Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

If you've ever slaved away at the grill all afternoon, only to find your guests have snatched up all the juiciest steaks on the platter before you could get to them, read on. With personalized branding irons, you can brand that sucker and claim it as your own.

Texas Irons has a whole slew of branding irons that allow you to make your mark on the meat (or veggie burgers) you grill. Sear your initials into your food with any of the custom monogramming options, show your Texan pride with a Texas longhorn, bless the meal with an ichthys, … Read more

American families cook at home surprisingly often, but they cut corners by using packaged foods, pre-made sauces and food "kits" (Think Hamburger Helper or Pasta Roni), according to a study released this week. Despite warnings of the United States becoming a country of families that rely on fast-food chains for sustenance, an archaeology study of 32 two-income, working families in Los Angeles showed 70 percent of weeknight dinners were home-cooked.

For the study, UCLA's Margaret Beck watched videotapes of families and recorded how much time they spent preparing the meals they ate at home. For a meal … Read more

It's a fact: cool people like the crust of the brownies (the part you find around the edge of the baking pan). One can think of these as the patriots of brownies: just enough hard cookie edge before they meld into warm gooey goodness. But in a conventional pan, unless you can secure a corner piece you're often left with one of those 'socialist' pieces. The Baker's Edge solves this dilemma with its innovative 'no corner piece left behind' design.

The unique pan equals one rectangular 9x13 or two 9 inch round pans, and will get your … Read more

I'll never forget the summer my best friend received a FryDaddy home deep fryer as a birthday gift. For several months, accepting an invitation to dinner at her house required a willingness to shave a few days off your life span, courtesy of the platefuls of deep-fried fill-in-the-blank that she offered up to guests.

If only she'd received an Actifry, the latest appliance from European kitchen goods maker Tefal (in the U.S., T-Fal), which the company claims will make fried foods a little bit healthier by removing most of the cooking fat. With one tablespoon of oil … Read more

If you like King Cobra 40s but hate the excess dew you get on your hand from giant bottles of beer, then the 40cozy might be for you. Made out of neoprene, it hugs your beer in a range of styles including camouflage and a pattern of beers and crowns.

The company will even make custom designs for bulk orders (holiday bonus anyone?). 40cozy is also doing its part to be green as it reduces the need for those pesky brown paper bags. It even make cozies for tall boys! So if you are drinking 40s out of style rather … Read more

In the last decade or so, technology has nestled its way into every room in the American household. We have iPods in our showers, wireless networks for our speakers and houseplants that tell us when they need watering.

Here at CNET, that means we've had to broaden our horizons quite a bit from the early days, or run the risk of not getting the full picture of how technology has shaped our lives. And so it is with much excitement and very little ceremony that I kick off the newest addition to our blog family, the Kitchen Gadgets blog.… Read more

Im cooked, a relatively new video-sharing site focused on cooking, is catching the attention of tons of food blogs today thanks to this video of oddball actor Christopher Walken demonstrating his recipe and technique for roast chicken with pears. Being suckers for such viral marketing, we decided to take a look around the site, which, aside from its foodie slant, is an otherwise straightforward video-sharing community: members can upload and watch videos; join groups focused on specific techniques, cuisines, or ingredients; and create lists of friends and favorites.

Why not just post these vids to YouTube? Well, some people have. … Read more

What is it about outdoor music systems that makes manufacturers insist on designing them to look like ice buckets? Are they supposed to look like coolers or ice cream makers to blend in with the poolside decor?

Whatever. SkyMall, everyone's favorite catalog at 30,000 feet, is the latest to offer one of these picnic wannabes with its "Boombucket iPod Music System." Like others of its ilk, the $150 bucket claims to be "weather-resistant" and can play an iPod up to 8 hours per battery charge, though we wouldn't recommend dunking it for laughs.… Read more