appliances

Vegetables that look good enough to eat

Are those cooked carrots as bright as they could be? And if you're going to eat your vegetables, don't you want full vitamin credit? The Gaggenau combination steam and convection oven helps you set a beautiful table with food that's full of health benefits.

The steam generator is connected directly to a removable water tank that doesn't require any plumbing or drainage lines, so you won't need to call your contractor for a pricey installation. The tank uses just one-third of a gallon to supply enough water to fill the oven with 100 percent humidity … Read more

Smeg and Marc Newson bring color back to the kitchen

In the '70s it was hip to decorate your kitchen in colors that would otherwise blind a normal human being. You couldn't go into a kitchen that didn't have chartreuse, guacamole, or squash yellow ovens and refrigerators. In today's sleek modern world, we've leaned more toward the stainless steel brushed look that makes our kitchens seem cold and lifeless. Designer Marc Newson wants that to change.

At the recent EuroCucina kitchen appliance and design show in Milan, Smeg debuted its new line of high-end ovens and cooktops designed by minimalist designer Marc Newson. Known for his … Read more

Buttered toast and Earl Grey tea, together in perfect harmony

America seems to run on Starbucks. If the world's supply of coffee beans were destroyed, we would be faced by listless zombies struggling to pull themselves out of bed everyday. However, if you're part of the population that doesn't need their daily jolt of caffeine, the latest product from Breville might catch your eye.

In what would seem like something out of sheer science fiction to the tea-drinking community, Breville has combined an electronic tea kettle with an electronically controlled toaster to create a mutant of the breakfast world. With sheer convenience in mind, it features 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

The cool factor of refrigerator drawers

Have you ever looked at your file cabinet and thought that space was just wasted? After all, it could be holding cold sodas and sushi, thanks to Marvel Industries' refrigerator drawers. Keep the fridge under wraps with overlay doors or go for the sleek stainless steel look or various color choices. An extra deep lower drawer lets you store 2-liter soda bottles and opened bottles of wine. It comes in several widths, so you can find something to fit any room in the house.

But why limit yourself? The Outdoor series lets you toss out cold beers to go alongside … Read more

At last, a place to store your chardonnay and your hot dogs

When planning a dinner party, the most important part is deciding what to do with the leftovers. While it would seem sensible to just throw them out or give them to the dog, Siemens wants you to enjoy them just as much as the first bite. Its latest line of avant-garde refrigerators and freezers will do just that. The refrigerator features the Quickcool and Quickfreeze technology that, with the push of a button, temporarily maximizes cooling to stabilize the temperature and keep those hot pans from spoiling anything that happens to be close by.

While it's great that it … Read more

Finally, a cool kitchen computer (concept)

Forget space, it seems as if the kitchen is the final frontier for computing. Companies have tried for years to create a computer that offers the right mix of design, functionality, and price so that people feel comfortable incorporating it into the household hub. (See also 3Com's Audrey, or even our recent post on Pandigital's kitchen TV.) As our Webware colleagues tend to roll their eyes at "yet another social network," so we kitchen geeks often scoff at yet another kitchen computer.

But even a jaded geek like me has to admit: the Kitchen Sync concept … Read more

Stink-free compost right in the kitchen

The quest to make kitchens around the country more eco-friendly just got a little easier. NatureMill, a San Francisco-based company founded by an MIT grad in 2004, is adding to its lineup of indoor automatic composters.

NatureMill's composters speed up the process of composting by heating, mixing, and aerating the waste that gets put into it. After two weeks, fresh food waste can be turned into nutrient-rich fertilizer for the garden, according to the company. They're small enough to fit into a regular kitchen cabinet (20 inches long by 12 inches wide by 20 inches high), and to … Read more

A secret to drying clothes? Liquid

Clothes dryers are the second biggest hog of household energy, according to the Department of Energy. Most are so similar in terms of power hunger that the Energy Star label of efficient appliances doesn't even mark dryers.

By this fall, however, consumers could enjoy faster, greener, and safer clothes dryers that draw half the power of conventional models, according to Hydromatic Technologies Corporation.

Its Dryer Miser technology would dry garments 41 percent more quickly without shrinking as much or stinking them up with the odor of burnt lint, said Michael Brown, the inventor and company president.

He plans to … Read more

Do androids dream of electric toasters?

Sometimes watching sci-fi shows can be depressing. On the one hand, the imagination blossoms with all the possibilities the future holds. On the other hand, everything you see? You can't have it. Because you know what? You don't live in the future. Sorry. No gagh for you.

So it's with mixed feelings that I point you, dear readers, over to io9, who has put together a list of the best sci-fi kitchen gadgets. The list of neat things you can't have includes such wonders as the knife that toasts your bread while it cuts, and the … Read more