Jean-Benoit Buisson

How I got here

This site began with a question that has nothing to do with cooking and everything to do with how these appliances are sold: why does a waffle iron that worked last winter suddenly stick? Every page I found while looking for an answer had the same shape — a ranked list, a score out of ten, an affiliate button, and not one figure I could check. None of them said what a basket's flat area was, what a replacement sealing ring cost, whether the plates came out, or that the answer was usually a €25 set of plates rather than a new machine.

That is the whole subject. The equipment in this category almost never fails; a coating wears, a gasket flattens, a pot no longer comes up to pressure, and then the whole thing gets replaced. A 30-litre mini oven arrives too narrow for a standard baking tray. A pressure cooker is bought for two hundred euros and its inner pot is not sold as a spare in your country. A stand mixer is chosen on colour rather than on the attachment hub that decides what it can still do in ten years. None of that is on the front of the box, and all of it decides whether an appliance is still in use in three years or in a cupboard.

So this is the page I wanted and could not find. I read what manufacturers publish, I check every product reference market by market, I follow what things actually cost rather than what they are listed at, and I say plainly when a figure is not published at all. That last part matters more than it sounds: most of the disappointment here comes from a number nobody printed.

I keep notes — the honest specification of each family, the place where the manual contradicts the sales page, which seal fits which cooker, and the buying mistake each category invites. This site is those notes, put in order, in five languages, because the same question is asked in French, German, Spanish and Italian and gets a far worse answer in four of them.

I am not a chef, and I do not pretend to be. What I can do is read carefully, compare honestly, and tell you which figure the maker left out.

What this site covers

Everything listed here is taken from the catalogue of this site, and each entry links to its own page. When the catalogue changes, this list changes with it. It is a list of what is covered — not a list of what I own.

• Ninja AF500EUSD
• Midea MAF20P0BPK
• Philips NA229/00
• Russell Hobbs 27632-56
• ETA ETA515190000
• LEHMANN LHOWM-4913B

What I care about

Three things, and they shape every page here. The number that gets quoted is usually the wrong one — an air fryer sold on litres rather than on the flat area food can sit on, a mini oven sold on volume rather than on internal width, a blender sold on watts rather than on the jar shape that forces food back into the blades. What the thing costs over three years decides more than what it costs today — seals, plates, inner pots and blade assemblies are wear parts, and on entry-level models they can outrun the machine or simply not be stocked. And the thing that matters most is rarely on the specification sheet at all: whether the parts that touch food come out and go in the dishwasher, because that is what decides if an appliance stays on the worktop or ends up in a cupboard.

What I am not

I am not a chef, a pastry chef, a food technologist or a dietitian. I hold no qualification in any of them, I have never worked in a kitchen, for a manufacturer or for a retailer, and nothing here rests on how well I cook. Nothing on this site is a recipe, and nothing on it is advice about food: where a manufacturer publishes a temperature, a time or a maximum fill line, this site reports it and stops there. In particular, nothing here is food safety guidance — sous-vide temperatures, dehydrating times and preserving methods are matters for the appliance maker's own instructions and for your national food safety authority, and this site points you to them rather than restating them. There is likewise nothing here about nutrition, diets, allergies or intolerances — those are health subjects and they belong to someone qualified. If you are looking for someone whose authority comes from a job title, this is not that site — what each judgement rests on is stated on the page it appears on, and you can read how this site reaches a verdict in full.

How I work

• Every figure names its source: a manufacturer specification, a manual, a standard, or the weight of long-term owner reports.
• No price, product reference or specification is ever invented. Where a figure is missing, the field is left empty and the gap is stated on the page.
• Product references are verified against Amazon before publication, per market. Where a model is not sold in your country, you are sent to a local search rather than to a page that does not exist.
• Where the cheap option wins, the page says the cheap option wins — and where the honest answer is a €9 sealing ring, a fresh set of plates or ten minutes with hot water rather than a new machine, it says that instead.

Why this site exists

Because this equipment is sold on the wrong numbers. An air fryer is advertised on how many litres its drawer holds rather than on how much food fits in a single layer. A multi-cooker is sold on eleven programmes when three of them do different things and eight are a thermostat with a label. A pressure cooker is sold on its price and not on whether its seals are stocked. And the parts treated as afterthoughts — the plate, the gasket, the probe, the spare pan — are usually the actual fix.

There is also a part of this that is not about buying anything. Most appliances that get replaced were not worn out; a coating had gone, a ring had flattened, a blade had dulled, and nobody had written down the ten minutes and nine euros that would have fixed them. A waffle plate that sticks, a base that leaks, a cooker that will not seal, a stone that blocks the airflow it was meant to help. Those problems are cheap to fix and almost never written down. That is the subject a page full of new machines is guaranteed to skip. It is not skipped here.

Correcting me

If something here is wrong, tell me and I will fix it and date the correction on the page. Write to [email protected].

Jean-Benoit Buisson · Montrollet, France