cooking

Forget the sixth sense, here comes the stick sense

The human nose is a very sophisticated device. It has the power to do many things, including connecting us to a special memory through the aroma of baking bread, showing us where the nearest coffee shop is located, and from an evolutionary standpoint, protecting us from eating meat that has spent a little too much time in the fridge.

The SensorfreshQ meat and poultry tester is a handheld, battery-operated wand that tells you whether or not that uncooked piece of meat or poultry is still OK for you to put into your mouth. Perfect timing, since summer is when grilling … Read more

Remove the stress from Thanksgiving, the Aga way

With technology advancing faster than one can keep up, sometimes it's good to hold on to the past. Believe me, I'm all for a refrigerator that can give me financial advice or a microwave that can regrow my hair, but sometimes you just want to keep things simple and cook a good meal.

Aga's cast iron Four Oven Cooker will do just that while at the same time keeping your kitchen aesthetically pleasing. Like the name says, it features four radiant heat ovens allowing you to speed up the cooking process and spend more time enjoying your … Read more

Best way to grill a steak without leaving your house

Now that we've reached the midst of the barbecue season, it's time to stoke the coals, find your favorite apron, and if you're like me, go inside because you can't stop sneezing on the steaks. Thanks to hay fever, I end up throwing away more steaks than I eat because nobody likes the salty flavor of mucus as they bite into their filet. Hamilton Beach understands, and the company is here to help with 500 degrees of goodness.

Hamilton Beach showed off the latest way to grill steaks in the comfort of your home at the … Read more

Top chef for tots

Although it isn't technically an appliance or a kitchen gadget, I felt that it was incumbent upon me to sound off about the MagiCook Kitchen by Little Tikes, a toy set that comes with several food look-a-likes that are embedded with RFID tags.

Radio-frequency identification is a way for an electronic receiver to identify items with radio waves. This means that the toy can sense when Junior pops something into the oven, and will respond with phrases in up to three languages that are appropriate to the meal of the moment.

Why is this kind of thing important? Well, … Read more

Take to the seas, it's BBQ time

When summer rolls around, it's time to gas up the boat, blow up the inner tubes, and head for the lake. In the old days if you wanted to combine your nautical adventures with your culinary ones, you were forced to lug your hibachi onto your boat and hope that you didn't hit a rough wake sending burning coals everywhere. Weekend warriors around the world longed for someone to step up to the plate and combine their two loves: boats and cooking raw meat.

Someone has finally come through for all of us and invented the BBQ Donut, … Read more

Where Wilson Tang is the new American Idol

Now that Wilson is the new American Idol (not to mention the perpetual Chinese Idol), he can't stop talking about his celebrity chumleys. Today, we discuss his American counterpart David Cook, everyone's beloved Dick Gaywood, Jessica Alba-Tang, Arnold Shawarazanegarradudebro, Saving Paris's Privates, Grandpa Ford, and more dregs of society. EPISODE 105 Download today's podcast

Who needs matching appliances when your counter is the appliance?

Let me paint a picture for you: you're in the mood for a burger and some French fries. The health nut in you insists that you include some steamed broccoli too. So you squat on your kitchen floor and set to the task of rooting through your bottom cabinet in search of the antiquated hand-me-down appliances that you're going to need to make your perfect meal happen.

First, you grab the fryer. Granted, it may have remnants of last year's deep-fried Thanksgiving turkey experiment and the residual oil slick on the outer edges may make it a … Read more

Kohler discontinues its food-cooking sink

The age of the dual-use appliances is upon us with toasters that make your morning tea, microwaves that bake chocolate chip cookies and dryers that iron your shirts. And then there was the sink that cooked.

It sounded odd and slightly unhygienic at first--the idea of cooking potatoes at your sink; boiling side dishes within coughing distance of all the nasty stuff you do at the adjacent sink, like dump old yogurt, strain your pickles or, say, pour out some fermenting chick pea juice.

Nonetheless, Kohler had come up with something that might just make the cook sink risk worth … Read more

Bringing Google into the kitchen

I was lost somewhere in the labyrinthine corridors of a sprawling Whole Foods supermarket, looking for foods I'd never known existed--Tamarind paste? Daikon sprouts? Pomegranate molasses? It was a humbling reminder that you can't Google everything.

Let me explain: I recently procured a copy of Food 2.0: Secrets From the Chef Who Fed Google, a compendium of food tips and recipes from Charlie Ayers, the ex-Grateful Dead caterer who was hired by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1999. And I was eager to put it to the test. Google has made it easier for … Read more