Cooking

Conde Nast's Epicurious, the granddaddy of culinary Web sites, recently debuted a newly nipped-and-tucked design. The site's modular layout and increased emphasis on community have prompted more than one blogger to declare it "Epicurious 2.0." By making its content easier to find and adding more opportunity for members to interact, Epicurious has managed to stay one step ahead of other "old-media" sites, such as MyRecipes, Time Warner's recently launched foodie portal.

The new Epicurious home page includes more defined white space, larger images, and prominently placed links to community features, including a … Read more

Rouxbe provides both seasoned foodies and clueless cooks with top-notch, how-to recipe videos. Product reviews, chef profiles and other articles are coming soon.

Both the content and images in Rouxbe's ad-free videos are terrific. You can download them for an iPod or at HD-quality to a hard drive. You can rate, bookmark, and print each recipe. Click on an exotic tool or condiment, and Rouxbe explains it and provides the option to make a purchase on Amazon. Nice touches include letting you control the volume separately for narrative instruction and music. The videos aren't personality-driven, unlike so many … Read more

Between mad cows and agricultural imports from China, you don't have to be a germaphobe to be slightly paranoid about your food. And even though there are devices developed for such tasks as sensing bacteria in uncooked meat, we can't help but wonder how well these things work--and how much of a chance we're willing to take.

That's where the "CulinaryPrep" comes in, claiming not only to detect the bad stuff but also eradicate it from the food in question. Using something called the "Grovac Process," which the device's manufacturer says … Read more

A while back, my mom gave me a whole mess of little kitchen gadgets for my birthday. One of the first ones I tried out was this cheese gripper from Progressive, designed to protect your fingers while shredding cheese or chocolate.

The design is pretty simple. The blue body bends around a block of cheese, while the stainless steel ends act as protective guards for your fingertips while you shred the cheese against a grater. The added bonus is it keeps your hands clean, so it saves another trip to the sink when you're doing prep work. I had … Read more

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

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