There are those of us who love cooking and will always find room for another kitchen gadget. Then there are those of us who imagine we will use them and leave them unloved in a cabinet after the first attempt or two to use them. They take up space unnecessarily. When looking at egg poachers and potato slicers, you may find use for one and not the other whether or not you are a keen cook but it will be a different gadget in each case!

If you are a keen cook you will have no need of an egg poacher pan as you will be perfectly capable of producing beautifully formed poached eggs in a pan of simmering water without any gadget at all. If you are not such a practiced cook however, you will probably end up with a sticky mess if you don’t have a poaching pan and therefore you will miss out on eating such a healthy and simple meal without one.

As for a potato slicer, the enthusiastic cook will probably put this to good use creating lots of potato dishes such as “pommes au gratin” with evenly sliced neat potatoes. However, if the most you ever get together yourself without resorting to ready prepared foods is the odd spaghetti in tomato sauce then chances are you will never get a potato slicer out of the cupboard.

The difference is that the keen cook uses gadgets to enhance and expand the dishes that it is practical to make at home, whereas the one who imagines they will like cooking if they have a load of gadgets to hand, still finds everything too much of an effort when it comes to putting them to work in the kitchen. In the latter case, gadgets are only good if they are simple to use and mean putting together a meal in less time than it takes to warm though a TV dinner in the microwave. An egg poacher is definitely in that category and a potato slicer is not.