International Home and Housewares Show 2010 – Day 2

At the show today, I spied many fun tools for the kitchen.

For instance, I saw a well made mandolin by Edgeware. It had very sensitive adjustment capabilities of the cutting blades. The best features were the steady handling, the ability to keep the blades parallel to each other for even slices and the ability to order a replacement blade when the original becomes dull.

There was also a good mezzaluna cutting blade and board with a bowl shaped indentation from Bon Jour. The bowl shaped indentation allows for more effective chopping of herbs and vegetables.

The Bon Jour booth also had a very nice tea machine on display. This relatively new device, FineT by IQ Innovations, was fully programmable with 7 different preset tea settings. The machine heated the water to the proper temperature for each tea type, steeped the leaves for the proper amount of time and dispensed the water into the carafe when ready. A heating element below the carafe kept the tea gently warm for no more than 30 minutes, after which time you could add more water to the leaves for a second brewing or begin the process anew. The quality of tea produced by this machine was sublime. It is on the pricey side, but if you are a tea lover, you should seriously consider purchasing this machine.

Le Creuset has redesigned their line of silicone spatulas and tools. The handles were engineered with new ridges which ensure a firm, yet comfortable grip.

The silicone heads are better aligned with the wood handle to prevent food and water from getting underneath. Several of the tools had extended silicone on the handles to allow any striking motions on the side of a pan to contact silicone and not wood. These are the best version of these tools I have seen yet.

I had a good time with the fine folks from Vinturi, the makers of wine aerators. I have been very skeptical of this product, but after talking with inventor Rio Sabadicci and his team I may become a convert. I want to run my own tests and experiments on wine and the effectiveness of the aerators, but after tasting the results with them today, my eyes opened to new possibilities. Don’t worry Rio, I will be, as always, fair about my tests.

I also spied a new product from an up and coming company called Perfect Portions. These guys produce a nutritional scale that has a great new design. The display area matches the nutritional labels on food products making the dietary information more digestible (pun intended). It also functions as a kitchen scale, but I will post a more detailed review soon.

I saw fine products from Fissler, makers of excellent pressure cookers and Chef’n, who introduced a new corn zipper and a well designed green bean slicer.

And a special shout out goes to the small and talented team at Baker’s Edge, makers of a great brownie pan, which I reviewed. They recently introduced a similarly shaped lasagna pan. There are new products in the works which I eagerly anticipate.

As with Day 1, there was more seen than can be detailed in one post. I will be providing more updates in the coming days and weeks.

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