Are there any household gadgets you found unexpectedly useful after you'd gotten them?
I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It's such a small specific thing, one I'd never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.
What are your small, "random" or "junk drawer" type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?
Indeed, being Belgian and an adept of the real French fries (double cooked) I was not convinced at all. In the end, I still prefer real fries but I find the air fryer very practical to cook (or warm up quickly - unlike microwave oven it does not make stuff soft) all sort of food.
I'm an American, so I can't say how they're cooked in Belgium, but I can say that boiling them in water for ten minutes before frying reduces the workload significantly and produces similar results.
Belgian fries (and any good fries in America) are fried once in low heat for a little while to cook the potato through. Then they are allowed to cool, and they can be frozen to use later, or you can fry them again at higher temp to crisp them up.
I was gifted an air fryer a while back. While it's generally useful, cleaning if after each use is really obnoxious imo and so I hardly ever use it.
It's a lot easier to clean a pan I used in the oven because I can just pop it in the dishwasher. I can't pop the air fryer in the dishwasher. It would destroy it.
I recently found out about these and they have been a huge help, but I found that food still manages to make it's way into the rest of the basket, even if it's not as much.
My kitchen has a solid ban on any product with the word "maker" in the name. They're all junk that take up space and do a worse job than conventional methods.