody has good ergonomic knives. But I laughed out loud at the egg breaker. One of my jobs while going to uni was dessert baker in a commercial bakery and my day started with "Separate 22 eggs". Since it was decades ago, a year or so back I tested myself to see if I could do a one handed crack and separate and I still could. Like riding a bicycle!
I love this! I remember trying to use the dumpling machine several times. I always ended up with too much dough left on the edges despite the small pieces of dough. My mother's advice - make the dumplings by hand and use a fork around them to close them :D
I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis several years ago. I am a home cook and I love cooking. Cutting for long periods of time has become more of a problem. I am supper happy to get the knife holder. I think that it will be really helpful for me
The banana slicer... it looks like it would be a pain to clean afterwards with squished rip banana clinging to the "slicers", versus how easy it is to clean a pairing knife. The pickle picker is just a very shortened version of what's called a parts retriever, used in garages to pick a dropped part out of the bowels of an engine compartment...hmm maybe I can repurpose mine being that I don't use it very much 😀 The vegetable chopper, it can be used to slice a potato into fries, it might be useful, although I would have doubts how long the plastic would hold up to that. Great video James, thanks.
The most fantastic kitchen gadgets I own are the GRIPSTIC bag sealers. Especially for the cheaply made "resealable" bags frozen foods often come in where the tracks that are supposed to seal the bag don't ever line up, so the bag never seals.
Your knife techniques make it so budget friendly for your audience because it just looks so simple to pull off over these tools you showed off! The knife is just so multipurpose over each of these tools! 😅
I remember my mum used to regular use a potato "chipper" with similar attachment to the 4 in one machine. It was just a simple box like machine with a handle to push to push the potato through the chopper blade. It was the sort of thing youd always see in the door to door magazines in the UK in the 90s 😅
@@ChefJamesMakinson hah yeah, I just looked up "potato chipper machine" and you can indeed still buy them here. I guess since we are known for "chips" here in the UK it's an easy market to cater to😅
Thx Chef! Even if most of those gadgets worked as intended the extra cleaning and fuss required completely negates their usefulness. Cleaning those vege cutters for example is hell on Earth compared to just using a damn knife and cleaning that when done.
“Peter Piper picked a PECK of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
I use to know the response frame and it went something like "Peter Piper would pick as many peppers as Peter Piper could pick if he would pick a peck of pickled peppers"
My wife loves pickles. The string of expletives that came out of her mouth when she saw the pickle picker was GLORIOUS. Strongly agree on the mandolin, if you have a bad hand like I do. Get one with a good safety guard. But yes, nothing there is better than a fork and knife.
My mom used to have this container that had a sliding strainer (?) in it. You dumped the jar of pickles in, and when you wanted one, you'd lift the handle and it lifted the pickles out of the juice!
I didn't know anyone peeled asparagus until a couple years ago when my sister-in-law peeled some for dinner. Seemed like a waste of time to me, unpeeled asparagus is delicious as-is and the peeling just seemed like food and time waste.
Chef James, hi again. All these kitchen gadgets are just a waste if time and money. The herb cutter is troublesome, the egg 🥚 breaker takes up space in the drawers and a pain to wash 🧼, so don’t have any kitchen gadgets at home. I even trued the garlic 🧄 crusher inconvenient to clean and wash 🧼.
The gourmet olive shop nearby used to have a "pickle picker" in every sample jar of olives and it worked great for tasting. That was over 20 years ago, so they've been around forever. Also good for coctail onions, bottled cherries, anything like that. Gets my vote if its durable.
With the tomato slicer, you can do a better job using 2 plates in the same way the container lid and cutting board was used. The advantage with the plates is that there's usually a rim on either side to help hold the food in place while you're cutting. ...but I usually find a sharp chef's knife, my hands, and a cutting board are enough...although I rarely need to cut huge numbers of anything.
Yes! I love this! I always had a fascination with those terrible as seen on tv products (they are usually so bad and useless, but sometimes there are gems). Especially when they are getting destroyed by people who know what they are doing. Absolutely I would love to see more of this. Great content! Maybe a reaction video to some horrible TV ads? :D
I use a vegetable chopper like that one sometimes because I have a permanently injured wrist that, when it flares up, makes that kind of cutting excruciating. Plus I have scoliosis and standing up for too long can sometimes be excruciating.
I do shamelessly enjoy my vegetable chopper, although I usually only bust it out if I need to cut a larger amount of veg, like for a stew or soup or larger scale recipe. Faster and more uniform than what I can do with a knife. If I'm just dicing one onion for a recipe, I just stick with the knife. The rest of the gadgets are quite silly, especially the banana slicer and the pickle picker. 😄
Fun video. I bet many of those will eventually be phased out. For one thing they unnecessarily cram the kitchen. Someone has given me a Silicone Garlic Peeler Skin Remover Roller. It works pretty well, however I still prefer banging on garlic cloves with my fist with a kitchen knife set atop of the cloves.
The egg cracker, to me, was the best tool to use! Needs some learning, but I think the mechanism of it looks unique, especially with a yolk catcher. 😊 The Evergrip seems convenient too, just how much knife control you have.
I think I will just practice my knife skills and general kitchen skills - that way it's easy to cook at a friends house without having to transport a load of different gadgets - and save my money to upgrade my knifes and pans to better ones when I can afford it.
There is so much tat on the net claiming to solve a problem that never existed! 😂 The trick I learned for tomatoes was to put them between two lids and slice in between the gap 🤷♀️
The asparagus peeler works perfectly for WHITE asparagus (the most popular type in Germany, and only sold until the end of June, not year-round); the stalks may well be half or 3/4 of an inch thick, and the gadget will give you a fairly even peel. For green asparagus, you're right, a knife works just fine.
I’m a home cook and I would never buy any of those gadgets. I just keep my knives sharp and have learned how to use them. The gadgets need to be cleaned and take up valuable storage space in drawers and shelves. I do have a pair of wooden tongs I use with the toaster and they are great for picking pickles!
Knife: Needs a little bit of training, is very flexible, fast to clean, can be used for decades Gadgets: No training needed, can only do one thing, might work or not work, hard to clean, might break very quickly I personally use a chef's knife 90% of the time when preparing food. That's basically all I really need when I would have to choose only one kitchen tool. Everything else is only nice to have. A very well sharpend chef's knife can even cut slices of bread with a thick crust.
First thing I thought regarding that tomato slicer was how the heck you're meant to sharpen the blade. Assuming the blade can be removed from the bit of plastic or otherwise exposed, it's probably a pain to sharpen even then.
I love your new kitchen! I agree with everything except the vegetable chopper. It’s the only way I can dice onions. I just don’t have the skill. If you make me throw mine away, I’m gonna buy the pre-diced ones from the store lol. Thanks for the consistently great content!
something i've come to notice (in my admittedly limited experience using kitchen gadgets) is that there are 2 things people should consider avoiding. 1: complicated things with lots of moving parts (these are harder to clean, which usually leads to leaving it in the cabinet to gather dust) 2: fancy slicers. 99% of what they do can be done with a knife, the other 1% is either wasteful or not very useful (like spiralizing a carrot into ribbons, or cutting an eggplant into the shape of homer simpson's head) (i have a ceramic mandolin that only has 2 moving parts. the thing you turn to make change the settings, and the plate that moves when you turn the setting knob) fancy slicers that claim to make food "fun" or make cooking "exciting" should be avoided at all costs. the are a B to clean, and the last thing i want the process of cooking to be is "exciting" (as if it would ever achieve that)
Good morning to you from Hong Kong 🇭🇰 SAR. These banana 🍌 cutter gadget is a pain in the butt when it comes to washing. I’d rather just peel it and eat it whole, or cut it he banana into slices and put it in vanilla ice cream 😋😋😋😋👍👍👍👍
I immediately thought of Tupperware's taco holders when reading "useless". I see this stuff in my cousins' kitchens along with dull knives. Worthless. I still have my parents' Condo Vegematic. Another useless gadget.
I'd agree with pretty much everything. For the evergrip, as Sorted Foods mentioned in their own review, it's also very useful for beginners in kitchens. I mean, how often did you see someone who's just starting holding the knife completely wrong? This forces your hand in the correct way. For the last one, the mandoline-that's-not-exactly-a-mandoline-but-is-trying-its-very-best, at 30$ I wouldn't buy it, but if it were cheaper, I'd consider it, because my chopping is ABSOLUTE garbage, and completely inconsistent.
Yeah.. I saw nothing in there that would go in my kitchen. I know they make pickle jars that if you turn upside down the juices will run down to the other. Or I could just use a small pair of tongs. Which I use to turn my bacon over. Thanks for the video
@@DavidMFChapman True! Though I usually keep some of the brine for use later...quick pickles, hot peppers, vinaigrettes, drinks... Usually about a month for the 'empty' jar.
My wife could do with an evergrip because I tried giving her my Victorinox chef's knife that won't slip on a tomato but she still manages to cut herself - soooo may band-aids! She prefers to cut veggies with a duller knife because it is ironically safer because when she inevitably slips it won't injure her. She avoids my Chinese cleaver (one of my favorite knives) like the plague...
We use the herb scissors for cutting hot green chilies. Very useful if you have sensitive skin 😊 (and don't want to burn your eyes, because after cutting chillies, the eyes always call out to the hands 😂)
Great video, was surprised you actually got like a slap chop type of thing to try out. Cooking with Jack would be jealous of that. I would suggest maybe trying stuff from more reputable and mainstream brands for products like Oxo, kitchenaid, rosle, etc. There are some gadgets that I do honestly like to use like a pineapple slicer, garlic press, garlic peeler, and apple slicer. All of those are made by Oxo and it just makes it quicker and usually less annoying when you are in a rush.
I would love to see the drawer required to store all that Cr@p & watch the person that owns that drawer select the banana slicer buried in the bottom of that drawer 🤣 Thanks for the laughs 🍻
I subscribe to the Alton Brown principle of kitchen equipment: there is only room for one unitasker in the kitchen, and that is the fire extinguisher. Every other tool MUST be capable of performing multiple functions to justify the space and expense.
Great video! Love to see whether or not these gadgets actually work. FYI, I saw someone else try the egg cracker. He said the problem is the metal piece that first pierces the egg is too large. It's going to puncture the yolk every time. But I would definitely love to see you test more products!!
There was a recipe for cookies that I used to make and I actually used the egg cracker because I am terrible at separating egg whites from the yolk but as you demonstrated in the video the problem with it is that the yolk would break before it got out of the shell. My family had a much better egg separator but we lost the part that was supposed to catch the yolk after we cracked the egg so we make do with the egg shell as the separator instead. Also the size of the egg did affect how the yolk would turn out like you demonstrated.
I'll stick to my knives thank you. But would love that knife handle thingy. Im left handed so it looks funny when i chop vegetables infront of people. 😂
Assuming you have a stove, spoons, forks, spatula, etc.. All you really need is a good knife, a good frying pan and a good ordinary pan. With those you can make so so much. EDIT: I suppose if I got really basic, all you need is a heat source, a knife and something to hold what you are cooking that is heat safe.
My vegetable lover’s soul is crying at the idea of peeling asparagus. I chew on the fibrous ends I break off rather than throw them out. Why would you waste any part of asparagus? Oh, the humanity! 😫
If you really feel the urge for a pickle picker, get it from a chemical supply or a hardware store. Far cheaper than one marketed for picking up pickles! Honestly, though, the only tool like any of those that I have at home is the box chopper. Mine isn't a chopper, mine has a few different mandolin-style blades. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's my favorite for grating things that I'm not going to get out the food processor for. I can give it to a guest to grate cheese with and it keeps the mess to a minimum. It collects all the slices and most of the juices when slicing veggies or fruits with it. Again, keeping the mess to a minimum. Can I do the slicing with a knife? Most days, yes. But especially as winter comes in, there are days when the answer is no. I've had arthritis in my hands since my teens, and I'm well beyond my teens now, and there are days when my hands cannot grip and control a knife well enough to grate cheese safely or slice veggies/fruits like I need. I'd like to have the chopper style, since it would make it faster in a lot of ways to make a chopped salad for lunch on a busy day at work. Is it optimal? Not necessarily, but it would be convenient, since I could make the salad in the bottom container, then just dress it and eat it from the container. Which, given my work schedule on days like today, is a very very helpful trait. (I mostly just wanted to comment that while I do think most of those things are a useless waste of money, things like the gripper and the chopping box actually do have value for someone with hands that don't always work as well as they used to or are supposed to.)
The EverGrip could be pretty handy for me. Arthritis in most of my joints, especially my knuckles, and bad psoriasis so my skin splits easily. Rounded edges are a must so getting a proper knife grip is "uncomfortable". The veggie chopper isn't *bad* but I already have a sprung, vertical mandolin type thingy with a feed chute that keeps my fingers well clear of the blade. Requires a lot less effort than the chopper as the pressure needed to do it all at once can be incredibly painful if your joints are no longer your friends. The rest are just pointless or bad IMO, even for those of us with conditions that cause manipulation issues.
Hey Chef! 😊 All of them are useless except for the knife grip. Besides, learning how to use your knives takes away the art and skill of creating beautiful cuts. I have fun using my knives, and we pick the ones we need for different specialties.😄 Great video! 🙂
I guess you can use the tomato "magazine" and slice them using a knife rather than using the included "slicer". But budget wise, it's cheaper using that container lid.
I use the mandolin and that's useful. Mind you, I'm a home cook, not a chef but even I look at this as "more crap to clean afterwards." But learning to get proficient with the knife has paid dividends for me. However, my sister-in-law would buy most of this stuff because it's cute...she's a horrible cook.
They guys over at Sorted Food often review kitchen gadgets, but they've gotten into really expensive ones lately like a automatic roti maker and dosa maker machines 🙂
As you mentioned, the egg cracker mentioned large eggs. It was obviously not sized for Jumbo eggs. I would try it with Large eggs first before discarding it. The rest of those items were more Temu than Amazon.
My family has the veggie chopper it really helps us when we harvest out onions & use the chopper to freeze them The knife holder I've seen on sorted food channel The egg cracker I've seen berry Lewis (formerly my virgin kitchen) & sorted food channels I agree with you on the pickle picker & banana cutter just a solution to a problem literally no one has
I think some of these are useful for elderly, or people with certain disabilities or health conditions. The vegetable chopper and egg cracker are especially useful for people with poor motor control abilities or Parkinson’s, and using a knife with strong tremors is very dangerous. Some people with self harm risk shouldn’t keep a knife in their homes at all so they won’t be tempted to use it the wrong way. For healthy people, I agree that a good sharp knife can perform better and is easier to clean.
Let me know what your thoughts are on these and which one is the best or worst! Also, be sure to see my are Japanese Knives Overrated video? ruclips.net/video/LgqoN2Duo5U/видео.html
@@ChefJamesMakinson will do 💚💚💚
Maybe try the dosa printer!
Would love to see a comparison between you making them and the ones coming from the printer
I would definitely use the knife gripper because of my arthritis. I mainly use a knife and a mandolin every day to make chips, fries, pickles, etc.
The poem you were reciting I always heard like this:
"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
IF Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?"
I did a lot of my own picking and pickling this year from my garden. My 2 little cucumber seeds yielded me 140 quarts of pickles. So, in my case,
Peter Piper picked a peck of prolific pickled peppers!
A peck of prolific pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a prolific peck of pickled peppers (or cucumbers)
Where's the prolific peppers Peter Piper picked?
Answer: In my pantry!!
Never seen anyone fail with the egg cracker before. That’s something
Nice change of scenery , you're on vacations !!! 🏝️⛵
LOL, the pickle picker is just a repurposed piece of equipment you use for electronics to pick up tiny little dropped parts... I've seen that exact thing in cheap starter kits from china.
There is also an automotive tool used to fish nuts, bolts, and screws out of places where you can't reach.
@@vikingr1000 I've seen those on Rainman Rays channel, they tend to be a bit bigger.
Lol yeah we used to have a much longer one that we used for getting stuff from down the backs of radiators etc
Came to the comments to say this lol. Have had a set for 30 years now.
Used for picking up stones by jewellers
The 4 veg chopper is really good for people with various disabilities, whether that's manual dexterity issues, as you said re. another tool - arthritis and so on. I think when reviewing some of these items, while I can see some are generally useless, others are game-changers for those of us who have difficulty using regular kitchen equipment. Also, we're not all Michelin star chefs, for many of us the cuts done by the veg chopper are absolutely fine :)
This was what I was going to say. I have a family member who is partially paralyzed on one side of his body, operating a knife and holding the ingredients to chop food finely would be impossible for him. In theory he could use something like that chopper. While a robot-coupe might be a superior tool for home use it's too much and a home grade food processor doesn't really have a rough chop setting. That doesn't mean it's a perfect tool necessarily(the force you need to apply and stability could be big factors in how usable it is for someone with disabilities) but it's a bit able-ist to look at something be like "Oh I don't need this in my use case." and say it's useless.
Love the vid! I also used to mock the banana slicer until I was in a kitchen with a 4 year old who wanted to "help" with food prep. Colourful, blunt, task-oriented tools are a boon in the right situation. It does see-saw then, for me, as to whether it is a kitchen item or a toy. Kept the mini-chef happy.
My mother-in-law and I exchange useless kitchen utensils every Christmas, she may get a pickle picker this year. Banana slicer was one of the first things one of us gave the other, after 20 years it’s getting harder to find unique gadgets that are both cheap and utterly useless.
Please do more of these. The item I had for many, many years, and which recently died because I dropped it, was the push-down vegetable slicer with different blades. After 45 years of high speed data entry, my hands are shot...arthritis and carpal tunnel make it difficult to do any precise cutting and boy did I love my little machine. Mine was smaller than the one you used and only did the two sizes of diced items, all I really needed it for. I think I will replace it with the one you used, as it had a nice big catcher and on sale now for $19. I will tell you, when I went through my mom's kitchen drawer where she kept meat thermometers and such, I found only two of what I would consider "gadgets" and those were a radish rosette maker and a strawberry stem remover. Both she used often though a small paring knife would do just as well, in my opinion, though she liked them and used them when she had full bowls of the items picked from the garden to can. Maybe they saved her time...I don't know. Really enjoyed this. (What do you think of the garlic press rocker and the 2 in 1 Pepper Seed Corer Remover on Amazon?)
The Herb scissors are actually just repurposed shredder scissors. These were used to shred paper when paper shredders weren't really affordable😂
This!
I think the 4 in 1 Veggie Chopper is the tool with the most potential in this video. The tool with the least potential is the Pickle Picker lol
😂
I'd say the banana slicer has the least potential. At least the pickle picker works!
Its not, I have one and they suck. Try cleaning those blades after some use. Most of these things are just like that, cool ideas but not practical when it comes to using them long term and cleaning. You end up spening more time rather than saving.
The pickle picker can be used for olives and other small things inside jars.
That's actually a very old thing. I have used in the past and it worked fine.
I hope this becomes a regular series, there's something so entertaining about watching a professional chef review kitchen gadgets.
We have something like the 4in1 chopper. I like to use it when I have to chop a lot of red/white onions into nearly samesized dices quickly. It's usually when I'm prepping for cooking for multiple people/dishes the next day. I like it because it's convinient, faster for me, means less crying and it's sealed enough to not make the whole fridge smell like onions for days.
Loving this! Please make a series of this!🔥
I may!
The vegetable chopper is a game changer for people who have all kinds of issues with motor skills!
A nice chopped salad is just a few slams of the lid, and you can shake it up with the dressing inside, then eat it out of the container.
Mandoline slicing is okay, but they're inherently more dangerous than the chopper, though I understand where you're coming from as a professional.
But for folks who have fine motor skill limitations, that thing opens up the possibilities for healthier eating and home cooking!
The tomato slicing trick I've seen is to put them between two dessert plates, ones that are shallow enough to leave a gap between them.
The herb cutter could be perfect for children who want to help you cook
yes but I learned how to use a knife at 5 years old
@@ChefJamesMakinsonahh! My parents wouldn't let me breathe on a knife at 5
@@ChefJamesMakinson Yeah... most parents, especially these days, would barely trust their 5 year old in the same room as a knife, even supervised.
Can I just point out the attention to detail in editing at 00:10 (... many different types of tools and gadgets that we chefs "knead" to use ...). Very nice!
The Evergrip is intriguing 🤔 It makes sense that there can be more ergonomic ways to grip a knife for chopping - disability/impairment or not
All the other gadgets seem fairly useless though haha
I grew up watching Good Eats with Alton Brown, and his message of only having one "unitasker" in the kitchen (the fire extinguisher) has always resonated with me
Thanks for the video, great stuff as always :)
Thank you!
All we need is a kitchen knife and a potato peeler, every other tool is useless 😂😂
😂
Spatula, spoon, tongs, colander, good pans?
The Evergrip sounds like a great purchase for me. I love to cook and bake but sometimes my hand just can't keep up with the pace I want to achieve because my fingers will lock/tire easily.
Thanks for the reviews!
I find this not really a product review video, but more a way for chef James to show off his fabulous knifeskills :D
That rubber band shooting took me back to when my brother did (or at least tried to) that with one of my hair ties. It was one of the ones that had a metal clip to seal in the ends of the elastic band.
He was being an idiot and grabbed a hold of the piece of metal (to aim), which then hit him directly in the thumbnail. He yelled, I laughed!
That pickle picker looks a lot like something completely different from the ...hardcore adult section, IYKIYKI
I have a veggie chopper, and I would say I am quite proficient with a knife, but it certainly has its use cases. The veggie chopper is good for mass-chopping veggies very quickly where you don't particularly care what they look like, e.g. for large vegetable soups.
They're also great for pico de Gallo and other salads with loads of cucumber, tomatoes, raw carrots, etc. The uniformity you get from them is quite aesthetically pleasing.
It has its downsides as well; namely, they're hard to clean because bits of veggies get stuck in the teeth.
Great video Chef James, this is an excellent idea. I think these handy dandy "crappy' kitchen gadgets were though up by a merchandising company trying to make a
fast Buck. Counting on the old axiom "there's a sucker born every minute". LoL
Thank you! yeah it's amazing how many of these things people buy
@@ChefJamesMakinson the amount of cleaning that all these require especially around hinges like sheers and such is just instant disqualified for me, knives are so much easier and better to clean after using.
@@ChefJamesMakinson It really is amazing! We have a longer version of the "pickle picker" with a long handle we use to pick up dropped screws, nuts and bolts when working on the van, or stick down the sink drain to retrieve hair clogs and free up the drain. Ours is magnetic and is great for small things you can't bend over to pick up or got dropped down the sink.
lol I’ve never heard of peeling asparagus! Always baked or grilled them and just ate it whole. You learn something new everyday!
This video had me laughing out loud! : ) I groan when I think of the stupid gadgets I used when I first was learning to cook. One of the dumbest gadgets I had was a garlic roller that was supposed to peel and chop garlic perfectly...it was horrible. I eventually threw it out and use mostly my chefs knife for food prep. Keep them sharp!
A fun video - I love "...if you use your hands, something that you already have for free.." A friend gave me a mushroom slicer, like an egg slicer only mushroom-shaped. It slices only one width, the slices get stuck in the blades, and if you have a large mushroom you have to cut it in half with a knife so it will fit. Much simpler to just continue using the knife, but I keep it because it was a gift and it's cute.
My favorite 'pickle picker' is a fondue fork that I bought at a thrift store for less than a dollar. Works better than that thing you had.
When it comes to kitchen scissors, I have the Fiskars my mom gave me when I moved into my first apartment. I don't know if they were made specifically for kitchen use but they work great for a variety of tasks...including snipping herbs. Quality Fiskars (not knock offs) for kitchen use is something my mom discovered before lots of chef's tools were available to the general public. She always had a pair in her kitchen and made sure I had a pair for mine
Not sure what to say about that banana slicer 😅 if you really wanted to slice bananas evenly without a knife I think a wire cheese slicer would work better than an odd shaped piece of plastic
Thanks for all the quality videos. I love watching and learning here. So glad I found you via Uncle Roger
I have two pairs of Fiskars scissors, they are the best
I have a veggie chopper pretty similar to the 4 in 1, works lie a charm. Getting the potato fries even thickness, finechopping an onion in 1 second..I have plenty of knives but that little gadget has become more useful than I first thought.
The banana cutter is obviously exclusively for enterprising toddlers who wish to make their own snacks safely
Oh chef you made my day! The Ever Grip I can see a use for. A lot of older people still like to cook and not everybody has good ergonomic knives. But I laughed out loud at the egg breaker. One of my jobs while going to uni was dessert baker in a commercial bakery and my day started with "Separate 22 eggs". Since it was decades ago, a year or so back I tested myself to see if I could do a one handed crack and separate and I still could. Like riding a bicycle!
I love this! I remember trying to use the dumpling machine several times. I always ended up with too much dough left on the edges despite the small pieces of dough. My mother's advice - make the dumplings by hand and use a fork around them to close them :D
I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis several years ago. I am a home cook and I love cooking. Cutting for long periods of time has become more of a problem. I am supper happy to get the knife holder. I think that it will be really helpful for me
The banana slicer... it looks like it would be a pain to clean afterwards with squished rip banana clinging to the "slicers", versus how easy it is to clean a pairing knife. The pickle picker is just a very shortened version of what's called a parts retriever, used in garages to pick a dropped part out of the bowels of an engine compartment...hmm maybe I can repurpose mine being that I don't use it very much 😀
The vegetable chopper, it can be used to slice a potato into fries, it might be useful, although I would have doubts how long the plastic would hold up to that. Great video James, thanks.
The most fantastic kitchen gadgets I own are the GRIPSTIC bag sealers. Especially for the cheaply made "resealable" bags frozen foods often come in where the tracks that are supposed to seal the bag don't ever line up, so the bag never seals.
Your knife techniques make it so budget friendly for your audience because it just looks so simple to pull off over these tools you showed off! The knife is just so multipurpose over each of these tools! 😅
🤣 its just practice!
I remember my mum used to regular use a potato "chipper" with similar attachment to the 4 in one machine. It was just a simple box like machine with a handle to push to push the potato through the chopper blade. It was the sort of thing youd always see in the door to door magazines in the UK in the 90s 😅
really? interesting!
@@ChefJamesMakinson hah yeah, I just looked up "potato chipper machine" and you can indeed still buy them here. I guess since we are known for "chips" here in the UK it's an easy market to cater to😅
Thx Chef! Even if most of those gadgets worked as intended the extra cleaning and fuss required completely negates their usefulness. Cleaning those vege cutters for example is hell on Earth compared to just using a damn knife and cleaning that when done.
“Peter Piper picked a PECK of pickled peppers, a peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked, if Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
I use to know the response frame and it went something like "Peter Piper would pick as many peppers as Peter Piper could pick if he would pick a peck of pickled peppers"
My wife loves pickles.
The string of expletives that came out of her mouth when she saw the pickle picker was GLORIOUS.
Strongly agree on the mandolin, if you have a bad hand like I do. Get one with a good safety guard.
But yes, nothing there is better than a fork and knife.
My mom used to have this container that had a sliding strainer (?) in it. You dumped the jar of pickles in, and when you wanted one, you'd lift the handle and it lifted the pickles out of the juice!
I didn't know anyone peeled asparagus until a couple years ago when my sister-in-law peeled some for dinner. Seemed like a waste of time to me, unpeeled asparagus is delicious as-is and the peeling just seemed like food and time waste.
Chef James, hi again. All these kitchen gadgets are just a waste if time and money. The herb cutter is troublesome, the egg 🥚 breaker takes up space in the drawers and a pain to wash 🧼, so don’t have any kitchen gadgets at home. I even trued the garlic 🧄 crusher inconvenient to clean and wash 🧼.
The gourmet olive shop nearby used to have a "pickle picker" in every sample jar of olives and it worked great for tasting. That was over 20 years ago, so they've been around forever. Also good for coctail onions, bottled cherries, anything like that. Gets my vote if its durable.
With the tomato slicer, you can do a better job using 2 plates in the same way the container lid and cutting board was used. The advantage with the plates is that there's usually a rim on either side to help hold the food in place while you're cutting.
...but I usually find a sharp chef's knife, my hands, and a cutting board are enough...although I rarely need to cut huge numbers of anything.
I hope you do more kitchen gadget reviews. Great stuff, and a nice change of pace.
Thanks, will do!
Nice to see a different kind of video! That tomato slicer 😂
Yes! I love this!
I always had a fascination with those terrible as seen on tv products (they are usually so bad and useless, but sometimes there are gems). Especially when they are getting destroyed by people who know what they are doing.
Absolutely I would love to see more of this. Great content!
Maybe a reaction video to some horrible TV ads? :D
I use a vegetable chopper like that one sometimes because I have a permanently injured wrist that, when it flares up, makes that kind of cutting excruciating. Plus I have scoliosis and standing up for too long can sometimes be excruciating.
I do shamelessly enjoy my vegetable chopper, although I usually only bust it out if I need to cut a larger amount of veg, like for a stew or soup or larger scale recipe. Faster and more uniform than what I can do with a knife. If I'm just dicing one onion for a recipe, I just stick with the knife.
The rest of the gadgets are quite silly, especially the banana slicer and the pickle picker. 😄
Fun video. I bet many of those will eventually be phased out. For one thing they unnecessarily cram the kitchen. Someone has given me a Silicone Garlic Peeler Skin Remover Roller. It works pretty well, however I still prefer banging on garlic cloves with my fist with a kitchen knife set atop of the cloves.
The egg cracker, to me, was the best tool to use! Needs some learning, but I think the mechanism of it looks unique, especially with a yolk catcher. 😊
The Evergrip seems convenient too, just how much knife control you have.
So many gadgets to complicate ones life and making a mess at the same time XD
I think I will just practice my knife skills and general kitchen skills - that way it's easy to cook at a friends house without having to transport a load of different gadgets - and save my money to upgrade my knifes and pans to better ones when I can afford it.
7:27 highly recommend for people with nerve damage or arthritis in their future. Grip strength seems to be much lower.
There is so much tat on the net claiming to solve a problem that never existed! 😂
The trick I learned for tomatoes was to put them between two lids and slice in between the gap 🤷♀️
The asparagus peeler works perfectly for WHITE asparagus (the most popular type in Germany, and only sold until the end of June, not year-round); the stalks may well be half or 3/4 of an inch thick, and the gadget will give you a fairly even peel. For green asparagus, you're right, a knife works just fine.
maybe but bananas can be very soft
I think with better materials the banana slicer could be useful but as James said, its plastic and to me seems cheap and nasty.
I’m a home cook and I would never buy any of those gadgets. I just keep my knives sharp and have learned how to use them. The gadgets need to be cleaned and take up valuable storage space in drawers and shelves.
I do have a pair of wooden tongs I use with the toaster and they are great for picking pickles!
Knife: Needs a little bit of training, is very flexible, fast to clean, can be used for decades
Gadgets: No training needed, can only do one thing, might work or not work, hard to clean, might break very quickly
I personally use a chef's knife 90% of the time when preparing food. That's basically all I really need when I would have to choose only one kitchen tool. Everything else is only nice to have. A very well sharpend chef's knife can even cut slices of bread with a thick crust.
...Still drooling over that knives collection 😀
First thing I thought regarding that tomato slicer was how the heck you're meant to sharpen the blade. Assuming the blade can be removed from the bit of plastic or otherwise exposed, it's probably a pain to sharpen even then.
I love your new kitchen! I agree with everything except the vegetable chopper. It’s the only way I can dice onions. I just don’t have the skill. If you make me throw mine away, I’m gonna buy the pre-diced ones from the store lol. Thanks for the consistently great content!
something i've come to notice (in my admittedly limited experience using kitchen gadgets) is that there are 2 things people should consider avoiding.
1: complicated things with lots of moving parts (these are harder to clean, which usually leads to leaving it in the cabinet to gather dust)
2: fancy slicers. 99% of what they do can be done with a knife, the other 1% is either wasteful or not very useful (like spiralizing a carrot into ribbons, or cutting an eggplant into the shape of homer simpson's head) (i have a ceramic mandolin that only has 2 moving parts. the thing you turn to make change the settings, and the plate that moves when you turn the setting knob)
fancy slicers that claim to make food "fun" or make cooking "exciting" should be avoided at all costs. the are a B to clean, and the last thing i want the process of cooking to be is "exciting" (as if it would ever achieve that)
Good morning to you from Hong Kong 🇭🇰 SAR. These banana 🍌 cutter gadget is a pain in the butt when it comes to washing. I’d rather just peel it and eat it whole, or cut it he banana into slices and put it in vanilla ice cream 😋😋😋😋👍👍👍👍
I immediately thought of Tupperware's taco holders when reading "useless". I see this stuff in my cousins' kitchens along with dull knives. Worthless.
I still have my parents' Condo Vegematic. Another useless gadget.
Banana slicer in the shape of an eggplant.... nice. 😁😁
I'd agree with pretty much everything. For the evergrip, as Sorted Foods mentioned in their own review, it's also very useful for beginners in kitchens. I mean, how often did you see someone who's just starting holding the knife completely wrong? This forces your hand in the correct way. For the last one, the mandoline-that's-not-exactly-a-mandoline-but-is-trying-its-very-best, at 30$ I wouldn't buy it, but if it were cheaper, I'd consider it, because my chopping is ABSOLUTE garbage, and completely inconsistent.
Yeah.. I saw nothing in there that would go in my kitchen. I know they make pickle jars that if you turn upside down the juices will run down to the other. Or I could just use a small pair of tongs. Which I use to turn my bacon over. Thanks for the video
The pickle picker is great!! ...for the LAST pickle in the jar that you inevitably end up chasing around with a fork...
@@bobd2659 that’s when I dump the contents of the jar into a strainer over the sink!
@@DavidMFChapman True! Though I usually keep some of the brine for use later...quick pickles, hot peppers, vinaigrettes, drinks... Usually about a month for the 'empty' jar.
Great video as always James. I couldn't help but bop my head constantly with all of the reggaeton in the background haha
I appreciate you reviewing these products! 😀
Thank you! :)
My wife could do with an evergrip because I tried giving her my Victorinox chef's knife that won't slip on a tomato but she still manages to cut herself - soooo may band-aids! She prefers to cut veggies with a duller knife because it is ironically safer because when she inevitably slips it won't injure her. She avoids my Chinese cleaver (one of my favorite knives) like the plague...
We use the herb scissors for cutting hot green chilies. Very useful if you have sensitive skin 😊 (and don't want to burn your eyes, because after cutting chillies, the eyes always call out to the hands 😂)
Great video, was surprised you actually got like a slap chop type of thing to try out. Cooking with Jack would be jealous of that. I would suggest maybe trying stuff from more reputable and mainstream brands for products like Oxo, kitchenaid, rosle, etc. There are some gadgets that I do honestly like to use like a pineapple slicer, garlic press, garlic peeler, and apple slicer. All of those are made by Oxo and it just makes it quicker and usually less annoying when you are in a rush.
pickle piker is for picking pickled carolina rippers out of a jar, so you don't touch them 😀
I have the same chef knife! Had it for almost 10 years and still going!!
I would love to see the drawer required to store all that Cr@p & watch the person that owns that drawer select the banana slicer buried in the bottom of that drawer 🤣 Thanks for the laughs 🍻
Call pickle picker "nose picker", much better use 😂😂😂
🤣
I subscribe to the Alton Brown principle of kitchen equipment: there is only room for one unitasker in the kitchen, and that is the fire extinguisher. Every other tool MUST be capable of performing multiple functions to justify the space and expense.
@@GuttersMN what about a coffee maker or a toaster?
Great video! Love to see whether or not these gadgets actually work. FYI, I saw someone else try the egg cracker. He said the problem is the metal piece that first pierces the egg is too large. It's going to puncture the yolk every time. But I would definitely love to see you test more products!!
There was a recipe for cookies that I used to make and I actually used the egg cracker because I am terrible at separating egg whites from the yolk but as you demonstrated in the video the problem with it is that the yolk would break before it got out of the shell. My family had a much better egg separator but we lost the part that was supposed to catch the yolk after we cracked the egg so we make do with the egg shell as the separator instead. Also the size of the egg did affect how the yolk would turn out like you demonstrated.
Even better asparagus hack: avoid it entirely, it's gross. Saves me loads of time!
I'll stick to my knives thank you. But would love that knife handle thingy. Im left handed so it looks funny when i chop vegetables infront of people. 😂
5:09 you can use two plates for that as well. Put tomatoes to one and cover with another one.
Assuming you have a stove, spoons, forks, spatula, etc.. All you really need is a good knife, a good frying pan and a good ordinary pan. With those you can make so so much. EDIT: I suppose if I got really basic, all you need is a heat source, a knife and something to hold what you are cooking that is heat safe.
My vegetable lover’s soul is crying at the idea of peeling asparagus. I chew on the fibrous ends I break off rather than throw them out. Why would you waste any part of asparagus? Oh, the humanity! 😫
Try getting your hands on a half-boiled egg 'maker', it makes perfect half-boiled eggs 🤣
If you really feel the urge for a pickle picker, get it from a chemical supply or a hardware store. Far cheaper than one marketed for picking up pickles! Honestly, though, the only tool like any of those that I have at home is the box chopper. Mine isn't a chopper, mine has a few different mandolin-style blades. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's my favorite for grating things that I'm not going to get out the food processor for. I can give it to a guest to grate cheese with and it keeps the mess to a minimum. It collects all the slices and most of the juices when slicing veggies or fruits with it. Again, keeping the mess to a minimum. Can I do the slicing with a knife? Most days, yes. But especially as winter comes in, there are days when the answer is no. I've had arthritis in my hands since my teens, and I'm well beyond my teens now, and there are days when my hands cannot grip and control a knife well enough to grate cheese safely or slice veggies/fruits like I need. I'd like to have the chopper style, since it would make it faster in a lot of ways to make a chopped salad for lunch on a busy day at work. Is it optimal? Not necessarily, but it would be convenient, since I could make the salad in the bottom container, then just dress it and eat it from the container. Which, given my work schedule on days like today, is a very very helpful trait.
(I mostly just wanted to comment that while I do think most of those things are a useless waste of money, things like the gripper and the chopping box actually do have value for someone with hands that don't always work as well as they used to or are supposed to.)
3:52 That blade's as sharp as a cue ball!
The EverGrip could be pretty handy for me. Arthritis in most of my joints, especially my knuckles, and bad psoriasis so my skin splits easily. Rounded edges are a must so getting a proper knife grip is "uncomfortable". The veggie chopper isn't *bad* but I already have a sprung, vertical mandolin type thingy with a feed chute that keeps my fingers well clear of the blade. Requires a lot less effort than the chopper as the pressure needed to do it all at once can be incredibly painful if your joints are no longer your friends.
The rest are just pointless or bad IMO, even for those of us with conditions that cause manipulation issues.
Hey Chef! 😊
All of them are useless except for the knife grip. Besides, learning how to use your knives takes away the art and skill of creating beautiful cuts. I have fun using my knives, and we pick the ones we need for different specialties.😄
Great video! 🙂
I guess you can use the tomato "magazine" and slice them using a knife rather than using the included "slicer". But budget wise, it's cheaper using that container lid.
I use the mandolin and that's useful. Mind you, I'm a home cook, not a chef but even I look at this as "more crap to clean afterwards."
But learning to get proficient with the knife has paid dividends for me. However, my sister-in-law would buy most of this stuff because it's cute...she's a horrible cook.
Great timing. Just made potato salad and salmon with a chocolate mousse as dessert.
I’ll eat and watch this
At home, we used a paring knife (non-serrated)90% of the time; serrated utility knife for the rest. 😂
They guys over at Sorted Food often review kitchen gadgets, but they've gotten into really expensive ones lately like a automatic roti maker and dosa maker machines 🙂
Don't think I've ever had a reason to peel asparagus
The veggie cutter will likely increase the tear factor on onions exponentially as it will smash more cells.
The asparagus peeler is probably more for white asparagus which are a lot bigger and which you must peel
As you mentioned, the egg cracker mentioned large eggs. It was obviously not sized for Jumbo eggs. I would try it with Large eggs first before discarding it. The rest of those items were more Temu than Amazon.
My family has the veggie chopper it really helps us when we harvest out onions & use the chopper to freeze them
The knife holder I've seen on sorted food channel
The egg cracker I've seen berry Lewis (formerly my virgin kitchen) & sorted food channels
I agree with you on the pickle picker & banana cutter just a solution to a problem literally no one has
I think some of these are useful for elderly, or people with certain disabilities or health conditions. The vegetable chopper and egg cracker are especially useful for people with poor motor control abilities or Parkinson’s, and using a knife with strong tremors is very dangerous. Some people with self harm risk shouldn’t keep a knife in their homes at all so they won’t be tempted to use it the wrong way.
For healthy people, I agree that a good sharp knife can perform better and is easier to clean.