Tag Archives: Kitchen Gadgets

Countertop Saltwater Taffy Puller: Candy for Days

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Saltwater taffy: it’s the sort of candy most people can have a few pieces of at the beach, then be perfectly content until their next beach trip. But maybe you’re one of the few who can’t get enough of it. Maybe you love it so much you need to make it at home. Well, for you, there’s the countertop Chef’n Sweet Spot Saltwater Taffy Maker (affiliate link). Just please, if you are going to buy one, make sure your health insurance includes comprehensive dental coverage.

The tabletop taffy maker features two rotating hooks for pulling the taffy after you’ve made the soft candy. Of course, you don’t need a taffy puller to pull taffy, you can do it by hand like I did when I was a kid, but you do risk dropping it on the floor and making a whole batch of dog hair candy like I did.

The hooks are removable for cleaning and storage, and the whole thing folds down to just the width of the gearbox, so it takes up very little space when not in use. Certainly a handy feature for storing the unit after the one time most people will ever use it.

[via DudeIWantThat]

An Ice Cream Spoon with an Integrated Flame for Melting Hard Ice Cream

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The Sizzling Scooper is the brainchild of Matty Benedetto of Unnecessary Inventions. It’s an ice cream spoon with an integrated lighter beneath for melting hard ice cream before scooping. Is it practical? Probably not. Is it necessary? Almost certainly not. Come on, Matty; you should have at least used a torch lighter for maximum melting capabilities.

I wish Matty would have provided some sort of warning before I decided to try making my own Sizzling Scooper with a metal spoon and burnt my lips after heating the ice cream too long. Can you even imagine how embarrassing it was to explain what happened to my doctor? Dammit, Matty, this is all your fault!

Alternatively, dip a metal spoon in a glass of hot water before scooping hard ice cream. That’s what I used to do before Matty put this idiotic idea in my head. Can I sue? The emotional distress this has caused has got to be worth something. At least a free Sizzling Scooper.

[via DudeIWantThat]

Countertop Slush Puppie Machine Is Brain Freeze Ready

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A staple of gas stations when I was growing up, Slush Puppies are hands down one of the best beverages to drink if you want your mom constantly nagging that you’re going to rot all your teeth out. Available from FireBox, the $100 countertop Slush Puppie machine allegedly produces Slush Puppies just like you remember: insanely sweet and painfully cold.

The countertop Slush Puppie machine can produce a liter of slush every 15-25 minutes, with the option for a coarse or fine ice grain. Just add water, ice, salt, and Slush Puppie syrup (sold separately in 500mL bottles – enough to make 4 liters apiece), and you’re well on your way to a debilitating brain freeze! I… I can’t think straight!

FireBox reminds you that if you’re going to add alcohol to your Slush Puppie, you need to do so AFTER making it in the machine. Otherwise, the alcohol will prevent the mix from freezing properly since its freezing temperature is significantly colder than water. Of course, anybody like me who’s tried and failed to make alcohol freezy pops on spring break probably already knows that.

The Top 10 Kitchen Appliances designed to be the perfect gift for all MasterChef ready home cooks!

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The pandemic birthed a lot of home chefs, who discovered a deep and profound love for cooking! Surprisingly, I was one of them. Before the pandemic took place, cooking was a chore I completely avoided. But now, I honestly find it quite therapeutic! The pandemic, and all the free time that came along with it, somehow awakened my inner chef. To encourage and motivate all the inner chefs that came to life during the pandemic, we’ve curated a collection of kitchen appliances that promise to transform cooking from a Herculean feat to an enjoyable and fun process! From a hidden induction cooking unit to a smart refrigerator designed with a built-in food preparation space – these kitchen products promise to transform your disastrous cooking experiments into MasterChef-worthy delicacies! These products can reduce your prep time in half, make the little cooking tasks much easier, and help you with tedious and complicated techniques. They make cooking effortless and easy. Enjoy!

The induction cooking system is seamless and very easy to operate. All you have to do is place the Lapitec Chef silicone mat on your worktop to activate the touch controls and switch on the system. The mat is key, without it the induction unit and controls will be inactive and the worktop is like any other kitchen counter only distinguished only by small engravings that align with the mat’s controls. Lapitec Chef allows for easy cleaning and storage so the counter can be used for other activities like preparing food, plating dishes and hosting social occasions. Interestingly, Lapitec is a 100% sintered stone and it is also non-porous, non-absorbent as well as resistant to chemicals which makes it ideal for both indoor and outdoor kitchens. You can choose to have either two or four cooking rings for your induction system.

Fooding, a new kitchen appliance concept from Yifeeling Design, combines the best of the microwave and air fryer. Turns out, we can have it all. Inspired by the bulbous shape of an astronaut’s helmet, Fooding merges the microwave’s traditional rectangular shape with the air fryer’s modern rounded edges. While air fryers heat up some tasty meals, they typically take up a lot of counter space which makes them less user-friendly. By combining the air fryer with the microwave, Fooding takes up less space in the kitchen and merges two appliances into one for a one-stop-shop.

Made from heat-resistant and food-safe plastic, the Egguins are an innovative way to store, boil, or serve eggs. The hollow penguin shape allows you to slide eggs (both small and large) into it, completing it visually and making it look like a flock of Emperor Penguins ready to dash right into the water (the visual metaphor of connecting the egg, the bird, and the water is just perfect)! Immerse the Egguins into a saucepan of boiling water using the handle above, and just lift them out when you’re done boiling them to the softness or hardness of your choice.

While new trendy diets make their way across social media platforms and health food stores, no single diet will fit everyone’s needs. Ditching trendy diets for mindful eating, the Fresh Fridge designed by Tati Feruccio is paired with an array of technical features that encourage a health-conscious lifestyle. The Fresh Fridge is a sort of smart refrigerator that analyzes each user’s distinct eating and health habits to portion out nutritious meals throughout the day. The main technical detail that stands out is the Fresh Fridge’s digital interface that’s located just above the small refrigerator. Broadcasting mindful facts and cooking recipes from its screen, the digital interface is like your own personal cooking show for various meals throughout the day. Just below the interface, allocated space for meal preparation feels intuitive and makes following along with recipes while chopping up produce items easier than ever before.

The Terracooler is a modern interpretation of the traditional Zeer pot or pot-in-pot refrigerator, an evaporative cooling refrigeration device that has been used for centuries and is still used today in countries across the globe, such as India and Nigeria. Requiring no electricity whatsoever, Zeer pots only need a source of water and some dry air to keep produce and other food items cool. Reinterpreting the Zeer pot for modern use, London-based designer Ellie Perry created the Terracooler, a tri-tiered pot-in-pot refrigerator that fits right at home on the kitchen counter.

Providing leverage for one-handed users, Moray is built with an assortment of chamfers, angled surfaces, and curved edges that hold dishes in one place while they’re getting washed. In refining her universal kitchen sink, Baltazar identified the obstacles faced in the kitchen for one-handed dishwashers and sought to solve them with Moray. Following a series of indirect observation and ideation periods, Baltazar learned that it’s less so about introducing new tools and more about redesigning the sink from the basin up.

Meet the Oblige, an entertainment space where homeowners can depict their personal traits by customizing the modular appliance to their individual lifestyle or living space. The modular cafe intends to go beyond the idea of the basic functions the appliances in your kitchen perform. The designers behind Oblige feel setting up a café at home is inconvenient for now because it’s not easy to set up space with all the appliances required. Connecting them all to water and electrical sources is another headache. Simply thinking of brewing a good coffee – you need a list of appliances – from your coffee grinder, the pod-maker, espresso brewer, milk frother, and more, depending on your choice!

ODNY.BOX is a food storage concept with an intuitive control dial and a minimal aesthetic for users to store any type of leftover, from hot baked cookies to cold Greek yogurt. Inspired by the bulbous shape that water makes when it drops on flat surfaces, the glass lid of ODNY.BOX comes together as half of a globe and almost curls under the platform where food is kept to ensure sealed storage. The seasons have an effect not only on the food we eat but also on how that food is kept for tomorrow. During the winter months, the hot food we order or cook at home is subject to cold temperatures, while during the warmer months, perishables like produce are the first to go bad.

Samsung Cuisine is a conceptual all-in-one portable oven made keeping the Samsung design language in mind. It allows you to heat up your food anywhere anytime. Think of it as a lunch bag and a microwave having a high-tech kitchen appliance baby! Samsung Cusine features the built-in inductive heating technology of Samsung that can go up to 300-degree F and it will heat up anything you put in the oven. Sullivan explains that this portable appliance is perfect for any trip – camping, hiking, or picnic! The portable oven has clean lines, minimal form, a smooth surface, and that iconic pill-shaped button. It is divided into two sections: top and bottom. The top heating container is perfect to cook or keep your food warm, while the bottom container can be used to store fruits or desserts.

Instant Cooking Pot with Lantern

Instant Cooking Pot with Lantern

Meet WAMP, an instant cooking pot made from ultra-durable duralumin material, ideal for campers who value multiple uses of things they stuff in the backpack. Although a pretty basic utensil, this solves a very useful purpose. You can put it on top of any oil lantern to employ the heat dissipated to good use. Case-in-point, heating or keeping the food warm without expending any extra energy. Be it cooking piping hot canned food or preparing energy-boosting tea on a long trip to the mountains.

The post The Top 10 Kitchen Appliances designed to be the perfect gift for all MasterChef ready home cooks! first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kitchen Appliances to help dessert-loving home cooks achieve their pastry chef dreams!

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My favorite part of a meal is…dessert! I have a massive sweet tooth, and if you give me a piece of cake, I’ll be sitting in contentment for hours. As much as I love devouring desserts, I’m not the best at making them. Although that would help reduce some of the stress on my wallet! For all those dessert lovers who love gobbling up anything sweet in sight, but unfortunately struggle at preparing them – this collection of kitchen appliances has been curated specially for you. From a Star Wars-inspired waffle maker to a robotic icing assistant to help you decorate your cakes – these kitchen appliances have been designed for all those home cooks with a huge sweet tooth! These kitchen gadgets are dessert-friendly and YD-approved. Enjoy!

 

Imagine how good an ice-cream scooping spoon would have to be to win a Global Innovation Award. With a special heat-retaining liquid inside its handle and a thermally-conductive alloy structure internal structure that guides the heat to the scoop’s rim, the ScoopTHAT II can quite naturally carve through that solid block of ice cream with zero fuss. Relying on just the physical transfer of heat, ScoopTHAT II slices through frozen cream like a hot knife through butter, but without any electricity or batteries… just good old science.

The Bruno comes as a clamshell appliance with a lid that hinges back when you open it. With heating coils on the base as well as the lid, you can use the Bruno just like an oven (except this opens differently) by even choosing which heating plate you want to activate. A grill plate sits at the middle, holding your meats or vegetables on it as you grill them just like you would on a barbecue grill. Open the lid, fire the lower coil, and you’ve got yourself an impromptu grill that works well with all sorts of food. Close the lid and activate both heating coils and you’ve got a toaster that toasts breads kept horizontally!

Producing probably the best waffles in the galaxy, Pangea’s Deluxe Millennial Falcon Waffle Maker creates iconic starship-shaped waffles, with even browning on both sides thanks to its weighted lid and in-built thermostat. It even packs two LEDs that tell you when to pour batter, and when the waffles are perfectly golden and ready absolutely devour.

Modeled on the shape and design of a toucan bird (remember Rafael from the movie Rio?), Toco actually helps core and spiralize an apple, turning it from a fruit into a fun spiral you can eat! Made from plastic (so it’s relatively safe around kids), Toco’s beak comes with a circular element at its tip that pierces into the fruit’s core, while the beak itself has a sharp-ish edge that cuts through the fruit’s flesh. Toco’s eye-hole serves as a finger-rest too, giving you the leverage you need to easily cut through the fruit.

Designed to mount onto your existing 3D printer, the Cakewalk 3D is a handy food extruder that lets you decorate cakes, make meringues, adorn your pizza with ornate cheese patterns, or write your name in guacamole on a burrito. If there’s any food that can be extruded, the Cakewalk 3D can pretty much extrude it, thanks to a stainless-steel food tube, a helix that pushes the food out like an Archimedes screw, and a NEMA 17 motor that runs the extrusions while the entire setup (which gets mounted on the X-Y axis arm of your printer) moves back and forth to create complex patterns that you feed into your printer program.

Designed in the bundt-cake format, the T&T’s mold is almost like a work of design and architecture (and highly reminiscent of Dinara Kasko‘s work), using geometric shapes and patterns to make each of the cake’s 8 ‘pillars’ look absolutely unique and exquisite. The cake’s silicone mold is perfect for casting intricate textures and allows you to eject the confectionery post-baking with incredible detail. The cakes look rather awe-striking on their own, but coat them with some mirror glaze and they should look absolutely ready for Instagram!

Not only do ice pops act as a tasty refreshment on a summer’s day, but they can also be used to quickly cool us down in the sweltering heat. However, the ice pop-making process is anything but quick, which can lead to frustratingly long waits as our impatience levels increase. This is certainly not the case for THE SEAL, which reduces the processing time down to a mere 10 minutes! You may be asking how this has been achieved? It takes full advantage of the working principle of an ice-cream maker but reduces the volume significantly. This, paired with the metal molds that reduce the freezing time even further, allows for ice-lollies to be made in just a matter of minutes… so you can enjoy the refreshing treat on a whim!

Much better than any cookie-cutter you’ll ever use, OXO’s Cookie Press doesn’t cut cookies, it pumps or extrudes them. The Cookie Press is a hand-operated cookie-pumping machine that relies on a stainless-steel die to push out intricately formed cookies with speed and consistency. Just load the die-disc of your choice into the Cookie Press’s base and fill the cylinder with cookie dough (your dough needs to be neither too wet nor too dry) and attach the pumping handle on top and you’re ready to go.

Imagine standing in front of an induction cooker with your pancake batter, and the cooker’s interface tells you exactly when to pour the batter into the heated pan for perfectly cooked pancakes. They say you always mess up the first pancake because more often than not, your pan isn’t at the right temperature… but when we made pancakes at Electrolux‘s office in Stockholm, every single one of them turned out absolutely flawless. Designed to make amateurs feel like experts, and to give experts a helping hand, Electrolux’s Intuit kitchen range uses a combination of remarkable design and cutting-edge technology, sprinkled with a secret sauce that is the AI.

There are three things that can destroy friendships. Monopoly, the Draw Four card in Uno, and an unequal slice of cake, pie, or pizza. Now I don’t know about the first two, but there’s a rather nifty way of avoiding the third scenario. Klipy’s Cake Divider. This handy little gadget allows you to set the angle for cutting the cake/pie/pizza based on the number of slices you need. It comes with a base that fits right into the center of the food item you want to divide, and the two arms of the Klipy act as guides for the knife, allowing you to cut perfectly even slices for yourself and your friends… because no one likes a greedy hog!

I hope you’ll forgive me for this terrible pun, but OTOTO‘s products are truly ‘deer’ to me! The company, which has established a reputation for making some of the most heartwarming products, does a remarkable job of combining elements of playfulness along with a strong storytelling aspect to create products that are just clever! Take for instance the Sweet Deer – a rocking-horse-inspired cookie cutter. Designed to clearly get children to help with food prep, the cutter comes in the shape of a reindeer on a rocking base. The rocking base comes with tapered edges that help it cut into the dough, allowing kids to cut out cookies while playing with their forest friends!

The Sonic Seasoning by graduation project of RCA student Mengtian Zhang is a unique creation centered on the satisfying sensory experience of listening to ASMR (Autonomous sensory meridian response) sounds even before we take a bite. This project culminated from Mengtian’s pandemic-induced lockdown experience when she took to watching ASMR cooking videos to remain stress-free. “I can feel the texture and flavor of food such as crunchiness and freshness behind the phone screen.” There Mengtian was struck with the idea of using sound and visual effects to elevate the buildup expectations of taste before the first bite hits the mouth. This resulted in the set of plates and cutlery connected to sensors for detecting touch which then triggers the appropriate notes to go with the whole eating experience.

Smart Kitchen Appliances that will transform you from a home cook to a MasterChef!

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The perfect set of kitchen appliances can make your daily life and cooking sessions a whole lot easier! But, honestly, after an exhausting day at work, I really don’t have the energy to deal with cumbersome and technical kitchen appliances. This is where smart kitchen tech comes in! Smart kitchen appliances quite honestly do most of the work for you! You simply press a few buttons, adjust some settings on the touchscreen, and most of your kitchen chores are almost done. Smart kitchen appliances can be a blessing in disguise, and we’ve curated some of our absolute favorites from you. From a smart cutting board that track’s your food’s nutritional value to a smart wok that automates most of your cooking work – these innovative kitchen appliances are the superhero sidekicks, you need on your cooking adventures!

That plastic kettle sitting on our kitchen counter probably looks like something from a time capsule compared to all the other appliances that have gotten design makeovers. Finally, it is the kettle’s turn and the B POINT shows it all off. It features a touch interface that instantly gets the appliance up to speed with others and lets the user form a more organic connection with it. The circular display has two rings – the outer ring shows the temperature and the inner ring shows the water level inside. Countdown starts after setting the water temperature and will beep once it is ready! The choice of CMF really elevates the simple appliance into an aesthetic product that you can display proudly on your kitchen counter.

decker3

Decker is an all-electric appliance so grilling on it is devoid of fossil fuels like coal. It creates a smokeless experience which is perfect for an urban kitchen or a balcony. Young millennials and Gen Z have little access to the experience of cooking food on a grill. Using a BBQ grill indoors only creates a fire hazard but most living quarters don’t allow them because of the smoke and soot which can be bothersome in cities where people are often living too close to one another. The team elaborates, “We created a clear yet functional UI that displays options as and when the functionalities are selected. The display screen is a hi-definition OLED display that is touch-sensitive with multi-touch as well as provides haptic feedback to the option selected. With the three functional elements of a stove, grill, and oven, the options for each use case are already mapped out so the user doesn’t have to navigate through a whole bunch of visual clutter thus creating a Dynamic UI.”

Food One was designed for young people living in cities who don’t have either the time or skill set for cooking multiple meals throughout the day. Beginning early 2020, the pandemic’s quarantine orders forced many of us out of restaurant booths and into our kitchens to cook our own meals. Fully integrated with smart technology, Food One operates as a classic smart assistant, with Bluetooth connectivity and app compatibility to connect to your smartphone or other smart devices. After connecting to Food One’s app, users can choose from a long list of available recipes suitable for cooking with the smart wok. Alternatively, those who enjoy cooking can upload their own recipes to Food One’s app for others to learn and follow.

There is a Korean practice of covering food with a cloth (Sang bo) which has been a tradition for centuries and has worked well – a ramie or silk fabric covering keeps it ventilated in the summers while a thicker fabric keeps it insulated in the winters. Inspired by this, the Mother’s Heart was designed to keep food fresh and retain its original nutrient quality. It is a simple device that is crafted like a dome food covering and an accompanying base plate. The covering has a dial on top and that lets you adjust the settings based on the food you’ve cooked. You can select between refrigeration or warmth and there is a timer feature that lets you select for how long you want to keep it running.

The Café Appliances Specialty Drip Smart Coffee Maker is a smart coffee machine with built-in WiFi that lets you enjoy drip coffee without any hassle. Amped with Voice-to-Brew controls, you can customize your own coffee, and even control parameters like temperature and strength. The built-in WiFi allows the gadget to connect to Alexa, Google, and the SmartHQ app. The auto brew setting enables you to prepare your coffee exactly the way you want it! Not to mention, it has been amped with a sleek and stunning design!

The Foody looks like most smart speakers but comes with a few crucial design details that set it apart. While it is, in spirit, a smart speaker, perhaps the most interesting detail on the device is a circular display on the top that slides from left to right. Apart from acting as a screen for viewing things like recipe thumbnails and cooking times, the display also acts as a switch that lets you tell the Foody speaker what’s in your pantry versus what isn’t. A camera sits at the central position of the circular slider, allowing you to scan the items you purchase. When you buy an item, keep the slider display towards the left and scan the item to tell Foody you just bought it.

SMART by VLND Studio is as its name suggests a smart water purifier that provides clean drinking water via its 4-step filtration process. The unique system eliminates almost all the contaminants from tap water, including rust residue, calcareous, chlorine, infusible fine particles, bacteria as well as bad odor and taste. SMART’s design focuses on making it as user-friendly as possible. The smart water purifier is easy to use despite its complex functioning. Sleek aesthetics, an intuitive touch screen, and a human-centered design make it attractive, approachable, and simple to operate!

Designed by Germany-based Aurora Life Science, Nutrio takes the guesswork out of your diet. Sure, outwardly it looks like a cross between a cutting board and a cashier’s billing desk at the supermarket, but the Nutrio is in fact a comprehensive nutrition calculator that lets you measure your food in an absolutely new way. The chopping board comes with an entire host of sensors that can detect your food, weigh the food, and display all its nutritional information. Whether you’re using raw ingredients or even packaged products, Nutrio lets you scan your food, calculate your caloric and nutritional intake, and absolutely crush your diet because you’re much more aware of what you cook and eat.

Thermomix TM6 Smart Food Processor Oven is a multifunctional kitchen appliance that does the job of multiple kitchen gadgets! It can chop, slice, fry, steam, slow cook and knead! It transforms tough cuts of meat into moist and tender pieces. It can also sous-vide your meat and vegetables. The smart food processor comes amped with a wide touch screen display and an innovative weighing scale, allowing you to cook your meals in the simplest and most effective manner possible.

The tablefarm is exactly what its name suggests. A tabletop garden that grows your food for you… but not just any food. The tablefarm’s focus is on microgreens, which are probably more nutrient-rich than actual veggies, packing as much as 10 to 40 times more nutrition in their small leaves and stems. If you’re wondering what microgreens are, they’re vegetables and herbs harvested just as they develop their first set of true leaves in about 7 to 10 days. They contain just as many vitamins and minerals as they would as full-grown plants — or even more, and are ridiculously easy and quick to grow… so much so that the tablefarm literally does it for you.

Tiny Kitchen Appliances that occupy minimum space but provide maximum functionality!

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They say big things come in small packages! And I could not agree more. Sometimes the most inconsequential-looking products can be packed with a whole load of utility. And this is certainly true in the case of kitchen appliances. Space constraint is a major issue in our modern-day cramped kitchens, and shoving a whole bunch of bulky and space-consuming kitchen appliances in them is almost impossible! Hence, we’ve curated a collection of compact kitchen appliances that do not compromise on functionality, despite their size. These handy kitchen products will occupy minimum space in your kitchen while providing maximum functionality!

Turner designed Carnerie – a conceptual device that will let you grow your own meat in the future! Cultured meat is the process of growing meat from cells extracted from animals. Many experts believe that cultured meat offers us the opportunity to produce meat with significantly reduced environmental impacts and without slaughtering animals. The technology is being rapidly developed across the world and is beginning to be introduced to some high-end restaurants but there has been discussion about whether one day we may be able to grow our own meat from animal cells in our own kitchens. Carnerie is a ‘grow your own meat’ device for around twenty years in the future. It is controlled by an app, whereby the user is able to order cell capsules from local farms in order to grow a variety of different types of meat.

Adriano Design designed Cucinotta for the Italian kitchen appliances manufacturer Fabita. Cucinotta can be described as a mini kitchen with large eyes and slender legs, it almost looks like a cute cartoon! It’s a compact and portable piece of furniture that can fit into almost any section of your home. Measuring less than half a square meter, the minimal mini-kitchen features an induction cooktop, a hood, and a large utility drawer (that can also be used as a fridge!). Powered by a single cord, Cucinotta leaves behind a minute carbon footprint. It, in fact, even has a wireless charging space for mobile devices.

Walker was a pioneer when it came to vegetable juicing and made it his life’s work to speak of its health benefits. Bringing their own compact juicer to the mix as an homage to Walker, Hatch Duo has designed The Walker Juicer, a masticating juicer without the bulk. Offering a slower, more concentrated grind, masticating juicers do not incorporate too much heat or oxygen into their juicing process. In regard to nutritional value, masticating juicers are largely preferred over centrifugal juicers. However, masticating juicers typically take up more space than centrifugal juicers since their slower grind generally requires a longer spout and auger. The Walker Juicer consolidates the parts of a masticating juicer and places them in its main body to create a more compact build without compromising each juice’s nutritional value.

The Visual Measuring Spoons build on the brilliance of the Visual Measuring Cups from 2019. Designed to quickly and effectively help you ‘visualize’ quantities, the Visual Measuring Spoons are shaped to look like fractions so you can, at a glance, understand which spoon measures what. The tablespoon is square-shaped, to look like a table. The teaspoon is slightly smaller and circular, the half-teaspoon is semicircular to indicate that it’s half of a full circle, and the quarter-teaspoon is quadrant-shaped. Just by intuitively looking at each spoon, you instantly understand what it’s for, helping you measure more efficiently and cook more effectively. You don’t need to eyeball your measurements as you cook, and you don’t even need to bust out the weighing machine to weigh out your ingredients in grams.

Modeled on the shape and design of a toucan bird (remember Rafael from the movie Rio?), Toco actually helps core and spiralize an apple, turning it from the fruit into a fun spiral you can eat! Made from plastic (so it’s relatively safe around kids), Toco’s beak comes with a circular element at its tip that pierces into the fruit’s core, while the beak itself has a sharp-ish edge that cuts through the fruit’s flesh. Toco’s eye-hole serves as a finger-rest too, giving you the leverage you need to easily cut through the fruit. A few twists later, you’ve got yourself an apple that’s core-less and ready to eat, bake, or decorate your smoothie bowl with! Toco works with all kinds of apples and a bunch of pears too!

Mitsubishi launched its ‘TO-ST1-T Electric Bread Toaster’ or ‘Bread Oven’. What differentiates this from the rest of the toasters on the market…A LOT. Mitsubishi’s Bread Oven is in a league of its own with a promise to serve you ‘the perfect toast’. Mimicking a waffle maker, the toaster looks like it’s come straight out of the ’80s with its retro-esque veneer brown look. Built with a sealed thermal-insulated structure, it can toast your bread without releasing any moisture, ensuring the bread is soft, fluffy, and far from being dry. The metal box is equipped with two plates that can go up to temperatures as high as 500 degrees Fahrenheit. These plates seal the slice of bread, transferring heat to it, and in turn, make magic.

The ICEY is a nifty little container that’s tall enough to fit right into your freezer. Inside it is an automatic churner that works just like an ice-cream maker does. Pour your drink into the ICEY and stash it in the freezer for up to 90 minutes and the ICEY turns it into an instant granita. As the cold temperatures freeze your drink, the ICEY continuously churns it, turning it into a flavorful snowy, crushed-ice beverage. It retains and amps up the flavors because you’re not adding any extra ice to it… you’re just turning it into ice instead… and unlike simply placing a bottle of juice into a freezer and turning it into a popsicle, the ICEY makes sure the resulting beverage is semisolid like a slushie and can be sipped through a straw.

Sitting on your kitchen table much like an Echo or a Google Home would, the Fruit WashingMachine is a rather unique way of cleaning your fruits and vegetables before eating or preparing them. The slick, pink device uses tap water to cleanse your fruit without any extra additive (like a food-grade soap or cleanser). The appliance, rather, uses an innovative technology that goes by the name ‘water hydroxyl food purification’. Now I’m no expert, but a simple look at some articles online shows that the technology involves pulsing voltage to ionize a gas at atmospheric pressure, helping in releasing hydroxyl radicals that help purify the water as well as the fruits and veggies inside it. In short, the Fruit WashingMachine uses a plasma jet to create a string of reactions that purify water in literally a split second, without affecting the water’s temperature or composition. In fact, the plasma jets are so safe, you can literally touch them with your hands.

The uniquely flexible Trebonn Roll mat is made of two parts. Individual vertical strips made from a knife-friendly polymer, connected together by a flexible, food-grade, dishwasher-friendly silicone mat. The silicone is responsible for the mat’s hinges, and magnetic closure at one end lets you snap the mat shut in place. Open it out and the mat unfolds to reveal a flat cutting surface… just make sure your knife-work isn’t parallel to the silicone hinges (you don’t want to accidentally cut the hinges through and through). Once you’re done cutting and chopping, the mat’s flexible design makes it easy to collect all your chopped bits and pour them into your crockpot, saucepan, skillet, or mixing bowl. The mat’s easy to clean – it rinses under tap water, or conversely, you could just place it in the dishwasher with the rest of your cutlery.

Designed to be your go-to for any cooking measurements, the Kitchen Cube integrates all measuring vessels into its singular, yellow, cube-shaped body. With over 19+ measuring units designed into its 6-sided shape, the Kitchen Cube can be used to measure anything from teaspoons and tablespoons to even cups, working with both wet and dry ingredients alike. The cube comes with both metric and US measuring units molded into its unique design, allowing you to even measure out your ingredients in milliliters if the recipe calls for it. Molded from food-grade plastic, the cube is dishwasher-friendly and even safe to use in the microwave, so you can swiftly heat up or melt your ingredients once you measure them out! Besides, its singular design helps instantly de-clutter your kitchen drawer or counter, but most importantly, it integrates all your measuring instruments into one cube so you don’t accidentally ever lose small measuring spoons!

The No-Touch Timer gives you the chance to set the timer hands-free. When it is in its default mode, the device functions as a clock, but when you bring your hands near it, the device transforms into a kitchen timer. You can set the timer hands-free by taking your hands close by to wake the clock up. You can adjust the hands from a distance and the further away you take your hands, the more time is added to the clock. Details of the time include real-time feedback on the screen, infrared sensors to detect how far hands are away from the device and thus converting into a corresponding time value. In essence, the further away the hand is from the timer, the longer time will be set.

Kitchen Appliances that will transform you from a home cook to a MasterChef: Part 2

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There’s one skill that has been successfully added to my repertoire of skills during this pandemic – and it is cooking! From a chore that I completely avoided, cooking has now become a therapeutic activity for me. I discovered an inner chef within me while baking banana bread, and concocting some Dalgona coffee! I do believe many other hidden chefs had a similar awakening as me during this pandemic. To encourage and motivate all the inner chefs within us, we’ve curated a collection of kitchen appliances that promise to transform cooking from a Herculean feat to an enjoyable and fun process! These products can reduce your prep time in half, make the little cooking tasks much easier, and help you with tedious and complicated techniques. They make cooking effortless and easy. Enjoy!

Turner designed Carnerie – a conceptual device that will let you grow your own meat in the future! Cultured meat is the process of growing meat from cells extracted from animals. Many experts believe that cultured meat offers us the opportunity to produce meat with significantly reduced environmental impacts and without slaughtering animals. The technology is being rapidly developed across the world and is beginning to be introduced to some high-end restaurants but there has been discussion about whether one day we may be able to grow our own meat from animal cells in our own kitchens. Carnerie is a ‘grow your own meat’ device for around twenty years in the future. It is controlled by an app, whereby the user is able to order cell capsules from local farms in order to grow a variety of different types of meat.

Food One was designed for young people living in cities who don’t have either the time or skill set for cooking multiple meals throughout the day. Beginning early 2020, the pandemic’s quarantine orders forced many of us out of restaurant booths and into our kitchens to cook our own meals. Fully integrated with smart technology, Food One operates as a classic smart assistant, with Bluetooth connectivity and app compatibility to connect to your smartphone or other smart devices. After connecting to Food One’s app, users can choose from a long list of available recipes suitable for cooking with the smart wok. Alternatively, those who enjoy cooking can upload their own recipes to Food One’s app for others to learn and follow.

Designed by Designer Dot, BO-ON is more than just your ordinary rice cooker! This multifunctional electric rice cooker features a double-layered cauldron, so the rice tastes as if it were cooked in a traditional iron pot. The cooker can also be used to prepare frozen dumplings and other ready-to-eat food items. This is due to a hot plate on the top section of the rice cooker. An accompanying app alerts you when your food is ready, so your food isn’t left stale and forgotten in the appliance.

The Open Suite Cooker Hood by Fabrizio Crisa for Elica is designed to keep in mind modern styling requirements and, most of all, modularity to bring out the most in everyday practical usage. The Open Suite merges a hood, a large LED light panel, modular shelving units along with a voice assistant integration that provides feedback on filter maintenance and overall system management. The unit is tailored for all your modern needs – the modular structure of the hood brings flexibility in how you actually want to set up the function and complement it with the visual appeal. This freedom comes courtesy of the 80 cm/160 cm modules that join in endless configurations depending on the user’s requirements and personal taste. 

The Dreamfarm Chopula Chopping Sit Up Spatula is a handy tool that can be used to flip and chop food! The flexible product allows you to flip pancakes, steaks, and more with ease. You can then use Chopula itself to chop or slice through those very pancakes and steaks. The multi-curved design of its head reaches the trickiest corners of the pan without any tussle. Available in a variety of color options, this thin little tool is definitely niftier and mightier than it seems!

Brava’s Purelight Countertop Oven uses light as an energy source to cook delicious food at home. Employing the proprietary Pure Light Technology, this oven reaches 500 Fahrenheit in less than a second! The Pure Light Lamps ensure that the food is cooked by utilizing lesser energy than you would need to even preheat a traditional oven. Equipped with multiple zones, the oven can cook different food items at different temperatures. This is the future of ovens!

We need to have the next refrigerator evolution in the form of Venine – a design conceptualized by industrial designer You-jin Syn. The idea is simple – preserve the core function of the refrigerator – but with the infusion of a design overhaul and added features. The motive is to make it convenient for a single-person household in the smallest footprint possible without compromising on the inherent function of the appliance. Syn’s concept germinates from the need for young apartment dwellers to have a smart and convenient way to gulp down quick meals without much fuzz. Rather than taking all the eatables out of the refrigerator and onto the dining table, Venine brings the possibility of dining on the refrigerator counter.

This kitchen appliance is for the Star Wars fans! The Star Wars Two Slice Stormtrooper Toaster looks exactly like a Stormtrooper. You can slide in two pieces of bread into the toaster, or even buns, waffles, English muffins, and pastries. Once toasted, the food will pop out with the Galactic Empire logo directly on it. Pretty cool, no? This one is a must-have for sci-fi lovers.

The Miso Robotics Flippy Robot is the kitchen assistant we all need! It’s especially handy if you own a commercial kitchen, and need that extra help. The robot can work for 100,000 hours continuously. Once it has been programmed, the AI assistant works automatically by itself, without requiring any assistance or help from you. Although, you can always control the robot and customize its setting via its control screen. I, for one, would love to have a cooking assistant, but I do believe the Miso Robotics Flippy Robot would be more ideal for large-scale kitchens!

The uniquely flexible Trebonn Roll mat is made of two parts. Individual vertical strips made from a knife-friendly polymer, connected together by a flexible, food-grade, dishwasher-friendly silicone mat. The silicone is responsible for the mat’s hinges, and magnetic closure at one end lets you snap the mat shut in place. Open it out and the mat unfolds to reveal a flat cutting surface… just make sure your knife-work isn’t parallel to the silicone hinges (you don’t want to accidentally cut the hinges through and through). Once you’re done cutting and chopping, the mat’s flexible design makes it easy to collect all your chopped bits and pour them into your crockpot, saucepan, skillet, or mixing bowl.

For more such innovative and functional kitchen appliances, check out Part 1 of this post!

Outdoor Cooking Appliances for your yard to help you prepare MasterChef-worthy meals!

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In the midst of the chaos that has been 2021, I didn’t even realize when summer rolled in?! Although the rise in temperature and my sudden craving for ice lollies are a testament to the fact that summer is finally here. Summer is the season of outdoor barbecue parties, and tanning sessions, or even camping trips and hiking for the more adventurous souls. Although we do not recommend any of these activities in lieu of COVID-19, we have curated a collection of interesting outdoor cooking appliances, in memory of past outdoor meals, as well as in the hope of future ones. Whether you have future plans for a barbecue party, or simply a well-cooked meal at a camping trip, these innovative outdoor cooking designs will help you display your MasterChef skills!

Dubbed the Dome, this compact oven by Gozney is very versatile. It is a professional-grade outdoor oven designed to work effortlessly for experienced chefs and novice ones alike. Whether you have guests over on a Sunday afternoon or have a family dinner, Gozney Dome can be there to take care of the cooking needs as long you have wood to burn. Even though wood-fired cooking is ideal in an outdoor setting if that’s not what the kids want – turn the dial and switch to the built-in gas burner and continue cooking at temperatures up to 500°C. You can roast, steam, smoke, bake, or BBQ inside the 25- x 24- x 28-inch Dome that includes a digital thermometer – a big upgrade over gimmicky ovens designed for the outdoors!

Charcoal grills on the market entice buyers with their smart features but if you are someone who likes things old school yet loves the functionalities of modern grilling and smoking prowess, this portable barbeque grill and smoker is the one. The Nomad Grill and smoker doesn’t come with any smart buttons or functionality but the intuitive industrial design makes it better than any smart options out there. It’s ultra-portable, has a cool modern design, and packs down to the size of a small briefcase. To make sure the heat stays inside and not radiate to the outside of the unibody case measuring 2×2 feet, it is crafted from anodized aluminum. The inside cooking area gives you 212 square inches of space for smoking or you can opt to double the space with open-grill mode. That’ll give you enough cooking area to barbeque steaks, ribs, or burgers – or even two racks of ribs or 30 burger patties.

The BURCH BARREL gives you unprecedented control over your barbecue process. You can operate the barbecue lid without having to touch it, or rest the grill on any uneven surface without worrying about it falling over, you can even lift the grill plate off the coal pan to add more fuel. Moreover, when you’re not grilling food, the BURCH BARREL doubles up as a portable fireplace for those perfect sunset social gatherings. The barrel’s design is immediately striking, with a large tripod system that has the barrel suspended from the very center. This unique format keeps the barrel balanced and vertical at all times, allowing you to mount it on rocky terrain or even on slanted surfaces without any fear of the barrel tipping over. Inspired by a camera’s tripod, the BURCH BARREL comes with telescopic legs that let you orient the unit to be stable, no matter how unstable your ground is, giving it a competitive advantage over regular barbecue grills that traditionally require a flat surface like pavement, to begin with.

Roxon’s MBT3 Multi BBQ Tool promises to meet all your outdoor barbecuing needs! Crafted from food-grade 430 stainless steel, the 6-in-1 multi-tool combines a variety of functionalities, so you don’t have to carry a case full of tools with you. The compact tool functions as a fork, knife, spatula, tongs, bottle opener, and a wine corkscrew! The design basically comprises three base elements, the fork, spatula, and knife, which are combined together via a 1.2mm liner lock. The various parts can be attached, detached, and arranged according to the tool you need at the moment. For example, the fork and the spatula can be joined to create a pair of tongs! Whereas the knife comes with a foldable handle, once the handle is folded in, it functions as a bottle opener and a wine corkscrew as well! Nothing like the ease of cracking open a chilled beer while tending to the hot grill.

Developed in the design language of DHL, PDF Haus aimed to give Shelf a simple box silhouette with a freewheeling attitude, taking inspiration from the color scheme, materials and finishes often chosen by DHL for their vehicles and brand aesthetic. The grill even comes with DHL decals and tags that can be adhered to the metallic grill’s front case that turns into its table extension. While most gas stoves come with a separate carrying case, Shelf’s entire grill has been turned into one that can be consolidated and carried away. Shaped and carried like a slim briefcase, two metal clasps open and slide out to reveal the Shelf’s grill and supplementary table space. Just beneath the grill, Shelf includes two retractable shelves that create more space for whoever’s cooking to place their spices, utensils, or tools. Blooming from Shelf’s underside like an awning, the shelves, and the sliding tables nearly double Shelf’s overall area.

Pyro Camp Fire is a portable fire pit constructed chiefly of American steel. It is provided with a grill/griddle extension for enthusiasts who want to create an inviting ambiance by burning wood or charcoal in a safe and clean manner. And when the stomach calls, the top extension can be swapped and you are good to prepare a meal or heat up the precook food on you. Designed by a team of camping and overloading enthusiasts themselves, this portable fire pit has an 18-inch long and 14-inch wide combustion chamber, while the contraption measure 9-inch tall. The entire pit weighs only 14.5 pounds making it appropriate to carry on every camping trail you’re headed for. The standout here is its side-loading system that lets you easily add wood without having to remove the top fire screen or grill.

Made from 90% natural materials, the UCO Bamboo Elements Mess Kit is a non-plastic outdoor meal kit that can take you all the way from cutting and prepping your food, to eating your meal. The 5-piece kit contains practically everything you’d need to prepare and enjoy a meal outdoors, apart from your ingredients! The Mess Kit’s innovative design leaves nothing to chance. The main vessel holds your food, while two handles on the vessel let you grip it as you’re eating, useful if you don’t have a table around you. It even has its own gasket-lined lid to tightly pack the food inside, preventing leaks while you’re traveling. The cutlery set comes with a spoon and knife combination, and a separate fork, giving you the freedom to eat any sort of food, either with the spoon and fork or the knife and fork. The cutlery pieces slide into each other to keep them together, but can slide in backward to turn into a long-handled stirring tool that you can use while cooking food!

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Designed to be the most robust as well as the most accommodating portable grill in the world, the WG Grill doesn’t just fit in the back of your car, it can literally fit in your backpack… and when opened out, can rest atop any type of fire (with its 3 height settings), while even withstanding a good deal of weight, so you can have anything from steaks to cast-iron skillets on it without breaking a sweat. Made from reinforced stainless steel, the designers behind the grill spent close to 18 months making the grill look as sleek and as strong as it is. The base is a folding frame that can open or close completely, to be held in place by the grilling surface, which has 3 height settings built into it. The grill can therefore be used over fires big and small and has a load-bearing capacity of up to 16kgs (that’s roughly 300 hot dogs!)

After a successful run with some compact cooking stoves, Jetboil has sent ripples down the market with the introduction of Stash, the company’s lightest backpacking stove ever made. Weighing only 7.1oz (approx. 200g), the Jetboil Stash is 40-percent lighter than the previous lightest stove in the company’s repertoire, despite the same use possibilities, better build quality, and cooking performance. With its almost insignificant weight and very compact size – when packed, it measures only 4.4-inch tall and 5.1-inch in diameter – the Stash stove is made specifically to allow backpackers, hikers/trekkers, or any other outdoor enthusiast to boil water or render instant-cook meals to an eatable temperature instantly. Unpack the stove out of the lidded pot, set up the base, screw up the canister and titanium burner, flex out the support arms, place the 800ml capacity FluxRing cook pot on the stand, and wait for 2.5 minutes before your coffee is ready!

 For the good barbeque and occasional wine sessions, a decent outdoor layout is a must-have. One such contraption which is worth every penny you shell for it – owing to its design that maximizes function – is the Convivium Mobile Bar from Italy-based Il Giardino di Corten. The modular outdoor kitchen – that includes a bar – is made from weather-resistant corten steel, similar to the brand’s other products for home and garden. Laid out beautifully for cooking and serving cocktails al fresco, this outdoor kitchen setup is equipped with an electric, gas, or charcoal grill and wooden cutting board to cater to the cooking needs. A kitchen is not complete without its washing area –Convivium Mobile Bar is fitted with a stainless steel sink that features pull-out taps, so the outright appeal and distinctive appearances of the design are maintained.

Kitchen Appliances to eliminate food wastage and live that Zero Waste Life!

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Food Wastage has become a serious problem these days. In fact, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, one-third of the food produced in the world is wasted. This is primarily because we ourselves fail to understand how much food we consume, or we don’t know how to recycle or reuse the food that has been leftover from previous meals. However, this is an issue that designers have been paying immense attention to nowadays. In an attempt to combat food wastage and to promote zero waste living, they have been coming up with innovative kitchen gadgets! These products provide unique solutions to curb the wastage of food on a daily basis. They make zero waste living a reality!

This conceptual device called The Mother’s Heart has the answers…yes, just like our mothers in the kitchen. There is a Korean practice of covering food with a cloth (Sang bo) which has been a tradition for centuries and has worked well – a ramie or silk fabric covering keeps it ventilated in the summers while a thicker fabric keeps it insulated in the winters. Inspired by this, the Mother’s Heart was designed to keep food fresh and retain its original nutrient quality. It is a simple device that is crafted like a dome food covering and an accompanying base plate. The covering has a dial on top and that lets you adjust the settings based on the food you’ve cooked. You can select between refrigeration or warmth and there is a timer feature that lets you select for how long you want to keep it running.

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Ronald Tan’s idea is that even a small portion of leftover rice is food nevertheless, and should not be treated as waste. The Mirai Rice Cooker is designed to not just flawlessly cook your rice (with multiple settings on its control panel), but it also allows you to transform your leftover rice into crispy rice cakes for a post-meal snack! The base of the cooker comes molded with a pattern that allows you to place your leftover rice into triangular pieces. The Mirai then cooks the rice into flat crispy cakes that can be easily scooped off with the spatula that comes built into the Mirai. The inner surface of the cooker comes with a Teflon coating to ensure your rice grains never get stuck to the Mirai, making it not just easier to cook with, but also keep clean!

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Food wastage is quite a serious matter. We buy things, forget we’ve bought them, and throw them away after weeks because they’ve gone stale. It only makes sense that we rely on AI to combat food wastage, and the Ovie Smarterware wants to do just that. The Smarterware ecosystem revolves around smart tags, that store the nature of the item, its purchase date, and its expiry date. These tags fit into either Ovie’s Smarterware container or the Smarterware clip and keep track of what you’re buying as well as when you’re buying them. When items start sitting around too long, the Smarterware clips ping you either on your phone or via your smart speaker, not only letting you know your veggies/meats are going stale, but they also browse through recipes for you to use those ingredients in!

Designed by Savin Dimov and Altino Alex, Bubble is a food tracker, that monitors our food consumption, in an attempt to encourage a healthier lifestyle and to reduce food wastage. Research shows that most of us don’t even know what food items we have in our kitchen! And a large number of us also don’t know what we exactly need to buy when we’re replenishing our groceries. Bubble promises to track, store, and replenish our food items in accordance with our needs. The food tracker comes with an app compatible with your smartphone. You can either order your groceries via the app or physically visit a grocery store and do your shopping. Once you’re home, you can place your groceries such as fruits, vegetables, milk, sodas, etc within Bubble.

The KALEA Automatic Kitchen Composter converts your food waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer! You can easily toss your leftover food scraps into the automatic composter, and it transforms them into a nutrient-dense fertilizer within 48 hours. The fertilizer is almost like soil and can be used in your personal garden to tend to your plants! The composter can be connected to an app as well!

Designed to provide food containers with high-vacuum storage to curb bacterial growth, Zhuhai’s vacuum storage system boasts that it can keep your leftovers sealed for three to five times longer than the standard food storage container. The hard plastic containers come with pre-delineated food zones that help users separate their food items and with a vacuum-sealed lid that works as the base for the accompanying pump. Zhuhai designed the vacuum pump to be automatic so that once it’s placed on top of a container’s lid and activated, the pump immediately begins pulling out the excess air inside of the container until it reaches a high-vacuum degree of -0.03 Mpa.

Most of today’s refrigerators are like deep bookshelves that come with air conditioning. They store a lot and keep our food items fresh, but as they fill, older food items just pile up and rot, so cleaning out your refrigerator ends up being more laborious of a task than it should be. In order to combat this, Nicolaou created PRESENTA, a new fridge design that keeps the storage capacity of the typical refrigerator but ditches the unfriendly depths. Three modular, three-tier shelving units comprise PRESENTA and thankfully they make both storage organization and inevitable clean-up much more approachable. Detachable, plastic shelves line the swing-out design of this refrigerator and they can be swapped out and reorganized in order to optimize storage and cleanability. When the user opens the refrigerator, each of the inside contents is immediately made both visible and accessible.

Designed by Designer Dot, Alone is a food waste processor for single-person households! It is a compact and ergonomic food waste processor that works perfectly for homes with only a single resident, for example, university students. You can place the food within the processor, and it will grind the scraps into powder form. An attached HEPA filter prevents any bad odors from being emitted.

Designed by Munich-based company brezzl., the Fridge Eye is designed to work with any fridge, attaching to a wall on the fridge, or a cabinet on the fridge door. The wireless device runs on batteries and boasts of a battery life that spans years. The trick is in the way the Fridge Eye is programmed. It isn’t a camera that streams video footage on command, it just sends you a picture of your fridge’s interiors every time the door shuts. The Fridge Eye uses a temperature sensor to identify when someone opens the fridge door (i.e., when the temperature suddenly drops), and it conveniently clicks a picture once said person has shut the fridge door.

Whether it’s oil paints, toothpaste, or tomato puree, the Big Squeeze makes sure you get a bang for your buck by squeezing every last drop out. Practically steamrolling tubes with its powerful metallic rollers, the Big Squeeze helps eliminate wastage by physically forcing every bit of residue out of tubes. The corrugated rollers help by getting into small corners to make sure nothing is left behind, while the Big Squeeze’s width is enough to accommodate everything from tubes of paint, or toothpaste, to even kitchen foods. It comes with an ergonomic hand-grip that mimics the style of a paintbrush, while a large winged key on the side lets you easily twist away to squeeze. Plus if you ever get a little food on it, just go right ahead and chuck it in the dishwasher!