Kevin Ashton writes for newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic.

His food blog wannabetvchef.blog.co.uk gets over 500,000 visitors a year and currently has over 45,000 followers.

For over 35 years he’s cooked around the world for VIP’s including the Queen, American Presidents, movie, TV stars and sporting heroes.

Kevin has also judged for UK's The Guild of Food Writers and for international culinary competitions. He also enjoys performing cooking demonstrations, including the International Food & Wine Festival, Washington D.C & the BBC Good Food Show.

If you're a chef planning, or refurbishing your kitchen, you should think about adding an instant boiling water unit to your kitchen plan.

Whether your kitchen is in a pub or a fine dining restaurant, getting the right mix of equipment and work space is a balancing act, particularly when most modern kitchens tend to be on the small side.

When the rough kitchen plan is drawn up you need to ask yourself how critical each piece of equipment is, and does it have multiple uses?

Working out your equipment mix, you need to take many factors into account like the type of menu you're planning, skill level of your staff, work flow and time management.

Instant boiling water units are often found in serveries or in the still rooms of traditional hotels to make hot beverages such as tea, coffee or hot chocolate but not so frequently inside the kitchen itself.

A decent chef wouldn't dream of putting a steak into a cold pan, but often out of habit heat their water for cooking on the stove top in saucepans. Of course, some cooking processes need to start with cold water but lots don't. Watching for that proverbial pot to boil can waste a lot of time and electricity/gas. Whether you're blanching vegetables, cooking rice, pasta or even filling a Bain Marie.... instant boiling water is a big time saver. Or perhaps you want to melt chocolate over hot water, aerate egg yolks for hollandaise sauce, make chocolate mousse or even make couscous on the fly, having boiling water on tap will save you significant amounts of time.

Once the dinner service is done, the kitchen still needs cleaning and nothing cuts through dirt and grease better than hot water, it even helps to reduce the amount of soap and chemicals that are needed which in turn is good for the environment. Whether you have a tiled floor, Altro flooring or a high tech rubber compound surface (complete with glass beads to make them non-slip), a modern professional kitchen floor needs mopping several times a day and boiling water really helps to lift the dirt and grime. Floors also dry more quickly which is safer for all of the staff.