Three Kitchen Gadgets Put to the Test: GastroMax Grater, Egg Cracker and Meat Vacuum Tumbler

Introduction

Kitchen gadgets tend to split into two camps: the ones that quietly earn their drawer space, and the ones that exist mostly to look clever in short-form clips. We put three widely advertised gadgets through a proper hands-on test with a professional chef and a home cook: a GastroMax rotary grater, an egg shell opener, and a meat vacuum tumbler. The results ranged from enthusiastic pass to outright rejection, with one late surprise in between.

GastroMax Grater: Clever Design, Mixed Results

The GastroMax Grater is a rotary grater that grates directly into its own container, which lifts away so you can tip the results straight onto your chopping board. Interchangeable grating drums slide in and lock in place, and you apply light pressure on the handle while turning the knob. The core idea is genuinely appealing: no extra bowl to wash up, and arguably less risk of scraped knuckles than a box grater.

On cheese it performed well, producing fine, even results. Onion was more complicated. The gap between the plunger and the blade means smaller pieces get pushed through unevenly, and the blades seemed more inclined to tear than slice. It also requires cutting ingredients into small, crescent-shaped pieces first, which adds prep time on top of everything else.

The verdict here was split. It does what it promises, and the straight-to-board grating is a real convenience, but the testers felt a box grater still does the job with less fuss. Priced at £15, it cost half of what most people would guess, which softened the criticism without changing the outcome.

Egg Cracker: A Fixable Design Quirk

The Egg Cracker is a small plastic shell opener that promises clean, mess-free breaks: place the egg inside, press the clamp, and the teeth score the shell before releasing the egg. It is aimed squarely at anyone who dislikes the mess of cracking eggs by hand.

Our first attempts were not flattering. Yolks broke repeatedly, and one egg ended up with shell fragments in the bowl. The turning point came when the technique was reconsidered: with the egg positioned the other way around, so the pierced end faced upwards, the results improved noticeably and an intact yolk finally emerged.

The fair assessment: it can work, but only once you figure out the correct orientation, which is not communicated to the buyer. Against its own claims, it fell short in testing. It did not reliably reduce shell in the food, it was not faster than cracking by hand, and it did not crack eggs perfectly every time. At £6.99 for a set of three, the price is trivial, but the panel doubted whether the gadget earns a permanent place in most kitchens.

Meat Vacuum Tumbler: Does Vacuum Marinating Work?

The Meat Vacuum Tumbler is the most serious piece of kit of the three. It is a drum-style machine that removes air from the drum during marinating, forcing marinade into the food, while a tumbling action mechanically breaks down muscle fibres to tenderise and improve flavour absorption. You load meat and marinade, lock the lid, turn the dial to vacuum, then let it tumble.

The headline claim is dramatic: 20 minutes in the machine is said to match 24 hours of traditional marinating, and the machine can tumble for up to 10 hours. In testing, the visual difference was clear. The tumbled steak had visibly stretched, elongated fibres and cooked noticeably faster because it ended up flatter and thinner.

Both steaks were cooked side by side and tasted blind against each other. The tumbled steak reached a more even doneness and was tender, but the overall flavour difference between the two was smaller than expected, estimated at somewhere around 10 to 20 percent. The honest conclusion: it is a time-saving convenience rather than a route to a dramatically better product. Time and patience remain the most reliable marinade tools.

Is the Meat Vacuum Tumbler Worth the Price?

At £58.99, it landed between the two price guesses, and the reaction was divided. It demonstrably works and does what it claims, cutting marinating time from hours to minutes and speeding up cooking as a side effect. For a foodie with space to spare who cooks marinated meat regularly under time pressure, that could genuinely be worth having.

For others, the counter-argument is hard to ignore: it takes up storage space, needs washing up, and the taste improvement over simply marinating overnight in the fridge is modest. One tester felt the price was fair for what it delivers; the other could not find £58 worth of value in the difference they tasted.

Buying Advice

If you grate large batches regularly and hate washing a box grater, the GastroMax Grater at £15 is a low-risk experiment, provided you accept the prep and the occasional stubborn end piece. The Egg Cracker set is cheap enough to satisfy curiosity, but do not expect it to replace manual cracking without a learning curve. The Meat Vacuum Tumbler is the only one of the three with a genuinely professional-grade result, and it makes sense only if fast marinating is a recurring need in your kitchen.

Conclusion

Two of these gadgets promise convenience and deliver it with caveats; one delivers a real technical advantage at a real price. The grater is clever but awkward, the egg cracker is cheap and fussy, and the vacuum tumbler works as advertised, though its value depends entirely on how often you would actually use it.