Hello, hello my lovelies. Hi, it's Emmy. Welcome back to another little gadget test. If you you've missed my vintage kitchen gadget test, I shall put the link up here and down below, but today I will be testing gadgets that I found at DAISO. DAISO originated in Japan and it is a ¥100 shop. So, a ¥100 shop is basically the equivalent of a dollar store here in the U.S. Everything in the store is ¥100. I actually have a really, really old video -- back when I was living in Japan of ¥100 shops. If you want to see that, I shall put the links here as well. So, since I've left Japan, DAISO has found itself all over the world, including the U.S, but everything is not $1 -- everything is $2.50. So, the last time I went to visit my family down in L.A., I stopped in one and picked up a bunch of things that I thought might be interesting to test. If you like these kind of kitchen gadget tests, be sure to like this video so I know it and I can do more. All right, let's begin! So, the first item I have, are these. *dee dee de dee dee* Any idea what these might be for? These are rubber gloves, that are pink and orange, and very nubbly. These are... peeler gloves. And, as you can see on the packaging it says, "Peeler Glove," because one glove was contained in here. I suppose you could get away by just wearing one glove, but I went ahead and bought both the right and left. The concept of this is: this is supposed to be able to peel your vegetables, by just wearing these gloves. I guess this works as a descaler as well. Some sort of nubbly material that has been dipped...in this plastic coating. Almost looks like Plastidip. Wow, and it is pretty off-gassing some pretty terrible smelling vinyl fumes, but... yeah....this is DAISO after all. Let's try a Russet potato. All right, so, we'll dampen our potato first, and start scrubbing. You've gotta use a lot of effort, and it's not peeling it that well. I think these would probably work pretty well with new potatoes. You know the potatoes that have the really, really thin skin? Not really doing much of anything, except....wearing me out. So if I use my thumb here, which I can get the most, kind of, force, it is scraping it down to the flesh, but... I think I'd already be done if I was using a vegetable peeler. Let's try it with a red potato. So, it is working a little bit better on the red potato. If you take the potato and rub it against the palm of your other hand. it seems to work pretty well. This is very efficient in terms of not having a lot of waste. Try a Yukon Gold potato. And that's not doing a very good job at all. Let's try a carrot. Yeah... yeah it's getting the skin off. But I have to say I'm not sure if this is necessarily an improvement. So, now I have some really dirty gloves. Yeah, these gloves, actually, clean up a lot better than I thought that they would. All right, so that was "Peeler Gloves" -- they worked passably well. Would I actually use them? Probably not. So, while we still have our potatoes out, let's try the next product. And it is this. Any idea what this might be? If I show you this side, you'll know what it is. Right? And this is a vegetable peeler. And the benefit of this vegetable peeler is that it catches the peelings. Pretty great for composting. We compost here, so you won't have to pick up the peels. I don't think I spend that much time picking up my peels, but, let's see how neat and tidy this ends up being. Let's use our Russet potato that we really couldn't successfully peel with the Peeler Gloves. And here we go! Oh... And it's kind of staying in there... It is a little awkward feeling, and it is catching all the peels. So, all the peel is trapped inside that little box. Let's see... yeah! All right! Now let's use the next potato. Yeah, so... It's not catching the peels as nicely. Sometimes this doesn't really....cut. This is very gimmicky; it works all right. It's not really that much of a timer saver for me, but I think I'll just stick with my regular, old harp vegetable peeler. Yeah. The next little gadget I have is this one. Any idea with this might be? I found this at a Japanese supermarket. I did not find this at DAISO, but I thought I would include it with the other Japanese gadgets. So, this is a rice paddle or rice scooper. It has this little flick switch here; and when you do that, those little prongs appear. And what this is used for is for washing, or agitating, or cleaning your rice. And then you flick it back in this direction to scoop with it. And then it has this nice, like, fat base so it will stand up. But then, I don't like how it feels in my hand. It kind of cuts into my hand. So, yeah, it feels a little flimsy. I do like that it has little dimples on it, and it keeps the rice from sticking. And, if you don't have a rice paddle that does this incidentally, If you dip your rice paddle in a little bit of water before scooping into the rice, you shouldn't have any sticking -- which is another little tip. Interesting little gadget. All right! Let's move onto our next gadget, which is this one. Any idea what this might be? Translucent plastic with little bear faces. Yellow on the other side. It opens up. So, what do you think this might be? This is a rice ball shaker. So, this little gadget makes mini rice balls. A bit of rice into each cavity. Next, we are going to take some furikake, some little rice seasoning -- this happens to be Rilakkuma, which thematically works pretty well. And then we'll close it up. And then we're supposed to shake this to form the rice balls. *tropical, maraca music plays* Here we go! Hah! It worked perfectly! That's great! Look at this... we have perfect little rice balls! How... stinking... cute! That's great! You don't have to deal with water; sticky hands; anything! This is perfect for my little kids. I think this would be awesome because they can do it themselves. Brilliant! While I have my rice balls here, I might as well taste one. Here we go! Itadakimasu! Delicious! Love it! Of all the things so far, I am actually going to keep this one The next little gadget I have is this little guy. *silly noise* Any idea what this little friend might be for? There's a back; there's a front. Feet. That might give you a little hint. This is a chopstick trainer. So, this is for your kids to help them learn how to use chopsticks. This is called a "Chopstick Friend." Take the chopstick and put it in the little square hole.... like that. 'Cuz this is made out of silicon it has a kind of spring-loaded action to it. The correct grip of chopsticks, you basically move the top portion of the chopstick, and this doesn't really allow for that. I would say this not so great for actually teaching your kids how to properly hold a pair of chopsticks, but, in terms of functionality I think this is great. Kids would be able to actually use chopsticks because they're like tongs. I don't think it is something that I am going to be really using with my kids, because what I've done so far is just get them a pair of regular kid chopsticks, like this -- and just hand it to them and just let them figure it out for themselves. I find that it gives them a little more independence, and then I can correct them as they go along. But it's more fun that way, as well. These are kid's chopsticks, and what is special about them is they have a little bit of texture on the end of the chopsticks, so it helps them pick up things better. If, by chance, you want to learn how to use chopsticks, I have a little chopstick tutorial which I shall put the links here. So, my very last item... is this. Any idea what this cute, little thing is for? This is an egg timer. And the way this works is you place this into a pan of water -- cold water -- along with your eggs; bring it up to a boil. This will turn white, and indicate when your eggs will be soft, medium, or hard. So, I was very curious to see how accurate this would be. Here are my three experimental eggs labeled: One, Two and Three in order of which I took them out of the water. When I boil eggs, I usually bring my water up to the boil first, and place my cold eggs into the water. And that way I've found that they peel really easily. So, Kenji López-Alt, over at Serious Eats, has a whole break down of why this works but, it has to do with the very hot temperature of the water. The proteins contract, and pull themselves away from the inside of the shell, making it really easy to peel. So, my concern is with this timer that, by bringing them slowly up to temperature, that the eggs will stick to the shell So, let's find out. So, let's give this a test. Number One... should be the soft egg. Look, it's already squirting juice out. Ew.. And, indeed, it is kind of sticking to the shell. The egg is not really peeling nicely. So, in this situation when you are dealing with an egg that is not cooperating, let's try this. We'll take our knife -- cut it through -- -- that, indeed, is a very soft egg. And we'll use our spoon to... scoop it out of the shell. I would say that's, a very soft egg. All right, let's check out number two, which is the medium. This one seems to be peeling a little bit better. And that probably has to do with the egg being more well cooked. Right, so here is egg number two. Not exactly beautiful, but at least we got it out of the shell. Okay... Medium is described as, "You will have soft yolks with runny egg white when the color is changed to medium." Well, that is definitely more cooked than the soft. I'm going to have to say that this, by typical U.S. standards would be considered soft. Next, let's do our fully cooked, hard egg, which was number three. This one, not surprisingly, peels the easiest. So, the peel did stick a bit, but it definitely peeled easier than the other two. And this is supposed to be hard cooked. So that, I would actually call a "medium." So when I ask for a hard-boiled egg this is how I prefer it. I like it to be a little bit gelled in the middle -- I don't like it when it gets too crumbly and dry, but that's just my own deal. When I poured my eggs out of the boiling water, I noticed there was a really strong... plastic, vinyl smell, that came from this, which... is a little bit worrisome, in my opinion. There is no need to have plastic boiling with your eggs. If you have the proper technique and the proper time, totally can avoid that. I would say this worked pretty well, although, it's a little bit, seemingly, undercooked, in terms of what, I think, most people in the U.S. would have considered "hard, medium, and soft." Let me know in the comments below if you want to see a whole, "How to boil an egg" recipe. I know it seems kind of mindless, and brainless, and dumb, and silly, but it's not, there's a lot of science about how to boil an egg properly. So, that concludes our little DAISO kitchen gadget testing. Let me know in the comments if there are specific gadgets you'd like to see me test out. And yeah, hope you guys enjoyed that one. I hope you guys learned something. Thank you guys so much for watching. Share this video with your friends. Show this video a little bit of love. And follow me on social media, so can you see a little bit of behind the scenes, of making these videos. And yeah, I shall see you in my next video! Toodle-oo! Take care! Bye....
