Stop the presses! Here’s the latest kitchen fad:
Serious home cooks looking to create a restaurant-style kitchen in their own homes are lusting after yet another piece of culinary kit.
Surfaces may already be groaning under the weight of appliances such as air fryers, espresso machines and top-of-the-range mixers – and let’s not forget the pizza oven in the shed, but middle-class foodies are now adding deli-style meat slicers to their polished countertops.
The ‘industry’ style equipment, which ranges in price from around £50 for a budget version on Amazon to the early thousands for an all-singing, all-dancing one, can precision slice through everything from smoked salmon to hams and cheeses – and even sourdough – with ease.
And while they may seem like an indulgent addition to an everyday kitchen, top chefs say they’re worth the investment – because not only will your charcuterie taste superior, but you can also buy it in bulk, which almost always saves money.
There’s less waste too, because you slice what you need, ensuring wafer-thin sheets of Parma ham don’t go unloved in the fridge.
The slicers – both hand-operated and electric – work by cutting food to uniform sheets, as thick or as thin as you’d like, which can affect flavors significantly, say those in the know.
Well, yes. The above article appeared in the Daily Mail yesterday (February 12, 2026).
Then there’s this:
…which appeared in this post, dated Nov 25, 2023.
Good grief; for once, I’m actually ahead of a trend.
No need to thank me; it’s all part of the service. (Oh, and don’t let the product description fool you. I used the above machine to slice meats like salami, ham and beef for years.)
My grandparents had one with the sliding disc slicer in the fifties. If I’d know they would be coming back now, I would not have thrown the thing away thirty years ago when the home-pro kitchen consisted merely of stainless steel countertops and ranges. I’m sure they would have kept it cleaner, too, so we wouldn’t have faced the Yeeeeeeech factor.
I’ve seen residential kitchens with so much “stuff” that there is very little counterspace to even make a sandwich. The lack of hygiene must be atrocious.
We go the other way. We have a good sized kitchen (16′ x 16′) and there’s only 2 things on the counter, the microwave and the Keurig. We don’t cook all day so why have all that “stuff” available all day? We bring it out of the larder as we need it then put it back.
I’ve done 99% of the meal prep here (1 cooked meal per day) for the past 30+ years and I require complete cleanliness and illumination – almost surgical. lol
Anything-everything food is a very small part of our daily life.
For me it’s a kettle (New Wife’s tea), a Keurig, a toaster and an air fryer. All are used several times a day. The rest (food processor etc.) are stowed away.
We’re lucky in that while our countertop is quite small (like most apartments), we have a large island for food prep.
Hm. I own six things on that list, sadly age and girth made the wellies and the Barbour jacket no longer usable. Also the gilet while lovely and toasty when used on travel did not hold up, the edge piping around neck and arms wore completely off. The 1911 and the Ruger will of course last for my grandkids to shoot with. Cheers.
My grandparents had one that they kept in the cold cellar. Like many other items in my grandparent’s home, it was carelessly tossed out by my mother and sister. I can’t count the treasures that they just tossed out.
Our kitchen is overstuffed with food and stuff that we try to avoid buying yet more appliances. There are a toaster, microwave, keurig and another coffee maker on the counter now as well as a crock that I use for making fermented foods such as sauerkraut on the counter right now. I think there are some canisters too.
I wish we had a good sized pantry in our house.
Can’t a knife be used to achieve the same goal? a knife or even several good quality kitchen knives can take up less space and be more versatile. We have a set of Wusthof classic knives that is almost 25 years old and still going strong.
Too much work, AND you need training to be able to slice things very finely and consistently. With the above, you just turn the wheel
For a couple of years, I owned a commercial kitchen and bakery. One of my business habits was to peruse restaurant equipment sales in the hopes of picking up a quality item on the cheap. It happened from time to time.
I was at an auction in DC during COVID for a Going Out of Business sale for an Italian deli/sandwich shop. I’d gone there for the True freezers they had (and got them) but a Berkel Meat Slicer caught my eye. This is the model: https://babylonmercantile.com/cdn/shop/files/bktrb_red-u_06-new_1_1.jpg?crop=center&height=840&v=1733955724&width=840
I knew exactly nothing about it, save that I knew they were pricey. No one at the auction could tell me anything about it, other than it didn’t work and no one knew how to fix it.
I got it for $1200 and that was the only bid. I had a guy on staff who could fix anything and he sussed out that the manual blade lock was jammed and one 55-cent part later, we were slicing everything in the kitchen.
Not particularly efficient for commercial use and serious overkill for home use, so I sold it about 4 months later for 4X what I paid for it.
I still have a late 80’s Hobart commercial slicer packed away somewhere. My wife doesn’t like it in the kitchen and if I’ve had a use for it the past couple of years, I don’t remember.
TC, That’s a beautiful machine!
If I were your customer, I’d come around just to see that slicer!
You mean that all this time, I could have had a big thing in the kitchen, to avoid having to go down to the workroom and clean the bandsaw table before cutting the thinnest damn slices you could imagine? Works on ham, sausage, even baguettes. Not so well on soft cheeses. Hard Parmesan is fine, but the swarf is so expensive…