Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

Mr. Whippy, the ice cream machine for sad miserable overeaters

Do you eat ice cream when you're sad? I sure do. When I saw that my nasty co-worker Tim Moynihan had pitted the Beer-Launching Fridge against Keepon the Dancing Robot in his artificial intelligence showdown, I got totally emo because I had no idea who to vote for. Then I bought myself a pint of Phish Food and ate it for breakfast with a side of Kleenex, sunny side down.

But technology is always making our lives easier, and here's a gadget that can help me figure out just how much self-pity eating I'll need to do … Read more

Tumble your way to tasty meat

Now even procrastinators can serve up tender, tasty meat as if they hadn't forgotten to start marinating until 10 minutes before their guests arrived.

I recently got to test out the Reveo MariVac from Eastman Outdoors, a funky kitchen appliance that looks suspiciously like a rock tumbler and that the company claims can cut down the time it takes to marinate meat to a fraction of the norm.

To use it, you just put raw meat and marinade into a compartment that tumbles it all together for up to 20 minutes. The idea behind the machine is that it vacuums out the air in the main barrel, stretching the fibers of the meat to allow the marinade to soak deeper into the meat in a shorter amount of time. All the while, the barrel turns, tumbling the meat and the marinade together in a messy bucket of flavor and goodness.

The company says the Reveo can do the equivalent of 4 hours of marination in 20 minutes, so I donned my lab coat and safety goggles and conducted a little experiment to see if the Reveo would hold up to these claims. As luck would have it, a co-worker was having a barbecue over the weekend, so I had plenty of potential judges who were more than happy to weigh in. … Read more

Bugatti roars into the toaster business

Forget about phones and MP3 players--the next designer gadget is the toaster. And leading the way to branded nirvana are, of all things, sportscar dynasties.

Porsche joined the fray with a brushed-aluminum model that looks good enough for the track, and now Bugatti has gotten into the act with an appliance of its own. True to its exacting nature, Bugatti has included "six browning-control options" for its "Volo" toaster, Gadgetizer says, with especially wide slots to accommodate different sizes of baked goods. But it's the red Italian flair that drew us to it, of course.… Read more

Robot cooks so you don't have to

To paraphrase the T-shirt: This was supposed to be the future. Where is my robot chef for days when I'm too tired to cook?

Turns out, the future is just around the corner. Liu Changfa, a retired professor in Beijing, has grabbed headlines with the prototype of his "food robot." The 5-foot-tall iron chef comprises a base that houses a computer, a gut that contains an induction cooker and a pot, and a chest that frames a screen. The chef also has a robotic arm to help with stirring as well as a C-3PO-esque mien that's … Read more

Popcorn popper does flips for you

Reuters has a story about a man who's apparently contracted a life-threatening lung disease that his doctor says may be linked to his massive consumption of microwave popcorn. He ate several bags of buttered microwave popcorn each day, according to the story. (The FDA is now launching an investigation to see if the additive diacetyl could be responsible for his illness and that of workers in plants where microwave popcorn is made.)

This news is not totally shocking to me. That's not to say anyone should expect to come down with lung disease because they ate food that'… Read more

The 5-ounce blue elephant in the room

The funnel is one of the unsung heroes of the kitchen. I use mine all the time for transferring liquids like soy sauce or cooking oil from large, bulk-size containers into smaller bottles that are more practical for regular use. It also comes in handy for dry goods, like for refilling the sugar bowl from a 5-pound bag or filling a pepper grinder from the giant container of peppercorns I have at home.

This elephantine funnel from Pylones dresses up the lowly kitchen tool. It's so cute I feel guilty hiding it away in the dregs of my Tupperware … Read more

Soap. Dunk. Blow.

With the piles of dish scrubbers on the market, finding the right one was a somewhat dirty operation. There were so many things to consider: regular or mini sized, mesh or sponge, soap squirter or standard, Walgreen's or OXO. And though I've been known to enjoy doing the dishes, my main goal was to find a scrubber that expedited the process. That is until I met the Bubble Scrubber.

Incorporated into this souped-up scrubber is a large bubble wand that sends a combination of Dawn and microbial remnants of last night's spaghetti into the air. It isn'… Read more

Trend watch: Individual desserts

Little did we know that the cupcake craze was actually a symptom of a much larger desire for individualized desserts. Sure, we've always had tartlets, creme brulee, and pudding. But lately we've noticed a couple of ideas for turning normally communal desserts into single-serving affairs.

For example, why bake a whole pie when you can bake individual slices in one of these pans? The 2/3-cup, wedge-shaped stoneware pan, which we first saw on Baking Bites, bakes a perfectly sized slice of pie (or other pastry) so you don't have to worry about the crust falling apart … Read more

Beating the back-to-school lunchtime blues

Now that kids around the country are heading back to school, parents have plenty of things on their minds. Thankfully, there are loads of clever products that can make it easier to get healthy, fun lunches out the door--and actually consumed. We put together a list of a few that might make lunches easier to plan for.

A poll of the parents in our newsroom is pretty much unanimous. The apple slicer was sent straight from heaven. It turns apples from loathesome fruit to scrumptious little snackers in one swift motion. This one from Leifheit goes for $14.95 on … Read more