Four Kitchen Gadgets Put to the Test: Wine Wand, Yoghurt Maker, Grain Flaker and a Noodle Water Slide

Introduction

Kitchen gadgets live or die on a simple question: does the thing they promise actually justify the space it takes up in your kitchen? We put four very different gadgets in front of ordinary home cooks to test, taste and judge: a wine purifier wand, a Greek yoghurt and cheese maker, a manual grain flaker, and a Japanese noodle water slide. The results ranged from quietly impressive to genuinely divisive, and the price tags turned out to be just as revealing as the performance.

How We Judged Each Gadget

Each gadget was used as a real cook would use it, with honest before-and-after tasting where it made sense, an assessment of build quality and ease of use, and a sanity check on whether the price matches what you get.

Wine Wand Purifier: Promises vs Reality

The Wine Wand purifier claims to be the only product available that removes both histamines and sulfites from a single glass of wine, using what the maker calls patented Phoenix technology. Since sulfites and histamines are common contributors to wine headaches and hangovers, the pitch is aimed squarely at people who love red wine but feel awful after it.

We tested it on a bold Italian primitivo from Puglia, stirring the wand for around three minutes and tasting before and after. The verdict on flavour was unanimous: no difference at all. That is actually a positive, because if you are paying for a nice bottle you do not want the nuances stripped out alongside the sulfites.

The catch is that its core benefit is impossible to verify in a single sitting. Owner reviews run the full spectrum, from people who say it did absolutely nothing to allergy sufferers who say it finally let them enjoy red wine again. Each wand is rated for a single glass, though some buyers report using one across two glasses with similar results. At roughly £10.66 for a box of eight, it is cheap enough to try if sulfites are a genuine problem for you. As a scientifically proven hangover cure it falls short, but as an experiment for sensitive drinkers, it may be worth the gamble.

Kuvings Greek Yoghurt and Cheese Maker: Set, Strain, Serve

The Kuvings Greek yoghurt and cheese maker is far more than its name suggests. Alongside Greek yoghurt and cheese, it claims to handle pickled vegetables, vinegars, vegan cheeses and even slow cooking, all built on one principle: a controlled, constant temperature for fermentation.

Making Greek yoghurt is a two-part process. Full-fat milk is mixed with a starter culture (or simply a spoonful of existing Greek yoghurt), locked in with the bowl and lid, and the machine defaults to an eight-hour fermentation. After fermenting, the yoghurt rests in the fridge for around three hours to ripen and set, then gets strained through the filter into the second bowl for another six hours in the fridge to reach that thick Greek-style consistency.

The tasting impressed everyone. The result was smoother and more flavourful than familiar supermarket pots, with a texture exactly as expected and a pleasantly sour edge. There is real merit here for anyone wanting homemade fermented foods with no mystery ingredients, and the risk feels low. The main hurdle is the £129 price tag. It is a great product if you can justify it and see yourself using it regularly; otherwise it can wait.

Schnitzer Grain Flaker: Fresh Flakes, Fresh Flour

The Schnitzer grain flaker is a beautifully made, genuinely heavy piece of kit with a clamp for securing it to a worktop. Turn the wooden knobs on the side and two grinders draw closer together, letting you adjust exactly how fine or how flat you want your flakes. It promises porridge flakes, fresh flour for bread and cakes, and freshly ground spices, milling around 80 grammes of oats in roughly 20 seconds.

The interesting part is why fresh flakes taste different. Industrial cereal production often heats grains to produce smoother, more shapely flakes, and that processing removes oils which begin to oxidise once the grain is flaked. Flaking your own means nothing has been stripped away.

In the bowl, the homemade flakes looked completely different from shop-bought ones, with less powdery excess, and tasters described a more rustic, homemade flavour profile. Nobody claimed it was better, just different, and genuinely nice. The ritual angle is real too: if you already grind your own coffee beans every morning, this fits the same slow-morning routine.

The uncomfortable truth is financial. Oat groats cost around £3 for 500 grammes, while a kilogramme of ready-flaked porridge oats is roughly £1 to £1.50. The unprocessed ingredient is more expensive than the finished supermarket product, and the flaker itself costs £198.90. It is solidly built, absolutely effective and will do exactly what you hope of it, but it is a lot of money for a niche routine.

Nagashi Somen Water Slide: The Fun One

The outlier of the group: a tabletop version of nagashi somen, the Japanese tradition of chilled noodles floated down bamboo slides or cold water streams for diners to catch with chopsticks. The practice dates back to 1959 in a Japanese noodle restaurant and has become a summer staple, so much so that department stores stack the shelves with noodle slides as temperatures rise.

Fill the reservoir at the bottom, hit the two buttons, and you get a whirlpool plus a pump that circulates water around the slide. The water keeps the noodles hydrated and soft so they never dry out, and the chill makes them genuinely refreshing in hot weather. Drop the noodles in at the top, catch them as they come flying down, dunk them in tsuyu sauce and slurp.

It worked beautifully in testing. The noodles were refreshing and cold, the catching was a game everyone wanted to keep playing, and at £46.92 it landed far cheaper than anyone guessed. It will not suit every kitchen, but for summer gatherings with family or friends it delivers exactly the playful, memorable experience it promises, and it made everyone want to try the real thing in Japan.

Overall Buying Advice

If you have a genuine sulfite sensitivity, the Wine Wand is cheap enough to be worth an experiment. If you eat Greek yoghurt regularly and want control over ingredients, the Kuvings earns its £129 price. The Schnitzer is a premium tool for people already invested in a from-scratch kitchen routine, not a money-saver. And if you want pure summer fun, the noodle water slide is the cheapest crowd-pleaser of the lot.

Conclusion

Two of these gadgets earn their keep through performance, one through novelty and charm, and one sits in an honest middle ground where it may or may not help depending on your body. Match the gadget to a real need in your kitchen, and the price tag stops being the deciding factor.