Welcome to How To Cook That, I'm Ann Reardon and this is Dave Reardon and this is an episode of
Clever or Never where we test a bunch of kitchen gadgets so you can see if they are worth buying
or not. And first up we have this unusual looking thing that says you can use it to
open the top of drink cans and then you can add like lemon or ice to your can. Amazing.
Let's give it a go it says to put it on top and squeeze and then turn again there we go...
I don't know if my can is quite strong enough because when I try to turn the can my actual
can is bending. There we go and oh did anything happen? No. Look it is cut. Okay. but not very
well it's cut three quarters of the way around. This is classy. It's a drink my thumb's been in
it and the lid of the drink which is no doubt not clean it has also been in it. Oh don't drink it.
The can itself is bendy. Hold it further down where the can is a bit stronger.
Oh dear, stop stop...
This is not a Dave gadget. No stop, you did it again. I'm not squeezing!
Let me try again. How are you doing it?
I don't know if it's cutting it doesn't feel like it's cutting that sounds just cut through
for the first time. A little Sprite burp. Once it's cutting it has more resistance
so then it's harder to twist without denting the can. No. That has not even cut halfway
around. That's odd. Well this one was the best out of four we gave it a good go. Yeah
what do you think was it a clever or never 👎🏻 Gadget number two is presented by you. It's a corn
kerneler I guess for getting the kernels of corn off the corn cob ... say that ten times fast! But
I spotted it and thought that looks ridiculous. I kind of like just eating corn on the cob.
Correct. Here we go aline the top slide it down, wait I think we've got a clever on our hands 🌽
Not so easy on the pouring out ... does it come open?
oh look at that that's much easier. Well I still prefer eating corn on the cob to
corn off the cob but that is pretty clever. Yeah I'm giving it a clever.
I was sent multiple emails asking could we review this gadget because they want to know does it
actually work? Well it says: this little device thoroughly cleans all the bacterias and chemicals
from your fruits and vegetables. Aquapure is such a great product it removes more than 99
of bacteria and pesticides. Why is it smoking? That's not smoke that's little bubbles. According
to their website aquapure electrolyzes the water and produces chemicals that kill the bacteria
and destroys pesticides. It sounds scientific. Do you think that's working? Yes, do you think
it's working Ann? I have my doubts but there's no way of telling ... I also have my doubts.
There's no way of telling just by looking at it like this there are lots of studies about using
electrolyzed water but that's completely different because that has two separate chambers. I think to
really explain that I'm going to need to pull this one apart and do a few more tests. Insert it into
the video here for you so you can see if this actually works in this form. In electrolysis if
you have a container of water which is H2O and then you add salt or NaCl and then you run an
electric current through the water some changes are going to happen. You'll get hydrogen gas
forming at the cathode and some chlorine gas at the anode and some sodium hydroxide and according
to their website you will also get some of that sodium hydroxide reacting with the chlorine gas
to make sodium hypochlorite or bleach so they're saying the chlorine and the sodium hypochloride is
what is killing the bacteria. If we take a closer look inside of this you can take the top off for
cleaning and unscrew these two little bits and you can see inside you have this piece of plastic and
if we take that apart you can see it's made up of two metal grates separated by a thin piece of
plastic. Now each grate attaches to one of these screws which are going through and connecting to
a rechargeable battery that sits on the base. If I connect the grates to the screws away from
each other then I should be able to collect the gases being produced separately from each side.
We only seem to be getting bubbles from the one side I suspect that's probably hydrogen we can
collect that in a test tube and if it is hydrogen it should make a nice pop sound when you put a
match to it, let's see ... so we can confirm that it is making hydrogen bubbles which look pretty
and impressive but they're not going to kill any bacteria. Now because I wasn't getting any bubbles
out of the other side I'm going to use a whole new unit that I haven't pulled apart and I'm going to
test for the chlorine gas just by putting some blue litmus paper across here. If the bubbles
are chlorine it should bleach the paper white now for comparison this is blue litmus paper that's
just been wet with water and this is the one that's been sitting in the bubbles and it's not
bleached at all which would indicate that either no chlorine is being produced or a very very small
amount. So why is that? Electrolysis of salt water is supposed to produce chlorine gas well I'll show
you if we add a heap of salt to the water I'm going to have to heat that up to dissolve it and
then cool it down and now if I add the Aquapure first of all you'll notice it's floating because
there's so much salt in there but if I you push it under water and use the blue litmus test again
holding it in the bubbles you can now see the paper is being bleached. You can actually see
the stripes of blue where the plastic grate was protecting it from the gases and I can smell the
chlorine gas it smells like a swimming pool. So when there is a concentrated salt solution you
get chlorine gas but when it's a very dilute salt solution because there's not much salt to react
with you tend to get mainly oxygen gas forming at the anode and just a little bit of chlorine. Their
instructions only say to add a pinch of salt which is only going to make a dilute salt solution. The
other possibility is that any oxygen and chlorine being produced could be reacting with the metal of
the anode which would result in an orangey tinge to the water but their website says that they've
done studies which shows that it removes 99% of E coli and 87% of salmonella. You don't want any
salmonella in your food at all so do not use this for meat or anything like that just cook your meat
really well anyway moving on. I did ask them for a copy of their studies and they said they would not
send their official documents they did however answer a couple of my questions about how much
water they used how many cycles all of that sort of stuff and they used four litres of water, one
teaspoon of salt and ran it for two cycles which I thought was interesting because the directions
that came with my machine said one cycle and just a pinch of salt. So why are the studies
that they're doing using different methods to the directions that are sent out to the customer? Well
I'm not sure but what I can do is run some of my own tests. I have a carrot here let's cut it
into pieces now for the first one I'm going to add a whole teaspoon of salt to the water like
they did but I'm going to run the aquapure just once because that's what the direction said and
then use a sterile swab to wipe along the carrot 15 times and then run that across an agar plate.
For the next one let's try a pinch of salt and one cycle just like the directions said. Bacteria are
so small that we can't see them with our eyes but by putting them onto nutrient agar like this it's
giving them the ideal environment to multiply and form a colony and colonies once they get
big enough we are able to see. For the next bit of carrot I'm going to run the aquapure once with
no salt at all because I will send an email after I'd purchased that said I could watch a video that
showed how to use it and in that video it didn't use any salt at all so let's see what the results
we get with that. And now in this bowl I'm going to add a teaspoon of salt and I'm not going to
use the aquapure at all I'm just going to leave it for five minutes which is the length of one cycle.
And for the last one I'm going to clean it under running water for five seconds ... four and five.
Then you leave all of those for a couple of days to let those colonies grow and these are the
results ... this one is the one that was left to soak in the bowl of salty water for five minutes
without the aquapure running and you can see we have quite a few colonies of bacteria growing
there which is what you'd expect that's why we need to wash our fruits and vegetables. Now this
one was the aqua pure run with no salt at all and it's not effective without salt it's not going to
do what it's promoting itself to do. This one is the aqua pure with just a pinch of salt which is
a very dilute salt solution and this one is the aquapure run with a teaspoon of salt so as you
can see it needs the teaspoon of salt for it to be effective. And just in case you're wondering
here is the one that I washed under the tap I'll let you decide which method you want to use.
This next Gadget is one that I chose it's a a candy playpen we uh got this strange device
this strange pen and we got one little packet of these uh these candies and then we went and bought
another bunch of them as well what we've done is we've put a couple of pieces of the candy in
there inside the pen we've plugged it in it's been heating up. I can tell this because it's
quite hot and uh the little lighter too blue. Ooh something is sizzling something there's a
noise but nothing's coming out this little thing here is moving we'll just wait ...
All right the little sound it was making has stopped but is it still working? Uh. Do we
have power? It's turned it off. Turned itself off we're now waiting for it to turn blue again ...
Who is this for though because little kids couldn't use it because it's too hot. I think
little kids could use it ... what's going on? It's out of candy that was two candy sticks already.
Yeah because it's going back up inside. Really? It's a little slower than I'd
hoped for. Oh do have to wait all over again? Wow that's really slow.
Put the next one in and keep going that would be fine but not if you have to wait. Alright,
here we go we're on ... the monobrow there just needs a bit of a bit of work.
Ready let's go ... it just turned itself off again 😖
Frustrated much not happy. That's the third time it's done that it's just taken ages to turn blue
and then it's turned blue and turned itself off. So the concept I like clever for the concept not
quite there on design yet that could just be the one that we have yeah but certainly that's
frustratingly slow and then turns off. I ended up taking the candy pin apart and soaking the
nib in water for several hours to unblock it and finally got it working but even when it does work
I seemed to spend more time waiting around than I could actually draw with it. This is as much as I
could draw in one go before it needed reloading again. One positive though is that the candy is
sugar-free so the decorations are fairly stable. If this was made out of sugar it would absorb
moisture from the air and would be so much more fragile. Our next gadget is a Baggy Opener! That's
what it says. Let's open the baggy opener. What is a baggy opener? Well you go like this
and then you get a baggie you put that down there ... does it vaccuum on? I think so or maybe not.
And then you put your baggie in there and there look at ... it holds it open for you. Wait before
you test it let me show you my baggie opener. I like to fold down the top of the bag so that
the top stays all clean. Put it over like that. Oh wow. all right ready yeah two three go ...
Does the can fit? It does. Tremendous baggy opener.
Oh I've dropped some peaches. Oh I think we've got a win. Okay now you've got to seal it though. Oh
well that's easy. I think it's a bit over full for sealing. Not for me, not with that baggie
opener. Now available! Mine is definitely over full and I'm not going to be able to get them
out I think yours is a win in this situation. I think it is. Boom! look at that. I'm gonna have
to give that one a clever, normally I would just use this but I wouldn't overfill it.
You seem a little reluctant with that clever. Yeah 🤔
Next we have not really a gadget it's a 3D cake tin that I picked up from the
second hand store. This is a Wilton one and it says that it's from 1984. So a long time ago,
um and do you remember how I feel about 3D cake tins uh ambivalent. I don't think that 3D cake
tins are good for cake but I do think they're good for something else which is ... chocolate.
Chocolate that's right so I've already filled this one with chocolate and I want to see how
well it has worked. At the chocolate places they have a machine that turns it consistently like
this so that it gets an even spread all over the whole thing. I'm that machine myself for
this one and I got a bit bored of turning it so I just put it in the fridge so it's probably
a bit heavy on one side but I'm hoping that it's covered everywhere there's only one way
to find out ... here we go that sounded like a crack. Well sounded satisfyingly
cracking. Yeah but it sounds like I might have just broken the bunny. Surely not,
nothing breaks it bunny 🐰 Oh it does have a crack, look.
Oh it does we can do surgery
Definitely a broken bunny.
Oh that's a pity. Nearly.
It's nearly a bunny. Can you fix it?
You could but everyone is going to be able to tell that you broke the bunny.
And look how much chocolate is at the bottom. That is a heavy set bunny. You can tell the issue was
that I got bored of standing there turning it so what's happened is we've got really thin chocolate
here. So yes you could use this for a 3D mold but you're actually going to need to stand there and
turn it. Now you might remember this gadget from the last clever one yes I do it's a cheese curler
and it's supposed to be used with Tete Des Moine is that you say it cheese sure which we couldn't
get hold of and normal cheese doesn't work with it and then I'd heard you could use it with chocolate
couldn't get chocolate to work with it and then one of our subscribers emailed me and said you can
buy specific chocolate that is made to use with this machine. Cool. So that is what I have done.
That is an interesting piece of chocolate. Now we want to see if it works. Let's go a reprise.
Oh yeah that's looking good much better well done look at that
that's much better thank you for the tip. It's very very soft like as soon as it touches your
hands it's melting so there's obviously some other fat in it other than cocoa butter that's
got a lower melting point. Shall I try it? I think you're the chocolate fan let us know.
It almost tastes hazelnutty, what's in it? I'm gonna have to translate that because so you know
what's in it. Well that was a bit of fun ... so if you have any gadgets that you'd like us to review
let us know in the comments below and we will do it for you. And with thanks to my patrons for your
wonderful support here is a list of absolute legends make it a great week by being kind to
others and we'll see you on Friday. Bye. That can just go in the bin. Yeah that is a strange idea 😵