It’s half six. You’re hungry. The fridge has a block of cheese, some shredded chicken left over from Sunday, half a tin of beans and not much else worth mentioning. On paper, that’s not a meal. But it can be. We just need the right kit.
We’re talking about a quesadilla press. It’s small, it does one job well, and when you’re not using it, it stands up on its edge instead of eating a whole cupboard shelf. For a kitchen where every inch of worktop is already spoken for, that matters more than you’d think.
The gadget: a press that stores on its edge
The Black & Decker QM1088 Quesadilla Maker has two 8 inch nonstick plates that press and seal six deep filled pockets at once, so you can do a whole meal in one go rather than one sad quesadilla at a time. It cooks from both sides, so there’s no flipping, and the maker says you don’t need oil or butter to stop things sticking. There’s a removable drip tray for anything that escapes, slip resistant feet, and lights that tell you when it’s on and when it’s up to heat.
The bit that earns it a place here is the storage. Stood on its edge in a cupboard or on a shelf, it takes up roughly the same footprint as a large chopping board. But it’s your dinner time hero.
Good to know: It makes six pockets per batch rather than one giant quesadilla, so it suits built up fillings more than a thin, crispy, restaurant style wrap. And it’s a simple on or off appliance. There’s no temperature dial, so you’re working with one heat setting, which is typical for this kind of press.
Three meals that take about five minutes each
Once the press is hot, assembling a meal is the easy part. Here are three that work with things most small kitchens already have sitting about.
Leftover roast chicken, cheese and a spoon of barbecue sauce. Shred whatever chicken is left in the fridge, scatter it with grated cheddar and a spoon of barbecue or brown sauce between two tortillas, and press. Done before the chip pan would even be hot.
Tinned beans, cheese and a pinch of chilli flakes. Drain a tin of beans, mash them roughly with a fork so they don’t roll out the sides, add cheese and chilli flakes, and press. It’s store cupboard cooking at its most honest, and it tastes a lot better than the ingredient list suggests.
Ham, cheese and whatever fruit needs using up. Chopped ham, a slice of cheese and thin apple or pineapple works better than it sounds. Sweet and salty, warm and crisp, and it uses up the fruit that was about to go soft at the bottom of the bowl.
Why it earns a spot
No hob needed, no pan to scrub after, and only the plates and the drip tray to wipe down. If your kitchen is the kind where one extra saucepan on the drying rack causes a small crisis, that’s a proper win. And because it stands up rather than lying flat, it can live in a gap beside the bread bin instead of taking over a whole shelf.
The pictures in this post are illustrations of what this type of gadget generally looks like, not photos of the exact product, so the real thing will look a little different on your worktop.
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