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Kitchen Gadgets Bonanza

The most extreme kitchen tech of the nation's cutting edge chefs—as well as some more accessible gizmos for the home cook

Posted 10.9.07 at 2:00 am 0 Comments

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For the Pros: The Pacojet
Todd Huffman
A super-slicer turnsanything to sorbet
How it works: Freeze ingredients in the Pacojet´s beaker and the machine´s titanium-coated, 4.2-inch blade turns at 2,000 rpm, slicing what´s inside into layers less than two microns thick. Air trapped between the ice crystals boosts the dish´s volume by 20 percent and gives it a sorbet-like texture.
On the menu: Grape-and-aquavit sorbet; frozen lobster bisque made from whole lobsters, shells and all—A.W.

Pacojet $3,450; pacojet.com
Tags
frozen lobster, inch blade, lobster bisque, pacojet, thick air
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For the Pros: The Evaporator
Todd Huffman
Catches flavor in a bottle
How it works: Available at your neighborhood lab-supply shop or on eBay, a rotary evaporator is a small distillery: It extracts intensely flavored syrup from almost any food. Just put your ingredients-say, strawberries and black pepper-in a glass evaporation flask, which heats them by rotating in a bath of hot water. A vacuum pump reduces the air pressure in the flask, which drops the boiling point of the water inside to as low as 112F. As moisture seeps out of the strawberries and reaches a boil, vapor rises into a condenser. There it cools, collects as a clear liquid, and drips into another flask. The distillate adds flavor to dishes without changing the color or texture.
On the menu: Strawberry-pepper sauce, gin and tonic with clear lime syrup-Anne Wootton

Heidolph VV Micro Evaporator $3,000; brinkmann.com
Tags
gin and tonic, heidolph, pepper sauce, rotary evaporator, vacuum pump
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