Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets

Refrigerators have always been the hub of the kitchen. Considering that is where all the food lives, it only makes sense. However, there is another aspect of the big appliance that draws constant attention, and that would be the refrigerator door. Sure, the door is where all the fun easy-access items such as condiments reside, but there is another side to the story: the outside.

As a wide-open plain, the outside of the refrigerator door is a perfect area for personalization. Long the center for communication, refrigerators have more recently upped the ante by including Wi-Fi-enabled touch screens (such as … Read more

Football season is upon us. That means months of football food lie ahead. As fall is ushered in by the kicking of an oblong ball, millions of cheering fans will be applauding the spread. No, not that kind of spread, the food spread. But no matter if the gathering is in the parking lot of the stadium or at a football party down the street, there needs to be a way to get the goods to the game.

A winning recipe for five-alarm chili just isn't worth it if it can't be shared among friends (or unleashed upon … Read more

Salad dressing, being the condiment that changes a bunch of lettuce and vegetables into an actual salad, has a pretty high importance in salad hierarchy. Of course, this is not surprising to anyone who has ever become lost in the condiment aisle at the supermarket. However, for all those bottles that line the shelves, all too often that massive selection does not lead to the one you want. Luckily, it is easy to make your own.

The Zing Anything Salad Zinger ($23.95) is a simple-to-use salad contraption that may end up rivaling the salad spinner for salad importance. Intuitive … Read more

The Breville BRC600XL Risotto Plus Rice and Risotto Maker is an automatic rice maker that does more than just make rice. An elegant interface offers user easy operation via a set of no-nonsense buttons. The dedicated cooking functions include settings for: risotto, saute, steam, and slow cook as well as the ever-popular automatic rice-making mode.

The multi-cooker is designed for easy automatic operation, but with the inclusion of so many cooking modes, versatility on the countertop is a big feature. The saute function not only provides an easy way to build flavor by browning ingredients before fully cooking, but it … Read more

Baking can be a furious endeavor. Throw a cook into a fully stocked kitchen with a set of measuring tools and anything can happen. That doesn't mean everything has to happen, though. Any chef could live without the spills and the messes that inevitably occur from trying to use something that was designed for another purpose. Worse yet is when a commonly used item gets in the way.

Baking scales, like any other piece of kitchen equipment, are only as useful as far as they can be used. Sounds simple enough, but all too often utility is lost due … Read more

Learning how to cook can be a frustrating experience. This should not be the case. Aside from an occasional overcooked steak, the process should be an enjoyable one. And considering that one gets to eat the results of one's labor, the aftermath isn't too bad either. (Unless that steak is really overdone.) Understanding that learning how to cook can be thought of as a game, a research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has created a cooking simulator designed to give novice cooks instantaneous feedback.

As a novel approach to culinary education, the system is composed of … Read more

Space is always a concern in the kitchen; it can also be an issue in the great outdoors. While that might not make much sense at first considering that the great outdoors is both great and outdoors, people who enjoy their time in nature tend not to want to get bogged down with stuff. But getting away from it all doesn't have to mean getting away from everything.

No matter if hiking or camping, everybody has to stop sometime to eat. And that means, cutting, slicing, and dicing. For those looking to trek beyond gorp, the Snow Peak Set M Chopping Board … Read more

The Electrolux Design Lab is a yearly competition that challenges design students across the globe. This year's competition asked students to create home appliances that would "provide a fuller sensory experience." Perhaps one day, some of these entries will be used in the home kitchen. Below are a few highlights:

Ingresure (seen above) is by Jongwoo Choi. It is a gadget designed to be a taste tester. Instead of chef's tasting their own creation, they would use the device to taste it for them. The idea is that the Ingresure would give amateur chefs the assurance … Read more

A toaster oven is one of those devices in the kitchen that are seemingly useful for everything. In fact, it gets pressed into service so often that we can practically use them blindfolded. (Do not use your kitchen appliances blindfolded.) It may be easy to forget how versatile a toaster oven can be, so that means a cheat sheet can help.

With icons to guide users through common tasks, the Panasonic NB-G110P Flash Xpress Toaster Oven ($127) makes the countertop appliance even easier to use. The preset functions are divided into two intuitive sections, one labeled "bread" and … Read more