Want to impress at a dinner party? This is worth a look

This hand-held kitchen gadget infuses food and drink with smoke.

Breville’s Smoking Gun Pro.

COOL NAME! WHAT IS IT? A hand-held kitchen gadget for infusing food and drink with smoke.

WHY? Because “where there’s smoke, there’s flavour”, the people at Breville say. (They obviously never tried my great aunt Marjory’s cooking; that woman could burn soup.) It’s designed for chefs, but it’ll appeal to adventurous home cooks too.

HOW DOES IT WORK? You load the burn chamber with a few wood chips, press a button to turn on the fan (it runs on four AA batteries), and light the wood chips – then use the flexible hose to direct the smoke where you want it.

WHAT SORT OF WOOD CHIPS? Breville sells tins of apple wood, cherry, hickory and mesquite, but you can also go off-piste, using tea leaves, spices or “dried herbs”, they say.

THE SMOKING BONG PRO! Now don’t get any of those ideas. But if you want to impress at a dinner party, or add a flourish to cocktails, it’s worth a look. Breville even sells a glass cloche as an accessory and now we’re really going overboard.

$250, available online