Two researches narrate Italians’ relation with the kitchen, investigating the advantages and the limits of some household appliances and aspiring chefs’ sense of frustration, too. Result? Technology will save our lives, always and anyway.
Italians and the kitchen world: a theme of great topicality. The audiences of television programmes concerning the cooking world, exciting challenges or educational programmes, soar and hit the target of viewer ratings. Witnessing that the issue thrills a growing number of people, of different ages and cultures. Fashions and hobbies change, then, but the kitchen confirms to be one of the most important domestic environments, not only as conviviality fulcrum but also as space meant as small creative laboratory. In this context, household appliances play a central role. The kitchen world, involving gourmets, touch taps and performance anxieties, is the issue of a research, carried out by Hansgrohe, which reveals trends and habits on a world scale. All over the world, the kitchen is undoubtedly the preferred room but also the place where, more and more often, are concentrated aspiring chefs’ ambitions and frustrations: Hansgrohe has interviewed European, American and Chinese citizens to discover how habits around cookers are evolving. The German brand that has made water saving and ergonomics the distinguishing features of its taps has involved 2,900 people in Italy, Germany, Holland, France, Great Britain, Russia, China, Argentina, United States and Turkey.
A first datum: on average, we spend as many as 23 days in the kitchen, an average of one hour and a half daily. An opportunity to enjoy some time with their families for 50% of interviewees while in 45% of cases the kitchen is the entertainment room, too. Multitasking space par excellence, it essentially remains the place dedicated to the food preparation and just in this ambit emerges the great influence exerted by television chefs at international level. 79% of the people interviewed by the household appliance giant like trying always new and complex dishes while 45% of them draw inspiration from the recipes seen on TV. Perhaps for this reason, as many as 59% admit the stress caused by these continuous cooking challenges and almost all (98%!) believe the facilities of their kitchens are insufficient.
Sink and tap are the elements that generate the greatest dissatisfaction: 93% of Chinese would like to change them. Italians seem to have a more relaxed attitude: 63% think the worktop comfortableness is fundamental while 59% like sharing the table with some guests (against 4% of British). What about taps? 57% would prefer them with the extractable shower, maybe to be more comfortable while washing up. 37% of our countrymen in fact still wash dishes manually.
All agree about one thing: when hands are busy, it would be fine to have the possibility of closing anyway the tap, thus avoiding wasting water. Likewise, while we are washing up, it would be useful to stop the water flow without dirtying, even if our hands are full of foam.
Hansgrohe solution to these requirements is called hansgrohe Matris Select with the Select button just at the height of the thumb, on the front part of the dispenser. Stopping or opening the water flow becomes easy even with our hands busy, since we can operate the button with the back of the hand or the elbow, too. Sideways, the ergonomic handle allows the control of the water flowrate and of the temperature, which can be also pre-set.
Another recent investigation carried out by Russell Hobbs, prestigious British company specialized in the sale of small appliances for home and kitchen, is dedicated to the kitchen and to the emotional sphere of chefs and aspiring chefs. According to this survey, 56% of Italians think that the time of the daily shopping is a real stress. 41% of interviewees declare they live with the anxiety of going back home and start cooking and, if 38% love wandering through the supermarket aisles or the market stalls searching for some inspirations for the dinner, a relevant 5% prefer instead getting it over by doing the shopping online. According to the collected data, the menu planning, i.e. the habit of programming meals in advance and of following a general weekly menu, is considered a useful practice not only to organize smartly one’s own time to be dedicated to the preparation of lunches and dinners (33%), but it can also be a valid incentive to adopt a healthy and well-balanced diet (34.5%) and an aid to save some money in the weekly spending (24%). For this reason, on the occasion of the release on the market of MaxiCook, the new line of household appliances purposely conceived to cook only once a week, the company intends to propose 5 easy and fast suggestions to organize meals, saving time and energy in the kitchen, and also some money in the weekly shopping. 1. Cogito, ergo I do the shopping. Variation is important not only to eat with pleasure but also to introduce in healthy and balanced manner carbohydrates, meat, fish, eggs, legumes, vegetables and fruits into our weekly diet. 2. Everything at the right time. Plan a time of the weekend to be dedicated to the preparation of lunches and dinners, and make this engagement become a small weekly ritual as far as possible. Choose then the day and the time you deem more comfortable: both on Saturday mornings or on Sunday evenings, you have just to find a couple of hours for cooking, in all tranquillity and without hurrying up. 3. A list and you forget the fear. Doing a shopping list and conforming to it not only shares in saving money, because you buy only the strictly necessary things, but it also aids to decrease the stress level, because it frees you from the anxiety of running for the shopping every day or, even worse, buying something ready at the delicatessen counter’s. 4. Always a glance at the calendar. Thinking of your weekly engagements not only helps in organizing the menu better but also in reducing wastes. If we are invited to a dinner at our friends’ or to a business lunch during the week, we know that we will have the chance of reducing part of our provisioning for the weekly shopping. 5. Nothing is written on the stone! If one evening you have an irrepressible desire for pizza, sushi, Mexican tacos or Lebanese food, or you simply want something different you had not programmed, it will be sufficient to revise a bit your menu. A “cheat day” is the necessary transgression that helps you to follow the weekly menu with more constancy the remaining days of the week.
