Your 5 favourite kitchen gadgets

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

#3 food cover for microwave oven

Something so simple yet so useful!

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

In no partcular order:

1. Note pads with magnets on back to hang on the fridge and jot things down. I sometimes forget what I was thinking between the sink and the fridge.

2. Crock pot. The gods could cook up ambrosia in one of these. And they are perfect in an RV when you go camping. I use mine at least once a week, often more frequently.

3. Plastic or plastic-coated wire whisk. To heck with protecting the Teflon, because the important thing about this item is that it goes through the dishwasher without rusting.

4. Corning Ware white grill pan. Heavy ceramic, not the plastic microwave variety. I've been looking for one ever since the tornado blew away the one that we got as a wedding gift 22 years ago. You can put 4 Ballpark franks on there, put it in a nice hot oven, and roast them until they plump and split open. Corning has not made them in the past 22 years. So I am watching ebay to see if one comes along.

5. Bundt pans. Go to a Southern Baptist 5th Sunday Pot Luck, eat some of somebody's mom's monkey bread. Then you will understand.


For those of y'all not blessed enough to be a Southern Baptist, here's the recipe;

MONKEY BREAD

4-pack of cheap refrigerated tube biscuits
Cinnamon and sugar in a bowl
Butter

1. Butter a non-stick Bundt pan. Don't try this with anything that is not non-stick.
2. Cut the biscuits - all 4 cans - into 4 pieces each.
3. Roll the pieces in cinnamon sugar mixture, then put them loosely in the pan.
4. Pour a stick of melted butter over the whole thing.
5. Cook at 350 until it is brown.
6. Pull it apart with your fingers or tongs to serve.

DG, I absolutely love you, girl!! Yes, I have a nonstick bundt pan, especially for this recipe.

While we're on the subject: Does anyone know if those hard anodized pans are as easy to keep clean on the outside as they are supposed to be nonstick on the inside?

[beppe]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

One thing I like in our kitchen is our Joseph Joseph cutting board set. It sits tidy on the bench and each board happily fits in the dishwasher (a high priority for me ).

http://www.josephjoseph.com/plastic-.../index-advance

Cute. But nothing beats a thick, heavy wood cutting board. For me. Yet.

[DMB]

I have just remembered something cheap and simple, yet indispensable for me, and it's this.

Over the years I have bought and tried all sorts of gadgets for opening jars, but this is far and away the best and I buy them for my friends and family. All they do is increase the friction between your hand and the jar top (or bottle top). As I have got older my grip has got much worse, so I use these things a great deal more. They don't fail me.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by lestatar

Tempered glass cutting board:

Doesn't glass hurt your knives? I'd think glass was too slippery and too hard to work properly?

[Ea]

Originally Posted by beppe

Cute. But nothing beats a thick, heavy wood cutting board. For me. Yet.

No, it's hard to beat wood IMO. But I've been looking at the new bamboo boards for a while - like this or this. I like the idea that they are very light, yet hard and solid.

[beppe]

These are my wooden cutting boards. The dark one is made to fit the sink, which is handy. When the little one gets too impregnated by old stuff, like onion or parsley, I scrape it with the knife and eventually I change it. My cooking guru sometime resents my cooking style, too homey, as old flavors keep coming up

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Ea

No, it's hard to beat wood IMO. But I've been looking at the new bamboo boards for a while - like this or this. I like the idea that they are very light, yet hard and solid.

They look sexy, that's for sure. I wonder about the stuff they use to keep the pieces together. Also I have a tendency not to trust blindly any products coming from the Celestial Empire

[lestatar]

Originally Posted by Ea

Doesn't glass hurt your knives? I'd think glass was too slippery and too hard to work properly?

Nah. I also have a Global sharpening doohickey:



Works great on all my decent knives.

Yeah, wood might be better on my knives but I never liked wood chopping boards for some reason and I am not crushing the knives on the block anyway. I have an aversion I guess going back to childhood - my grandma had a typical Chinese round wood block chopping board and she always made me wash it.

I guess I feel like I can never really clean wood blocks properly to get all the stuff out 100%. What can I say?

[beppe]

Originally Posted by lestatar

Nah. I also have a Global sharpening doohickey:



Works great on all my decent knives.

Yeah, wood might be better on my knives but I never liked wood chopping boards for some reason and I am not crushing the knives on the block anyway. I have an aversion I guess going back to childhood - my grandma had a typical Chinese round wood block chopping board and she always made me wash it.

I guess I feel like I can never really clean wood blocks properly to get all the stuff out 100%. What can I say?

Clean clean, really clean cooking is something we all aim to. An ideal. Lost in the world of dreams. Unattainable.
To maintain the original pure flavor of the ingredients.
To carefully blend them in the recipe so that they all mix and dissolve in something new and unique.
I would remain to listen to my cooking guru saying these things in an adoring attitude, now and ever. And hoping for an encore of the culinary triumphs that my cooking guru provides me with patient benevolence.

The best steak I ever had, and I had many, was in a small greasy spoon, beside the road, in the middle of nowhere, on the road from Mexico City to Oaxaca.
Gorgeous, I mean the steak. Grilled or maybe fried, who knows. Tasty, imbibed with fragrance: to me by what were exotic flavors, I recognized chili, coriander, anis. Fantastic. Then I went behind the shack to have a look at the cook and present my compliments ...

[lestatar]

^ you know what? This is sooooo true. I too have been lucky enough to have incredibly delicious food in the most unlikely of places. Excellent point - in those cases, for sure, some "flavor mingling" has occurred, all for the better!

Don't wanna give the impression I am some kind of clean-freak/germophobe. On the contrary, I strongly believe in the natural power of the human immune system and strongly disagree with stuff like hand sanitizers and such which I feel reduce the efficacy of our natural defenses.

TBH, I think I like the glass type cutting boards 'cause they look so cool.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

While we're on the subject: Does anyone know if those hard anodized pans are as easy to keep clean on the outside as they are supposed to be nonstick on the inside?

I have hard anodized cookware. Yes, it is easy to keep clean. Still looks like new on the outside, except the bottoms definitely show use.

[phenomshel]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

I have hard anodized cookware. Yes, it is easy to keep clean. Still looks like new on the outside, except the bottoms definitely show use.

Thanks! I cannot keep the outsides of my skillets looking decent. With my Kitchenaid set, I found the only thing that worked was scrape them with a very thin bladed knife (which dulled the finish but got the burned on stuff off). But if you miss even one time, it burns on worse and just becomes impossible to get off. You see all these commercials for cookware, "Oh this is ten years old and looks like new..." I can see the appeal of cast iron skillets simply for that, LOL. They're not supposed to look pretty, inside OR out. However, I can't lift cast iron, so that's not an option.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

Something so simple yet so useful!

It was actually found at Ikea. Same place I bought my red round 99 cent mouse-pad.

[beppe]

The gadget I use more frequently in my MW is this 2.5 liters steam cooker. There is a special program that does everything by itself through the sensors of the smart MW. I put the stuff in, with just 100 ml of water (about half a cup) and I get everything done in no time. It is large enough to hold a pound of fresh spinach.
Easy to clean.
One of my preferred dinners is aioli. I steam the vegetables (cauliflowers or broccoli or Brussels sprouts, carrots and potatoes, usually, all together), I steam the fish (fresh cod or the like) and some big shrimps, while I make a fresh mayo with raw garlic with the stick blender, and I have a luscious and healthy dinner ready in less then 20 minutes. More time to play
Yes, they appreciate.