I Tested The Laziest Kitchen Gadgets

Everyone wants cooking to be easier. Except instead of leaning on proper technique and mastering efficiency in the kitchen, more and more people are leaning on cooking gadgets that promise to make cooking simpler. But most of these gadgets often make the whole process... lazier. I mean, you end up with a worse product. So where do we draw the line between easy and lazy? So I bought the laziest cooking gadgets I could possibly find, and today we're putting them all to the test. If they lower our effort and time making something and it's still good, then it passes... But if it results in a lower quality result... at all, it fails. It is classified as a lazy cooking gadget. So it all starts off with our first item. The $1,700 cooking robot: the Posha. It has 1,000 recipes in it, pre-programmed. It cooks everything for you from start to finish. So the question is, where is this gonna land for us? I'll be honest, you still have to do the prep and the shopping. It does not have arms or legs or a brain... or I guess it kind of has a brain. We're gonna be doing butter chicken. I thought, "I have a recipe for butter chicken. Let's see how this compares to mine." 1,000 calories a serving? 81 grams of fat? Mother of pearl!! It's telling us what goes in where. So we're gonna follow the directions and fill up each individual container with the prepped items. And I have a little friend. His name is Christian, who's gonna help me do all this today. All right, boneless chicken thigh, 12 ounces, goes in container A. So container B gets heavy dairy cream and four tablespoons of unsalted whole butter, ginger garlic paste, five ounces of red onion puree. You fill each one up, and then they just clip into each zone. Like, you literally just slide it out, and it just slide—boom! Clips right in. Whoa! That's so sick! So these are all the individual spices already loaded up into here: Turmeric, methi, salt, red chili powder, garam masala. It is limited, though. You cannot put more than six spices in any of the recipes. Curry spatula in. Okay, start cooking. Here we go. I'm so nervous. Oh! Yo! Oil! I don't know why it's stirring the oil. I've never... I've personally never done that. Oh, oh! First one! Tap it out, man! Oh! Yo! Whoa! Wait, it's not gonna stir, like, the onions first? I'm blown away by that. The fact that it didn't stir the onions is crazy. Oh, shit! They're not even getting in there! The Posha is supposed to be a "set it and forget it" cooking solution. So we're gonna let it rip for an hour, and after we test all of our gadgets, we're gonna pit it against my own butter chicken recipe to see who wins! Now, onto the next gadget. You might be wondering what this device is. It's a garlic peeler. Correct. So, Christian, I'm gonna give you two cloves of garlic, I have two cloves of garlic, and we're gonna see who peels it faster. And... go! Oh, shit! It's done. Wow. That actually worked crazy good. I'm actually shocked. I might use this! Let me try that! Let me try it! All right, now you peel one. All right, ready? Go! There was multiple layers! Bah! I was so close! Nah, I think it works too. Yeah, that's kind of cool. I like that one. Hey! Not lazy! Next, we have the Rotato Express. Rotato! Look at this thing, dude. Absolutely beautiful. First, you take, like, a potato, for example. Stab it on there, bring this down. It's supposed to make peeling easier. Let's see. Oh, it stops on its own! I mean, it kind of peeled it unevenly, and it didn't finish peeling it. But it was really cool. Now try doing that with 40 potatoes. But, you know, you could do other things. Not just potato. You could even do... a mango. It's so perfect! Is it gonna do it in one go without breaking? Grab that end. It's one single strand! This is how long the mango skin is. That's kind of sick. I mean, it works. It also missed a spot on here as well. I mean, it did peel a tomato, actually, really nicely. Really ribbed. I don't know if I dislike this or not. Maybe, like, while it's peeling... I've always wanted to eat a mango like that. Salt me, baby! I mean, it's lazy, but efficient. I could be doing stuff while that's peeling. Okay, yeah. Moving on... we have the Newness Pineapple Corer. In my opinion, I don't see how this is even gonna save you time or effort, really, because you still have to use a knife. Step one: It wants me to cut off the top, center the blade on the... pineapple, twist it slowly until reaching the bottom. How deep do I go? Oh... whoa! That's satisfying. Dog. Tunnel vision, dog. Oh, she's sweet! That worked out so good. It is a shortcut. It's consistent. The only downside is there's quite a bit of waste. There's a lot of pineapple in here that ended up not getting cut. This much pineapple! You don't necessarily need this tool. You can core a pineapple easily. Here's how you do it. He's gonna time me to figure out how long this takes. So you're gonna cut off the top and then the bottom, turn it over, and then you'll trim the sides down, trying to stay as close to the skin as possible. If you get too close to the skin, you end up with these sort of, like, little needley bits. Okay, and then in half... in half again... in half again. Remove the core, turn... remove the core, turn, and your pineapple is done. 35 seconds, Chef. At this point, you can actually cut your pineapple into any shape you want, except for a ring. But like, if you want to cut it like a brunoise, you can do that. Or you could take it and you get bigger cubes, or you can cut it into batons, or you can cut it into, like... Do we get the point here, guys? It doesn't need to be expensive. A $10 knife will do the same job. That's not... $10. I mean, it takes strength to get that done, too, so it's not making it easier for anybody, like, physically. For the amount of waste, I'm going to say: Lazy. Just learn the knife skills and don't waste your food, you know? Next up: The Auto Stirrer. What better item to test than a risotto? The whole point of this is to stop the necessity of always having to stir, stir, stir. The rice is going to go in. I'm so tempted to shake the pan. I know! But it's an auto-stirrer, guys. Might as well add our shallot and garlic. Maybe we should just skip the toasting and go straight to adding the wine. Little more broth... Why is it staying on this side? It, like, refuses to go over here. Like, go back over here! Number one: There's already an issue with the fact that it's not getting to the edges. You can see that the edges are completely untouched. The rice that was on the edges ended up getting a little too toasted, whereas the rice in the center kind of got stirred. Look at how this area is stirred. But see how this is all undisturbed? It has not even touched this area after almost five minutes of stirring! Do you think it's the wrong size pot? Here's the problem with the smaller pot: It's just spinning in place. I know this device is also for accessibility, but even then, it just did not yield a good product, and we really tried. We're gonna call it: Mid. Next: This. What could this possibly be? A helicopter? A flying device? A new form of a drone? No, it's for cooking bacon. The Bacon Wizard! They actually advertise that it makes a better product. Ballsy of you to say, buddy! I don't think it's fair to compare this to the baking in the oven—or roasting in the oven, I guess—'cause that takes much longer. So I think we compare this to a pan. So the reason it makes a better product is they say that you end up dripping off way more of the fat, so you end up with a crispier, less greasy piece of bacon. You can only do eight pieces of bacon at a time. How long does it cook for? Eight minutes. Eight minutes is a long time. in a microwave. It's a long time. And now we wait eight minutes. While this is going, I'm also gonna be cooking bacon in a pan to compare the two. Should take roughly the same amount of time. We got eight minutes on the clock. Is that how you lounge? That's how I cook bacon. You look like such a diva right now. This is making a weird noise. My bacon's still cooking eight minutes later. This looks about two minutes out, so we'll call this 10 minutes for pan bacon. Shall we? Ooh! Ugly as fuck. We have two different kinds of bacon. This, like, matte pink bacon is not crispy, first of all. Which, listen, I'm not against non-crispy bacon, but if you're a crispy bacon-goer, you are not going to get crispy bacon. I think the pan version looks much more appetizing. It tastes like Denny's bacon. Buffet bacon. I'd take a step up. Ha! Way more flavorful. Saltier, too. More of the liquid has evaporated out. More concentrated flavor. How often do we really eat bacon? Maybe once a week or less. Assuming that you're like the average person who probably doesn't eat bacon every single day, you might as well just take the time to roast a bunch of pieces of bacon. It's just as set-and-forget, in my opinion. You get more product out of it. You can do, like, 16 pieces of bacon instead of eight. It'll take twice as long to cook, though. But you'll end up with this much more flavorful bacon and serve more people. Because this is easy cooking: Disgusting. We're going to count that as lazy. On to the next. Some items were created for accessibility, but there are people with all abilities that are trying to automate their cooking processes, make their cooking easier and faster with things like the Slap Chop. The question is, does it make an okay product? You already have the knife out. That's what I find funny about this item is people will say things about the accessibility of it, but you still have to cut it and prep it. I really don't know who it's helping. You can only fit, like, a quarter of an onion in here. All right, go for it. It's still a button. That's not bad. It's not bad for a chili. If you were gonna, like, sauté this into a sauce, that would work. What about... a carrot? It's brutalizing the vegetable. But you know what? I think it's good for one type of food cut, which is medium-fine chop, rough chop kind of look. You can still end up with a great product with that. I think someone could slap chop that celery faster than I could cut it nicely. For that, I'm going to give it a thumbs up. I agree. Onto the next. Now let's check and see how the Posha is doing. It looks okay, but the true taste test of man versus machine is coming up at the end. But we have more gadgets to try. We're back at the microwave. What's in here? Fasta Pasta. I hate that name. It's literally a microwavable box. You put your pasta in there, cover it with water, and you close the door and cook it. This one's gonna be 13 minutes. Let it rip. Now we wait. What the? Well, we got something to drain it with. Boom. The lid goes on. You drain it. Oh, God! All right, here we go. I tried to get some pasta. Only a little overcooked. That's nice. I have a little toothsome in mind. I guess. Like, you could hypothetically pour out and leave in some of the pasta water, put a sauce in there, put some butter and some salt and shake it in that and then serve it. And just eat it from there and play your video games. I don't have to boil my water. The only downside, though: portion size. This is two portions. You're limited to four. In America, that is one portion. It didn't necessarily make worse product. I'm sorry, Italians, but... not lazy. I certainly will not be using this. But you know what? You want to make it easier. Less mess, I suppose. Fasta Pasta. Moving on, the rice cooker. So to use it, very simply, washed rice going in, equal parts water. Level it out, you close it, and then. Now this is going to take like 30 to 40 minutes. It takes a shocking amount of time in the rice cooker, but... I don't have to do anything else. And after you press the button, you open it up and guess what you have? Perfectly cooked rice. We already know how I feel about rice cookers. I love them. They cook rice perfectly every time. It takes out all the guesswork. I'm usually against single-use tools. This is the one tool that I hyper-fixate on. You don't have to buy the expensive one. You can buy a cheap one. This makes a better product with less effort. Consistent. Set it and forget it. Everything about this is a pro. Not lazy. Moving on. Sistema egg cooker. It makes omelets and poached eggs. Today we're gonna make an omelette. All right, I'm gonna do a little cheese, onions and tomats and then... a little more cheese. Lock it. Pop this baddie in here for 40 seconds. All right. After 40 seconds, give it a quick little stir. I'm gonna pop her back in there for another... 40. Ugh. It's not fully cooked. Pop it in another 40. We followed the instructions. They did not work. So we're gonna add a little more cook time. Did it bust open a little bit? The lock is there still. Oh boy! Put that between two buns. The sell on this product is that it's fast and easy. It was supposed to take 80 seconds. It took an extra 40 on top of the 80, but I mean, it's only 40. 40 extra seconds here, right? I don't hate it. I think most people would be okay with this, honestly. It's one less dish. You're washing the dish. Yeah, you still gotta wash it. You're still washing a whisk. You're still washing a bowl. So it's not saving you on cleanup time really much. Every omelet you make is gonna look this way. It's gonna be rubbery, and you can't control the way that it's cooked. So you can't have like a softer omelet. You can't have a crispier omelet. 100%. It's lazy. It's hospital eggs. Yeah, it is hospital eggs, actually. That's very accurate. That's lazy. Moving on. We have the Veg-O-Matic 16-in-1. They say it creates... unmatched knife cuts. Big statement from Veg-O-Matic. We've got these little cube cross-hatch... Carrots. You just kind of slam it. He just hit it! Hit it! It! Oh! That's not bad. I mean, that required effort. So if this was to make things more accessible, I mean, you better have some serious triceps strength. Let's try a piece of celery. That was easy. Didn't really cube it, though. Onion. Oh, wow. Compare this to the average person's knife skills. That's not a bad dice. What if you're like, "I have no time, I'm just going to slam this whole potato"... Again. Quickly, quickly! Give me another one! All right, give me something else. I don't care what it is. Let's try a different function. So now we have the mandolin top wavy cutter. Ooh, crisscross applesauce. It's too thin. It's too thin to get a good crisscross. But a good... Wavy. Let's just get a bunch of wavies. Get a bunch of wavies. All right, you're scaring me. You're scaring me. One downside is this is a fixed blade, meaning you can't make it any thicker or thinner. But if you just want an all-in-one, I mean, it works. In terms of accessibility, like, anybody could use this. It's efficient. It's an added bonus that it comes with a container that everything goes in. So less mess, less stress. Not lazy. We have... I just cut myself. Did you really? I actually literally just cut myself. Let me see it. Oh, wow. How'd you do that so I don't do it? All I did was the exact function it's supposed to do, and I am bleeding. If you put your thumb at the most important part of leverage, it literally slices your thumb. Okay, so you have a single-use product that cuts a banana... and fingers! I refuse to recommend a product that I just cut myself with trying to use it. Properly... Almost like a... Disqualified! Yeah. Thumbs down! Don't drop that, though; it'll drip. Moving on. Next: the air fryer. I used to hate them, but have they gotten better? So, you got our salmon. We have it nicely seasoned. A little bit of spray oil, so we'll let that go. It's gonna cook for ten minutes. This is very much of, like, a set-and-forget. You don't need to, like, have a lot of pots and pans. So it all comes down to whether or not the product... comes out really nice. 'Cause if you cook salmon in a pan, you can get it super crispy and it's super moist and it's not dry. So, that's what I'm looking for in this. My thumb hurts. Our salmon is done. It looks crisp. It's sizzling. It's bubbling. Oh, that's hot! There goes your second thumb! I wasn't even intending to get crispy skin, but I think we did! But I wanna talk about the top. The top has a nice color, so I'm happy about that. Side's got color and even the skin. Okay, it's not crispy enough... Did not break, but look at the cook on that! Look how juicy that is!! Oh, it's tender. Wow, that's delicious!! That is a fire air fryer! I used to hate air fryers; I've come around to them. It is a perfect example of what could be considered a lazy cooking item. But it really does make it quick and easy sometimes. In some cases like this, it actually makes a better product. Getting salmon cooked this nicely in a pan requires real skill. Throwing it in the air fryer honestly requires almost none. Dare I say: restaurant-quality salmon! Not lazy. This is a weird one. You look at this and you're like, "What kind of weird shovel is this?" It is, in fact, a meatballer. Let's see if it's intuitive. So you just pack it in there? Do you gotta flatten it out or anything, or...? This better make them fast, 'cause it takes a while just to stuff that thing. This is disgustingly lazy! I just make balls faster, I feel like. So, that did a terrible job. And it's gonna get a thumbs down! So, we have the three-in-one sandwich cooker. Imagine if none of these borders were here. I'd call it a griddle. Yeah. You also can't control the heat on this, so we better pray to God this thing is dialed in like a Michelin-starred chef. So... Okay. Okay, she's warm. You put that in there, I'll smash it. Can you turn down the heat? Oh, you can't, can you? And then I guess you close this. Yeah, I guess so... I'm worried about the egg yolk, right? Bang, bang, dude! Woo! Wee! Oh, it does touch the yolk. A little bit of a Maillard. A little salty-salty. Little queso. Flip these bad boys. Bang! I'm being really careful. I'm just giving it top heat. All right, we're melted. The egg looks cooked possibly nicely, though. At least it didn't break. I mean, it does look good. Oh, that just busted!! You went pretty hard on that cut, brother. It's pretty good. That's with the ingredients, really. You know, I know it's like a three-in-one, but it seems single-use. It's like you gotta pull it out for breakfast only. You could do the exact same thing all in one large pan. And it's cleaner. You just wipe out the pan and it's done. This is... you've got all the ridges and everything. So, like, I think this is actually more work. I don't think I know anybody personally that's not a professional that would use this. I'm gonna give this a thumbs down, personally. Yeah, thumbs down for me. Finally, the moment of truth: the Posha is finally finished. But how did it do? And is it going to be able to beat me? It looks, actually, very good. It didn't get any color on the chicken so that makes me worried about the flavor. But smells fantastic. It's a little thicker than I want it to be. Ok our butter chicken is in. And then they recommend to add a touch of fresh chopped cilantro. And that is a robot's butter chicken. And it looks quite nice. We have several blind taste testers trying both dishes to see which they prefer. We did a reset between each tasting to keep it fair. I want a real winner here. If this robot can beat me, this is its chance. Now let's see what they think. They're actually way closer than I was expecting them to be. They are super similar. Those actually are really similar, I'm not going to lie. They're very close together... Like, a lot closer than you'd think. The second one had a lot more spice. The chicken is super tender. I think the texture of the first one was, like, a little creamier, a little smoother. I think the second one had a little bit more spice, And I liked the sauce a little bit more. It was a little bit creamier. The second one, it was more rubbery and chewy, but the flavor was more buttery. Honestly, the only difference I'm notating is that the second one is a little spicier. It's a bit more deep in flavor. The second one had a better spice. Which one do you prefer? Number one. If I had to pick one overall, I think the first one. I think I prefer the second one. First one was a little bit too buttery for me. I think number two. Probably number two. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Get in my face! Total tally is four to one. And the winner is... Not the robot! Congratulations, Joshua Weissman! Yes! I beat a robot! But it's okay. I'm friendly. I work hard. When you decide to enslave humanity, just remember that, okay? I wanna try this one. I'm, like, actually pretty pumped about it. I mean, that's good. It's seasoned nicely. It's a little sweet, huh? This is the final moment. A cooking gadget that quite literally does it all. And the question: Is it lazy? Did it make a worse product, and did it make our lives easier? You still have to do all the prepping, you still have to do all the cleaning. You have to do almost all of it, except for the stirring and the watching of the pot. So we're gonna go with... sad. Lazy! At the end of the day, cooking is all about making something delicious. It doesn't always have to be hard or tedious or require a bunch of time and energy. And what we learned is some things do make life easier and still make a delicious product. But some things make them worse. So choose wisely. 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