Is this the way to a perfect souffle?

A top Chicago restaurant has installed a laser to zap dishes to perfection. But what gadgets do UK chefs swear by? Andrew Shanhan asks them

Industrial laser

Who uses it? Homaru Cantu, Moto, Chicago

How much? $2,400 (£1,400)

Alongside the Fat Duck's Heston Blumenthal, Cantu is one of the world's biggest culinary gadget geeks. Not only does he insist his waiters wear FBI-style earpieces and microphones, but there is a patent pending for his Willy Wonka-esque food replicator which prints flavours on to edible paper. Cantu's latest kitchen accessory is a Class IV laser which could apparently melt metal if the fuse could take it. "We've got a new laser dish on tonight. We make a pyramid-shaped pastry cone and we take some of the edible packaging material that we use which has been soaked in natural popcorn extract. Then we zap the packaging material, the essence is collected in the cone which gets cracked open at the table." Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration has not yet regulated the laser's use on animal products, so in the meantime Cantu has to content himself with zapping vanilla pods.


Who uses it? Chris Horridge, Bath Priory Hotel and Restaurant

How much? Approximately £250,

"I initially bought it to see if I was going to poison the customers or not," Horridge confesses when discussing the microscope connected to a laptop in his kitchen. When he began researching his starter of foie gras, sycamore sap and cow parsley puree in December, Horridge found that it was difficult to identify cow parsley from other, less desirable members of the parsley family. "I bought the microscope and examined the stalks at x40 magnification where you can see that the poisonous varieties of parsley don't have hairs." Since then Horridge has used it in other kitchen projects. "We had a problem with a souffle one night, so I stuck it under the microscope and there you can see each individual bubble. I started taking photos of souffles and now we have a database of microscopic images of them. If we have problems we can use the photos to find out why it's not working."

Microplane grater

Who uses it? Matthew Christmas, Chez Bruce, London

How much? £18 from John Lewis, or

Although this is the most low-tech gadget to be suggested, Christmas believes that the super-sharp Microplane spells the end for the traditional grater. "My sister bought me one and it seemed like the sort of thing that sisters buy their brothers who happen to be chefs. But then I used it and thought, 'Blimey, this is good'." He says that a Microplane gives you a level of control that the old graters are incapable of: "It's great for getting lime zest because you can avoid the bitter pith underneath. It doesn't get clogged up like an old grater either."

Frozen dessert maker

Who uses it? Mohammed Ourad, Momo, London

How much? £1,995,

At first glance, this gadget doesn't seem too wow-wee. Surely, most food processors could blitz frozen food? Not so claims Ourad, a fan of the Pacojet brand: "This is just really cool. Unlike an ice-cream maker where you have to add lots of sugar, here you can just freeze some fresh fruit and maybe put a little bit of light syrup on if you want; then when it's frozen you can put it in the Pacojet and it turns into beautiful fresh sorbet." The Pacojet works by having a blade spinning at 2,000rpm shaving an extremely thin layer off the top of the frozen food which very quickly produces smooth sorbets.

Digital water bath

Who uses it? Tom Aikens, Tom Aikens restaurant, London

How much? £500-£1,000,

The current must-have gadget for any self-respecting chef. Nickel Electro says sales have practically doubled in the past month. It might not seem like the best thing since the bread-slicer - it is after all just a bath of hot water. However, chefs say it gives them precision control. Aikens' eight-litre model allows him to specify temperature to within 0.5 of a degree. "I do a pigeon main course on my menu," he says. "We sear the breast and then we vacuum seal it into a bag with thyme, bacon, truffles and duck fat. The bag goes into the water bath at 48C and the flavours infuse with the meat. It only takes between five and 10 minutes in the bath, until it's beautifully cooked."

Hot-plate lightbulbs

Who uses it? Paul Kitching, Juniper, Manchester

How much? 99p for a pack of six

It's not surprising that instead of using normal kitchen gadgets, Kitching, one of Britain's most experimental chefs, opts to use the lightbulbs from his hot-plate. "The idea sort of comes from the Granada service stations on the motorway," he explains. "You know where they have all the food out on the hotplates under those lights and the baked beans have been sat out for so long that they've dried out. As a kid they were always my favourite." After years of experimenting, Kitching now has his drying technique down to an art form and his repertoire of dried foods includes sweetcorn powder, pineapple chunks which end up the consistency of fudge, and his favourite - strawberry dust. "Get a punnet of strawberries, blitz them into a puree and spread it on greaseproof paper, then let it sit under the lights for about six hours. You end up with a thin parchment which you pound with a pestle and mortar. Pass it through a sieve and you've got strawberry dust. The flavour is amazing."

Motorised bong

Who uses it? Tom Cockerill, Entropy, Leicester

How much? £30,

"I haven't got one yet, but what I want is a kind of motorised bong that you can put hickory into and then press the button and draw the smoke through into an upturned brandy glass," says Cockerill. "Then the waiter takes the glass off and reveals your food wreathed in all this smoke. Maybe we could actually serve it in marijuana smoke at the start of the tasting menu to get the appetite sharpened."