At this year’s Housewares show we ran into the company Bon Home. Considering the massive amount of random innovation we walked past, it was surprising that we stopped at a dish rack. The logic here is sound. Anyone who has china or simply anyone who cooks for a crowd has had the added hassle of washing and drying dishes between courses. Not to mention being overloaded with stacks of dirty plates by the end of the night. The promise of an auto-drying dish rack is that a quick wash and a press of a button and in 10-minutes you are reset and ready to go again.

If that’s not enough to pique interest, think about glassware. A bar-brush is the missing ingredient and you can easily serve in balloons, flutes, tulips, and not deal with the drying hassle, one of my least favorite jobs in the kitchen. I’d rather hüpfburg mit rutsche clean a dirty stove. After a few minutes they offered to send me one free of charge. I couldn’t say no.

I had a dinner for 12 two weeks ago with several courses and different wine glasses. It was a perfect test for this as a concept as well as a product. So how did the Bon Home Dish Rack work out?

I have a lovely china pattern that I won’t put in the dishwasher and my wife hates using it because of the hassle factor. So service went from appetizer plates to salad plates to dinner plates, back to salad plates and coffee cups and saucers. Mutliply each of those by 12 and by the end of the evening you’re looking at a kitchen filled with cooking aftermath as well as having nearly every piece of china you own being dirty.

This is a good argument for catering. Instead I quickly rinsed, and washed plates per course and set them to dry. Timing was a bit tough since it adds a step that I didn’t take before but considering I didn’t have to take the time to dry the plates it was doable. You could easily say why not just let them drip dry, but considering the courses you couldn’t re-use those plates and they would pile up since we’re dirtying them faster than they could air dry.

The machine is easy enough to use. Press a button and a heated breeze dries everything in 10 minutes and shuts off on its own. The first time I used it a cloud of smoke wafted up. It apparently is packing dust on the heating elements and cleared up immediately. Otherwise everything went smoothly and by the end of the night clean-up took far less time. I was left primarilly with glassware and while rinsing is still a hassle, the air drying certainly sped up the process. I did it in shifts. It was no longer a two person job. The added bonus is that glasses are significantly less spotty than letting them air dry over time… while they’re not spotless, it’s a nice plus.

The Bon Home unit takes up an outlet and a larger space than my previous rack but it’s worth it and even though counter space is at a premium, it’s earned it. You can get it for around $80 at Bed Bath and Beyond as well as other stores….

As mentioned earlier, Bon Home provided me with this unit free of charge. No promise was made to review it, only to try it out.

–Josh Brusin