Appliances & Kitchen Gadgets

In the '70s it was hip to decorate your kitchen in colors that would otherwise blind a normal human being. You couldn't go into a kitchen that didn't have chartreuse, guacamole, or squash yellow ovens and refrigerators. In today's sleek modern world, we've leaned more toward the stainless steel brushed look that makes our kitchens seem cold and lifeless. Designer Marc Newson wants that to change.

Marc Newson's colorful ovens

(Credit: Retro to Go)

At the recent EuroCucina kitchen appliance and design show in Milan, Smeg debuted its new line of high-end ovens and cooktops designed by minimalist designer Marc Newson. Known for his biomorphism style and his beautiful ergonomic designs, Newson is the first non-Italian designer to work with the company and is also designing a line of refrigerators for Smeg as well.

In an interview with the Web site DomusWeb, Newson said what he identified with in the design "is the fact that there are a lot of things that relate to the past, materials and finishes you don't see that often in these kinds of appliances on the market. Also colored appliances, but more importantly than the color is the enamel, it's not paint. Enamel is part of the core business and history of Smeg."

Along with a range of funky colors including pale blue, bright orange, off white, and black, the ovens also appear to utilize a touch screen with a digital readout for temperature and time.

Unfortunately, according to a spokesperson for Omega Appliances, the ovens and cooktops are still prototypes and won't be available worldwide until the second half of next year.

America seems to run on Starbucks. If the world's supply of coffee beans were destroyed, we would be faced by listless zombies struggling to pull themselves out of bed everyday. However, if you're part of the population that doesn't need their daily jolt of caffeine, the latest product from Breville might catch your eye.

Breville's Ikon Kettle & Toaster

(Credit: Breville)

In what would seem like something out of sheer science fiction to the tea-drinking community, Breville has combined an electronic tea kettle with an electronically controlled toaster to create a mutant of the breakfast world. With sheer convenience in mind, it features a sleek nested design to fit in a compact kitchen to fit the same space your old toaster used to occupy.

If the idea of a toaster/tea kettle combination doesn't do anything for you, it also features the "A Bit More" button for when your toast is almost perfect but just needs, like the button says, a bit more. Additional features include an electronic browning control dial, extra wide and deep self-centering toaster slots to ensure even toasting, and a 1-liter capacity kettle to ensure there's plenty of Earl to go around.

So, throw out your old toaster, give your tea kettle to the Salvation Army, and invite the girls over for afternoon tea.

NatureMill's automated composter can fit in a regular kitchen cabinet.

(Credit: NatureMill)

The quest to make kitchens around the country more eco-friendly just got a little easier. NatureMill, a San Francisco-based company founded by an MIT grad in 2004, is adding to its lineup of indoor automatic composters.

NatureMill's composters speed up the process of composting by heating, mixing, and aerating the waste that gets put into it. After two weeks, fresh food waste can be turned into nutrient-rich fertilizer for the garden, according to the company. They're small enough to fit into a regular kitchen cabinet (20 inches long by 12 inches wide by 20 inches high), and to reduce the stink, air is forced through a carbon filter when it gets sucked in to oxygenate the waste.

The regular "Plus" model will run you $299 and can process up to 120 pounds of waste per month. And although it's small enough that it could probably fit in a smaller apartment kitchen, it's only useful if you've got a yard in which to use the compost you make. One batch of compost is good for 10 - 40 square feet, according to the company, so you'll need to have a big enough yard to accommodate a fair amount of fertilizer. For people considering setting up a more traditional compost bin, though, the NatureMill system can be kept inside the house to reduce the need to take out kitchen waste so often; used outside, it works faster than passive composting and doesn't require the same kind of attention to acidity, temperature, and aeration that so-called managed composting does. And the company says the composters will hold up in the rain and snow.

Don't look so guilty, little one. One pup's trash is another man's tulips.

(Credit: NatureMill)

NatureMill also makes a professional version that's intended for heavier use. It comes with a foot pedal for hands-free operation, has components made of stainless steel, and can be switched into vacation mode for times when the kitchen is closed. There's even a version for pet owners, which can accept pet and kitchen waste. The pet-friendly composter has its limits though; NatureMill does not recommend it for use with horses or other large animals. Both of those models go for $399.

For those wondering about the trade-off in power usage, the company says it consumes less energy than a standard night-light and costs about 50 cents per month to run.

Sometimes watching sci-fi shows can be depressing. On the one hand, the imagination blossoms with all the possibilities the future holds. On the other hand, everything you see? You can't have it. Because you know what? You don't live in the future. Sorry. No gagh for you.

So it's with mixed feelings that I point you, dear readers, over to io9, who has put together a list of the best sci-fi kitchen gadgets. The list of neat things you can't have includes such wonders as the knife that toasts your bread while it cuts, and the Star Trek replicator, which pretty much conjures up whatever you want whenever you want it.

Eat your heart out. And try not to think about the fact that, here in the real world, we can't even get a freakin' Internet fridge worth buying.

Eat a bowl of doughnuts for every meal.

(Credit: SkyMall)

In case you were wondering, there is a God.

The Dough-Nu-Matic, available via the SkyMall in-flight catalog, is a miniature version of the Krispy Kreme fryer/conveyor belt that forms and fries savory doughnuts.

For just $130, you can make very small doughnuts at the clip of a dozen every six minutes. That means you can eat 120 miniature doughnuts every hour without leaving your home. You can make doughnuts in your bathroom and eat them in the shower. You can place doughnuts on each of your fingers, then eat them off like the magical Mr. Doughnut Hands. You can buy a kiddie pool, fill it with doughnuts, and swim in it while wearing doughnuts as water wings.

Dials on the side of the machine let you adjust the cooking temperature, but alas, there is no "jelly" setting. You'll need to hollow out the doughnuts and inject jelly into them yourself.

You'll need your own dough, and SkyMall doesn't mention whether oil is included in the package. You may need that, too, but the machine's enclosed, covered oil fryer means you won't get splattered with hot oil while you watch the doughnuts get ready for business....the business of shoving them into your pie-hole.

I repeat: you can now make doughnuts in your home and eat the living hell out of them.

[Via Geekologie.]

Now even procrastinators can serve up tender, tasty meat as if they hadn't forgotten to start marinating until 10 minutes before their guests arrived.

The Reveo requires a surprisingly small amount of marinade. Mmmm...meat juice...

(Credit: Jennifer Guevin/CNET Networks)

I recently got to test out the Reveo MariVac from Eastman Outdoors, a funky kitchen appliance that looks suspiciously like a rock tumbler and that the company claims can cut down the time it takes to marinate meat to a fraction of the norm.

To use it, you just put raw meat and marinade into a compartment that tumbles it all together for up to 20 minutes. The idea behind the machine is that it vacuums out the air in the main barrel, stretching the fibers of the meat to allow the marinade to soak deeper into the meat in a shorter amount of time. All the while, the barrel turns, tumbling the meat and the marinade together in a messy bucket of flavor and goodness.

The company says the Reveo can do the equivalent of 4 hours of marination in 20 minutes, so I donned my lab coat and safety goggles and conducted a little experiment to see if the Reveo would hold up to these claims. As luck would have it, a co-worker was having a barbecue over the weekend, so I had plenty of potential judges who were more than happy to weigh in.

Reuters has a story about a man who's apparently contracted a life-threatening lung disease that his doctor says may be linked to his massive consumption of microwave popcorn. He ate several bags of buttered microwave popcorn each day, according to the story. (The FDA is now launching an investigation to see if the additive diacetyl could be responsible for his illness and that of workers in plants where microwave popcorn is made.)

The West Bend Stir Crazy in action.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

This news is not totally shocking to me. That's not to say anyone should expect to come down with lung disease because they ate food that's readily available on grocery store shelves. But I have deep-seated distrust for a lot of the packaged food out there, namely because of all the preservatives and other chemical additives they tend to contain. As such, I try to avoid the pervasive nasties as often as possible.

But this is no easy feat when it comes to popcorn, for which I have an insurmountable weakness. Popcorn is like kryptonite to my will power. I simply cannot get enough of it.

Fortunately, there are lots of appliances available that make it easy for me to balance these two forces--my loathing for eating strange chemicals and my crazy love for eating popcorn. Making it by hand in a lidded pot with oil is easy enough. But for total ease of use, it's tough to beat a standard air popper. Or so I thought before a friend gave me this super appliance.

The West Bend Stir Crazy popcorn popper is one of those rare gadgets that's functional and actually fun to use. The non-stick bottom heats up like an electric wok. To use it, you just put a little oil and the unpopped kernels on the bottom, put the dome lid over the top and turn the Stir Crazy on. A thin metal rod spins around just above the heated bottom, keeping the kernels from sitting still (and therefore burning). After a few minutes, the popcorn starts popping away like one of those old Fisher-Price vacuum cleaners.

When you're done, you can just flip the whole thing upside-down and use the dome as your popcorn bowl.

With the top cover off, butter can be melted through the top of the dome while popcorn pops--in theory anyway.

(Credit: Amazon.com)

The top of the dome has holes in it, and you can put butter there while the popcorn pops. The idea is that the heat will melt the butter, which will then drip down onto the popcorn below (the Stir Crazy comes with a small cover you can place over that section when you're done so all the remnants of the butter don't drip onto your lap while you eat). A neat idea, but it hasn't worked that well for me. I've always used refrigerated butter, and the popcorn's always done before the butter has melted.

For those who get peeved at unpopped kernels, the Stir Crazy performs well, usually only leaving a few duds behind per batch. I'm told it can be used for making caramel corn, too, though I haven't tried that yet.

If you're looking to cut microwave popcorn and all its spooky additives out of your diet, the Stir Crazy is a pretty solid way to go about it.