美国国家公共电台 NPR Do 'Hipster Cooking Gadgets' Spoil Comfort Of Cooking?

Do 'Hipster Cooking Gadgets 2' Spoil Comfort Of Cooking?

play pause stop mute unmute max volume 00:0003:48repeat repeat off Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser 3 to a recent version or update your Flash plugin. LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST: 

You may have spent a lot of time in the kitchen lately, laboring 5 over your Thanksgiving meal or maybe feeding a brood of relatives in for the holiday. Perhaps you use conventional cooking tools - spatulas 6, ladles, graters. Or perhaps you use some state of the art flashy device like a crepe batter 7 trowel spreader or a home macaroon-baking kit 4. If it's the latter, Keith Blanchard would like a word. He is the former editor in chief of Maxim 8 magazine and the author of an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal last week called "Why Hipster Cooking Gizmos Are Killing 9 Cooking." He joins us on the line.

Thanks for being with us, Keith.

KEITH BLANCHARD: Thanks for having me, Linda.

WERTHEIMER: So why are hipster cooking gizmos killing cooking?

BLANCHARD: Well, there's something that runs afoul of the comfort side of comfort cooking when you bring in this sort of hipster-influenced individual gadget 1-related cooking, where suddenly everything has 54 ingredients and it's Stumptown this and artisanally hand-folded that.

WERTHEIMER: (Laughter).

BLANCHARD: It's very funny, and we pole a lot of fun at hipster expense. But I think there really is something to - if you make artisanal cake pops at home because you tried them in a new bakery...

WERTHEIMER: As opposed to cake.

BLANCHARD: Exactly. That's what I was going to say. When you make cake, we have to get plates out, and we have a shared experience all together around the table. But when you hand out cake pops, everyone can disappear back to their corner and tap away at their screens by themselves.

WERTHEIMER: (Laughter) Now, you just spent Thanksgiving with your relatives, right?

BLANCHARD: That's correct. That's right.

WERTHEIMER: So you didn't do the cooking. I wonder, did you inspect the kitchen for hipster gizmos that might have crept into the making of your meal?

BLANCHARD: I did, indeed, to make sure that it wasn't polluted by such gadgetry 10. And the only thing I found that was sort of interesting - 'cause I had never considered it this way before - but the turkey baster itself is kind of an individual gizmo, if you will. Right? We don't call it a meat baster. It's really just for this one single purpose. But yeah, they're very traditional cooks. And - I didn't see any evidence of creeping hipster-ism (ph) there.

WERTHEIMER: Kitchen - but, you know, kitchen gadgets are popular holiday gifts. Now, I try not to buy one, as you say, if it only does one thing. But did you find any gizmos that you particularly don't want to receive?

BLANCHARD: I don't want to receive a mini donut maker 11 or a waffle stick maker or a cronut maker or any of these kind of gadgets that only have this one purpose because now I'm in for storing and maintaining a new item that I'll probably use twice the first month and once in the three-month period after that and then let go forever. One gadget that exemplifies exactly what I don't want for Christmas, even as a stocking stuffer, is the dedicated 12 three-prong sausage pricker 14.

WERTHEIMER: I don't think I (laughter) understand what that is.

BLANCHARD: Well, you know, when you're grilling 16 sausages, they can burst unappealingly or unattractively, let's say, on the grill 15 if you don't prick 13 them first. But we already have a dedicated three-pronged sausage pricker. It sits to the left of every plate in America. So I'm not sure why I'd need a separate...

WERTHEIMER: Called a fork (laughter).

BLANCHARD: That's right, exactly (laughter).

WERTHEIMER: Keith Blanchard wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which is called "Why Hipster Cooking Gizmos Are Killing Cooking."

Keith, thank you.

BLANCHARD: Thank you very much, Linda. It was nice to be here.