Entries tagged with 'appliances'
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If you've eaten at a fancy restaurant in the last five years, chances are, at least part of your food was cooked sous-vide (French for "under vacuum"). It was only a matter of time before a home version of the $1,000-plus thermal water circulators required for controlling the water baths would hit the market. And who better to shill for the new toy but molecular-gastro-uber-chef Heston Blumenthal?
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Wired blogged about this mini deep-fryer last week, and at first I was quite taken with it. Who wouldn't want a small, easy-to-store deep-fryer that uses only a quart of oil rather than a gallon or more? But then I remembered the deep-fryer episode of Good Eats, in which I seem to recall Alton Brown talking about heat recovery—that you need a good amount of oil so that the food, when dunked, doesn't lower the oil temp so far that your goodies don't fry properly. Then again, if you're only making a single serving of fries or one chicken wing at a time, I suppose this thing might work. Still, if cooking for one is sometimes lonely, deep-frying for one...
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In England, Heinz has unveiled the world's smallest microwave—and it plugs into a USB port so you can nuke some grub at the desk or on the go. Called the Beanzawave, it's obviously a ploy to increase brand awareness for Heinz baked beans, but you could also warm some coffee, tea, or maybe a meatball or two. Don't get your wallet out yet, though. The 7.4-by-6.2-by-5.9-inch device is still in prototype stage, and who knows if it'll ever see the inside of stores. Apart from its size, the key breakthrough is the use of a combination of mobile phone radio frequencies to create the heat to cook both on the outside and within in under a minute...."It is possible...
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As winter, with its gray skies, whipping winds, and white Christmases rolls in, all I want at the end of the day (or in the morning when I first wake up, or right now, in the office) is a magically warming and charming and energizing cup of hot chocolate. But it seems like the only way to make one without much effort is to rip open a paper packet of powder. Even Starbucks starts with syrup. But I don't want hot cocoa. I don't want hot chocolate milk. I want hot C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-E. Dynamic duo Williams-Sonoma and Bialetti (of espresso pot fame) have co-released the Hot Chocolate Pot. Plug it in, pour in some milk, and add fresh chopped chocolate—or...
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amazon.com I loved Julia Moskin's story in yesterday's New York Times about "rice cooker cooking," but c'mon, Julia—after you tell us that older rice cooker models are easier to cook in because their controls are easier to override, shouldn't you have told us which rice cooker we should buy? Serious eaters want to know. Can anybody help me out here? Related Rice Cooker FAQ Rice Cooker Cooking: More Than Just Rice...
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Sure, I live in coffee country, but as soon as I saw Adagio Teas TriniTEA—something of a cross between a coffee machine and Big Mac—I had to try it. For $100, the electronic tea kettle can make up to four cups with the ability to brew at two temperatures (212°F for black and herbal tea, 185°F for everything else) and steep between two to eight minutes. How Does It Work? Just put loose tea leaves in the steeping chamber and add water to the first of three chambers. After turning on the machine, water will reach the proper temperature, then it beeps and dispenses water into the steeping chamber. When it's done steeping, the machine beeps again and allows the...
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A waffle iron as seen through the lens of Brittny Badger, whose photos of artfully deconstructed devices feature other iconic kitchen items like a toaster or this ex-juicer....
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Does anyone need a toaster with an automatic bread slice descending mechanism and an opening with its own retractable cover? Probably not. But hey, people don't need widescreen flat panel TVs either. And I do have one of those, even though this toaster would probably be more useful. Watch this guy's incredibly cool toaster in action, after the jump....
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So, here we are in the thick of the winter doldrums: insipid, over-priced, globe-trotting produce lining every grocer’s shelves, and colds spreading like the giggles in a high-school sex ed class. Fortunately for us, there’s citrus, which is, for the most part, at its peak this time of year, and at the ready to inject a little zest into our meals and a little vitamin C into our phlegmatic corpora. While I enjoy a half grapefruit with breakfast here and there and perhaps a few Meyer lemon chunks added to an occasional pasta dish, I tend to consume my citrus in juice form. To that end, my Artimetal juicer is indispensable. Working with a simple lever mechanism, I find it...
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Thinking of buying a fancy rice cooker but don't know which kind to get? Over at Just Hungry Maki Itoh posted a great FAQ about rice cookers regarding size, features, and price....
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