Kitchen or lab?

We normally associate high-tech gadgetry with specific rooms in the house – the living room where the telly, DVD player and surround sound system are, and the office, where the new iPad occupies pride of place. Maybe the bathroom, thanks to the waterproof television you just installed.

What about the kitchen?

Well, if you consider the dishwasher and the fridge to be cutting edge technology, then yes. But we’re going beyond that boiling point – consider voice-recognition grocery list organisers, fingerprint recognising espresso machines and sous vide cookers that would make Heston Blumenthal break into a jealous sweat.

Precision orb electronic scale by Heston Blumenthal

Yes, we’ve all heard about the snail porridge and mock turtle soup. And despite the weird-sounding names, we all want to try them. The only problem is that only the lucky ones manage to get a table at Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck restaurant. The alternative is to either book at table at his other restaurant, Dinner, at the Mandarin Oriental in London, or else try and mimic his recipes at home.

If you’re going for the latter option, first things first – get the ingredients. Second, measure them out using the electronic scale endorsed by the great chef himself. And if the end result doesn’t taste as good as Blumenthal’s, at least you tried – you even used his scale.

Z-island

If you’re considering upgrading your kitchen into a tech-heaven, then Zaha Hadid Architects’ concept kitchen might do the trick. Designed for DuPont, the Z-island is an all-white spread that features cooking and eating surfaces, a built-in TV and an LED screen for displaying recipes. The kitchen even emits fragrances to mask any bad odours.

Fridge mount

If you can’t survive without your iPad, not even in the kitchen, then this fridge mount will solve your addiction. Designed by Belkin, the iPad fridge mount is a bracket which attaches to a fridge door – the tablet is held by its own magnets. Just don’t slam the fridge door.

Silicone widget

Nothing high-tech here – just a simple yet brilliant idea. Developed by Konstantin Slawinski, a company that has been manufacturing kitchen products since 1914, this rubber hinge has two holes into which you can slot kitchen utensils. So a fork and a spoon are instantly transformed into a salad server, while two knives can serve as a pair of tongs.

Egg and muffin toaster

If breakfast is a hurried affair for you (it always is), then what you need is a good multi-tasker. Developed by Back to Basics, this toaster prepares toast and poaches eggs simultaneously. There’s even a steaming tray for heating up pre-cooked bacon. For once, you can be at the office on time.

Chemex coffee maker

This is low-tech technology for a high-grade coffee brew. The gadget is very simple to use – you place ground coffee in the cone-shaped filter at the top and pour hot water. The coffee then just brews itself, filtering any sediment and therefore, the bitter taste. A toast for cleaner coffee.

SmartShopper

Thanks to Apple’s Siri, voice-recognition technology has become all the rage, even in the kitchen. The SmartShopper grocery list organiser does what it says on the label – you just dictate your shopping list and it will print it out for you. The organiser recognises more than one voice, so the whole family can chip in to stock up the larder.

Sous vide cooker

You’ve all seen it being used on the Food Network and now you can have it in your kitchen too. A sous vide cooker cooks using water – you just pop the food in a plastic bag and immerse it in the water bath. The main advantage is that you can control the water temperature to within a tenth of a degree – it’s just like a Jacuzzi for food. Such precise cooking eliminates burned food incidents.

Fingerprint recognising espresso machine

We all prefer our coffee our way. This espresso machine by Philips Saeco lets you create up to six different profiles for nine coffee beverages. The machine then scans your fingertip, recognises who you are and makes your coffee according to your profile.

For more than €1,500, you also get a machine that generates 15 bars of pressure and even pre-infuses the coffee so that the brew is rich and aromatic. Grinder and milk-frother included.