I love popovers and used to make them in muffin tins until I found these at a garage sale.
This week, I’m starting with Cooking Tools, Strange and Wonderful!
(Johnny, did you ever track down that rice cooker that you want?)
If you would like to be on or off of this weekly cooking thread, please send a private message.
-JT
Remember when the bread machines were the rage?
I recently bought a microwave bacon rack for a few dollars at Wally World. The bacon hangs on arms and can cook 6 slices at one time. I was frustrated because my oven doesn’t cook evenly and my bacon wasn’t turning out well so I gave it a shot. I love the microwave rack! It may have been an “as seen on tv” but I don’t remember and don’t watch tv. The bacon turns out perfect for me and unlike the older microwave bacon pans, it doesn’t have groves, just a drip pan, so it cleans up easily. I absolutely love it and it doesn’t leave my microwave a mess like just using paper towels does.
On my last trip to Alaska, I bought an Inuit Ulu. It’s carved out of a piece of birch, rather oval in shape and about five inches deep. The Ulu knife is a curved blade with a handle that you rock back and forth to chop the food in the bowl. It’s wonderful for guacamole, fruits, shrimp for ceviche, etc.
I love popovers and used to make them in muffin tins until I found these at a garage sale.
“I’ve sometimes bought things I have no use for, just because I liked the container they came in. Go figure.”
You’re not alone in that “fetish”, lol! There was a brand of jelly that came in an octagonal, tall, jar that I would buy because I really liked the jars for storing herbs, tea, etc in. The jelly was quite good too, so it wasn’t just for the jar. Getting a little further off topic, you mentioned the well built wooden tool boxes... I love those. Most of the tool specific boxes that are made now are junk. Injection molded to fit the tool, but instead of a real hing, the thing just relies upon thin plastic to flex back and forth as the box is opened and closed, which ultimately fails. It might be a tool valued at a few hundred dollars that it protects, complete with foam hollowed out to fit the tool, but the lack of a decent hinge makes the box what I like to refer to a “future trash”. Lol
Salad spinner to dry lettuce for a salad after you’ve rinsed it is pretty handy.
Also the modern garlic presses that let you to press a clove with the skin still on it. They extrude the meat without passing the skin.
A splatter screen is handy if you’re doing high heat searing of meat on the stove top. Saves a lot of mess and clean up.
Digital instant read thermometer with thin probe for checking doneness without scarring up your food.
The one gadget I really miss and am having one heck of a time replacing is my Bass-O-Matic. If anyone knows of a source, I’d LOVE to get another!
I have a Vita-Mix blender. Powerful and indispensable. Besides smoothies (helps in my wife’s diet), I’ve done gravies, sauces, soups, and desserts in it. So glad I got it!
I also highly recommend anything from Pampered Chef. I use their small stoneware baking pan to do my bacon in the microwave. I also use it for meatloaf in the regular oven.
I just had TAH-BSO on the 8th and out of the hospital on the 12th. I also had my gall bladder and some lymph nodes removed. One gall stone was larger than a soft ball. Prelim result is endometrial cancer grade 1, but will be getting the pathology results in about 2 weeks to see if I need any more treatments.
-
I am looking for some quick, some what healthy recipes that won’t stress my digestive system any more than it already is. In addition to the staples and pain in my abdomen, my back has decided to start acting up again. My right thigh -nerve damage- started breaking through the pain meds this afternoon. And I have had edema in both legs for the past few months and having surgery hasn’t helped with that. Just taking a shower today wiped me out.
So recipes that don’t need a lot of prep or standing watch would be very helpful. Usually I can come up with my own ideas but my brain is occupied on other stuff and nothing really sounds good right now.
Sausage makes a great jalapeno stuffing. Especially if you then wrap them with bacon :-)
Ummmmmm.. Bacon.
Just bought my first ricer on Monday. Had a gift certificate from Christmas and the store was going out of business so I figured I’d better get there and use it quick,
I got it not to rice ‘taters, but to squeeze greens. We grow a wide variety of greens over the summer and I like to freeze them. It’s a pain to try to squeeze the water out after blanching by hand. This should make things easier.
Gadgets! You’ve found one of my weaknesses!
I just picked up a new-in-the-box deep fryer at Goodwill 2 days ago. I have more other gadgets than you can shake a stick at. But, I do actually use them, and most were bought on sale, so there :P
I have a bad shoulder, so some cooking gadgets are necessary.
I have a bunch of food fanatic friends who like upscale cooking and the associated gadgets. A number of them started talking about Sous Vide cooking a couple years ago.
This is a process where you take your food item (usually a meat), seal it in a waterproof bag (or vacuum pack), and then put it in circulating water which the Sous Vide maintains at a very fixed temperature (variance under 1 degree I believe). Then you leave it in there for an extended time to get it exactly to the temperature you want (can’t beat convective heat transfer from circulating water). Once it has been in there long enough to attain thermal equilibrium, you take it out and brown the outside (in a pan or with a torch) and you are done.
This means if you want a steak perfectly medium rare, you sous vide it to 130F for 30-40 minutes, take it out, brown it quickly (so you don’t dump in extra heat) and you get your steak medium rare throughout. No uneven cooking or such.
So, in the interest of sowing a future Christmas present for myself, I bought one for my sister since the price has come down on them to rational from ‘Good Lord that’s steep!’.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GT753W8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
She put it to limited use, then decided to move and take very little with her, so she shipped it to me to use. I have been putting it to good use. I am particularly taken with how it does a pork chop. Traditionally I’ve always ended up with overdone dried out chops, and hence I’ve avoided them. With the sous vide, you can get them to an internal of 140F, pan fry them in some butter and you get a damned good, juicy pork chop. Best if you season it in advance before you do the immersion. The nice thing is that pork chops are only about $2/lb in bulk at Sams when even hamburger is around $4/lb these days.
Mind you, these are not cheap devices, and work best if you also have a vacuum sealer. However the results are really quite amazing.
Two “simple” but very useful gadgets I own and love. Potato ricer and food mill. Bought my daughter a food mill when she had her first baby. She raided all my old ice trays we hadn’t used since we bought the fridge with the ice maker. Then she would buy produce on sale or go to the farmers’ market and stock up on great fresh produce, cook large batches, run it through the food mill, and make her own baby food. She froze it in the ice trays, which made perfect serving sizes. Super healthy and economical!
I love to “window shop” for gadgets. That’s how I wound up with some that are never used-impulse buy.
The gadgets I do use pretty often:
Egg slicer
Veg-o-matic
Blender
Coffee Grinder
Crock pots