The MasterChef boom – why £400 gadgets are beating the slump

(Alamy)

Britain may be in the depths of an economic slump but sales of expensive kitchen kit are rising like a well-made loaf. Demand for professional small appliances at John Lewis has soared a sizzling 233 per cent.

By "professional small appliances", the company means the sort of electric gadgets that appear on Masterchef and cookery shows hosted by people qualified to use them. We're talking machines like the Magimix Food Processor (£299) and the KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer (£419).

Of course, the hefty price of these gizmos may make sense if you are going to use them every day. Moreover, the KitchenAid mixer is a design classic – its raked motorhead support column suggests the soaring tailfin of a '59 Caddy – that will bring colour and panache to your kitchen.

But how may of us parting with hundreds of pounds for a mixer plan to use its 10-speed motor or "planetary mixing action" to its full potential as we knock up Thomas Keller's lemon sabayon tart or Heston's Black Forest gateau?

I can speak with some authority on the matter since our kitchen is full of gadgetry. I might consider dispensing with the food processor though it is worth keeping if only for homemade pesto (infinitely better than anything from a jar). My wife insists she makes ample use of it for stuffed vegetables and breadcrumbs. (My breadcrumb phase was dramatically terminated when I tried to pulverise an ancient, rock-hard baguette, which demolished the processor bowl.)

We use the stand mixer about once a week. It is wonderful for making dough. I occasionally get the urge to make focaccia and recently made a cheesecake which had a dramatic impact on my waistline. Pancakes are a doddle with the stand mixer, even more if you happen to have an electric pancake maker (£20 from Lidl). The resulting crepes and galettes are sensational but the urge doesn't strike us more than once a month.

The stand mixer's faculty for dough-making was somewhat undermined when we bought an electric breadmaker. Breadmaking becomes child's play especially if you use a packet of bread mix, but the four rumbling hours it takes to make a loaf means we haven't stopped buying stone-baked baguettes from Waitrose.

The most recent addition to our kitchen paraphernalia is on loan. The SousVide Supreme consists of a vacuum-pack machine and a water bath for slow simmering at a precise temperature – as used by Heston Blumenthal and other top chefs. This upmarket boil-in-the-bag transforms recalcitrant beef into tender perfection. It's wonderful if you can afford the money (£429) and space.

But there's always another gadget on the horizon. I remember Rick Stein using a spice grinder which looked a bit like a concrete mixer. Some foodie friends have an electric whetstone which produces a razor edge on their knives. They also have a Thermomix, a super-blender which weighs, chops, kneads, steams and cooks. Yes, I think we could find room for one of those.

My wife, meanwhile, retains a soft spot for her ancient electric hand mixer (from £15). "Nothing better for mayonnaise." She is also "utterly in love" with her KitchenAid vegetable peeler (£10), but her favourite gadget is a skewer (around 30p). "I use it all the time. If it comes out clean a cake is cooked. If the juices flow clear, it's time to take your chicken out of the oven."