A good salad dressing is one that doesn't separate. When making salad dressing, some of us shake, some of us whisk, and no few of us cruet. All of these methods, though tried and true, work on some dressings, but at your local kitchen store you can get a gadget that works on all of them: the Bonjour Salad Chef. The Salad Chef is a hand-held blender consisting of a power unit with a touch button on the top, from which emerges a long stem with a set of high-impact plastic blades on the business end, which when engaged spin at extra-high speed to emulsify salad dressing.
Emuslification is a science-fair-sounding word that refers to the suspension of acid in oil. Creating it is a matter of technique: the oil and acid which you mixed in a ratio (approximately two-thirds oil to one-third acid) combine with flavorful ingredients to incorporate into a sauce which maintains its consistency. The only way to create emulsification is effort. For vinaigrettes, whisking is usually sufficient. For a heavy dressing, some shake ingredients together in a lidded jar -- adherents swear that this is the only way to make a creamy dressing such as blue cheese.
I promise I am not typing this from the copy on the box, but the Bonjour Salad Chef does its job perfectly. I have tried it on every kind of dressing I make: lemony washes for arugula, vinaigrettes from shallot to balsamic to pear, hearty olivata for Greek salad, burly Worchestershire dressing for Cobb salad, even red-wine dressing for beef salad. The Chef works best when the ingredients are placed in the bottom of a mid-sized bowl, and the Chef is lowered into them, whisking from the center outwards. Salad dressing should be fresh, but a dijon vinaigrette I made for this column held together six hours (refrigerated) before starting to separate.
Saturday afternoon, Scott and I hopped into the car and headed out to the King of Prussia mall (a strange name, to be sure) in suburban Philadelphia. He had been wanting to get out there ever since they opened a LEGO store in the mall earlier this month and we finally had a free afternoon in which to make the trip.
It was everything a LEGO store should be, with plenty of amazing models of towns, vehicles and many of the vessels from the Star Wars movies. There were also a number of kitchen-related goods, which delighted me to no end. In addition to the timer you see above (which I did end up buying), you can get LEGO salt and pepper shakers, baking pans, ice cube trays and popsicle molds. They'd make great gifts for cooking-inclined LEGO fans!
Last May, I posted about the genius that is french toast made on a waffle iron. However, like so many of these things I write about here on Slashfood, I hadn't actually had an opportunity to give the technique a try, trusting instead that the Kitchen Chick wouldn't lead me astray.
Luckily though, I recently stumbled across a blog post that put the waffle iron french toast method to the test and proved that it is a winner. Lauren (creator of the pies in jars) used a two square Belgian waffle iron to cook up french toast made from bread designed for Texas toast. The bread fit the iron perfect and she and her family found it so delightful that they used the same method to make garlic bread to accompany dinner.
A couple months back, I discovered a tantalizing new product. Called the Handpresso, it is a highly portable, manual espresso maker that uses the pressure generated by a hand pump to create shot after shot of perfect espresso. I had to take one for a test drive.
I've now had the Handpresso in my possession for about a month, and it has quickly become one of my favorite unnecessary kitchen tools. I say unnecessary because I really didn't need it, but now that I have it, I can't imagine ever giving it up. It makes producing a shot of espresso as easy as boiling a kettle of water and pumping up the chamber with air (it takes about 55 to 70 pumps, depending your speed and energy level). The coffee pods produce a good tasting shot (I realize that these pre-ground packs make coffee purists cringe, but they actually do the job nicely).
The only drawback I see with this tool/appliance is that it makes it hard to produce a succession of shots. It is at its best when you only need a single shot. Otherwise, the pumping gets old quickly and when the machine is hot, it's a little tricky to remove the old pod and replace it with a fresh one without burning yourself.
I see this as a great gift for the espresso lover, especially those folks who do a lot of camping or require regular hits of caffeine.
One of the tools that I use the most is my trusty bench knife. Some people call it a bench scraper, and I've also heard it referred to as a bencher, but bench knife is my favorite term.
The main duty of the bench knife is to divide dough and I use mine frequently throughout the day while I'm at work. It's also helpful in moving dough around. If your dough is a little sticky, the bench knife can help you get it from the table/counter to the scale to rising spot. On in addition to all that, the bench knife is great for keeping your work space clean. Experienced bakers know how the dough seems to get into the oddest places and dry there. Use this tool to scrape up all the little bits and then brush them into the garbage. Just be a bit careful on easily scratched surfaces.
I highly recommend a bench knife for anyone really interested in baking. If you're using one at home, you can find other uses for it. The wide surface makes it good for scooping things up, and makes transferring food from board to pan a breeze.
Last summer, a reader took the opportunity to excoriate me for my perceived show-offery when a sorbet recipe I posted mentioned the use of an ice cream maker. Well, for one, a goodly percentage of ice cream, sherbet and sorbet recipes conclude with the mandate to "freeze according to ice cream maker's directions" and for another, it was a goshdarned wedding gift!
Perhaps some small accord could be struck, or perhaps even kicked with the use of the UCO Play & Freeze Ice Cream Maker. Ice and rock salt are added to one chamber and edible ingredients to another. The whole unit is then hand-tightened together and the merrymaking/ice cream churning commences. The ball can be tossed, shaken, passed and generally frolicked about with, then opened and stirred, resealed and agitated again until the mixture reaches a pleasing consistency, and co-churners have worn out all "Have a ball!" related puns.
Still, should the $16.50 expenditure (via Amazon) still seem a tad schmancy, I included a coffee can agitation method in a post on Soul-Saving Sweet Tea Sherbet a while back.
Personally, I would think that the mere desire to have a gizmo that times your chocolate intake would inevitably lead to said gizmo getting smashed into a million pieces in chocolate impatience. If your cravings are that bad, would a little bit of plastic really help?
But as a random, weird foodie gizmo, the Chococlock, which has popped up over at Firebox, is definitely interesting. For $37, you can buy this clock that releases a bite-sized treat once every hour. The big design flaw -- it has a cheat mechanism which makes the whole thing useless. Oh, and you better be quick -- you have only 30 seconds to nab it before the machine sucks the candy back up into its plastic recesses.
This sounds like the perfect gift for someone who collects toys that will soon be obselete, but otherwise, a crazy waste of $37. Why not just get a gumball machine for chocolate, or heck, take the classic route and make a drawer of sweets at your desk?
I grew up in a family that preferred toasted cheese sandwiches over grilled cheese ones. I credit this melted cheese and toast phenomenon to the fact that my mother was always looking for ways to make meals healthier. Butter was typically the first casualty under her command.
However, not knowing that there was a world of buttery, grilled cheese sandwiches out there, my sister and I were perfectly content with the toasted version that our parents provided. These sandwiches were made easier by the fact that we were toaster oven people, making it easy to get an initial toast on the bread before adding a layer of cheese for melting.
There's a new product on the market that could revolutionize the toasted cheese sandwich and make it accessible for everyone, even those who own pop-up toasters. It's called the Toastabag and it is intended to be used for toasting entire sandwiches. I do see some problems with it, though. The most notably the fact that once cheese is melted, it runs to the lowest point. I imagine that if you toasted your sandwich in this gizmo long enough to sufficiently melt the cheese, you'd end up with a puddle of melted cheddar on the bottom of the bag and two greasy pieces of cheese-scented bread. Secondly, you'd never really be able to get a good toast on the bread, as it wouldn't be exposed directly to the heating element. Lastly, unless you've got a wide-slot toaster, wouldn't you be hard-pressed to actually get a full-on sandwich into the toaster slot?
Despite my concerns, I do have to give the Toastabag folks credit for clever thinking. What about the rest of you? Do think this is genius or insanity? Does anyone out there have a Toastabag of their very own?
Peanut butter has always been a staple food in my life. As a kid, a piece of whole wheat toast, smeared with a dollop of peanut butter and topped with jam was a regular breakfast. I often had a pb and honey sandwich in my lunchbox (my mom was a fan of heaping on the peanut butter, making sandwiches so thick that they made lunch time conversations impossible) and it wasn't uncommon to have an afternoon snack of sliced apple or celery sticks with a tiny dish of peanut butter for dipping.
These days, I always have a jar of peanut butter in the fridge, with a back-up in the cupboard (it is a sad day when I discover that I've forgotten to replace my secondary jar). Like my mother before me, I only buy the natural peanut butter and the one problem with this style of butter is that the oil separates out. I always pour the majority of the oil off and then stir the remaining oil back into the peanut butter. However, this tactic means that the last inch of peanut butter is often dry and nearly impossible to spread, as I never to a great job of getting the oil all the way to the bottom.
One way to handle the separation is to store the unopened jar upside down so that when you open it up, the oil is dispersed a bit better. However, since I do like to pour some of the oil off, that technique doesn't work well for me. However, thanks to CNET's Appliances and Kitchen Gadgets blog, I've learned that there's a gizmo (with the fabulous name Grandpa Witmer's Old Fashioned Peanut Butter Mixer) you can buy to help you stir your peanut butter. I know that this isn't tool for everyone, but for those of us who love our natural peanut butter, this one could be a lifesaver. You screw it on to the top of your jar, turn the knob and the stirring wand does the rest. Sign me up!
I've been drinking coffee since I was 13 years old. When I was 15, my parents succumbed to my wish for an espresso maker of my very own. These days I've got a red-handled Bialetti, two french presses, a Melitta single-cup filter, a glass Chemex set up and traditional drip machine to choose from when it comes time to make a cup of coffee. And even with all those toys, these days I've been going with the cold-brew method (it's a great summer time way to brew).
There's a new kid on the caffeinated beverage block and it could potentially knock all my other preferred methods out of the top spot. Called the Handpresso, it bills itself as the world's smallest espresso maker. It uses a pump mechanism to create the necessary pressure for espresso, so that you get that gorgeous crema that all the baristas rave about.
It's currently available at Charles & Marie. It comes in at $155, but for espresso lovers with small kitchens (I'm waving my hand in the air wildly), it could be just the thing.
Baking Bites is a really great baking blog. I always enjoy reading it, and Nicole usually has great recipes and cool gadgets. As I was perusing the blog today, I was especially attracted to this post about the non stick oven spill catcher.
My first thought, being a sucker for kitchen gadgets, was "ooooh, neat!" My next thought was "is that really necessary?" Why not just put a foil lined cookie sheet under whatever it is that you're baking? It would be less expensive just to utilize products you already have on hand, not to mention easier to just toss the foil when you're done.
However, at just five dollars, and with it being non stick and all, the spill catcher could be an economical and easy way to avoid making more garbage while you're trying to keep your oven clean. How do you feel about the non stick oven spill catcher?
Wow! The second piece of toaster news in as many days. I never would have guessed that the toaster world was that active. Well, maybe we just caught it on a good week.
I read about the super toaster over at Slash Gear (no relation). Apparently this gizmo is in the Guiness Book of World Records for "the highest toast launching". The Highest Popping Toaster in the World was created by Freddie Yauner, with help from his friends at Roaming Robots.
This may actually have been around for a while, but while you can email the creator for a kit to make your own, this is definitely not a commercially available product. However, you can check out more images and video at Freddie Yauner's blog, and maybe see about making your own!
The Topography Bowl is made to look like a round mountain range, which you then fill with soup or salad so it looks like a mountain lake or forested valley. I guess this would be a conversation starter at your next dinner party, if you can afford it. The price is $179 a pop. Over at Inventor Spot, M Dee Dubroff' constantly throws out comments on how silly this thing is, and I agree. However, if you have the money and tend to like eccentric dinnerware, the Topography Bowl may be just what you're looking for.
Inseq Design wants you to have fun with your food. To that end, they're working on a toaster that'll put old fashioned dot matrix images on your toast. Remember the old printers, or video games? Yeah, something like that.
This is just a prototype right now, and it's not available, but would you be interested in something like this? I can't imagine it being particularly useful. I also see the entertainment value not lasting very long. However, maybe you can judge for yourself with this video of how the toaster actually works. Now that's entertainment!
When I saw this machine on Inventor Spot, I was truly amazed. I also thought it sounded too good to be true, but that remains to be seen.
The Culinary Prep is a device that cleans food in an "all natural and very effective anti-microbial solution." The makers of the Culinary Prep claim that it removes 95% of bacteria from the raw meats and/or vegetables that you wash in it. It's also about $400, but I guess when it comes to food safety you get what you pay for.
In addition, the Culinary Prep makers say that it reduces spoilage (thus extending shelf life), improves flavor, and still reduces fat and sodium. I can see how this device can extend shelf life, reduce spoilage and all that, and even how that could have an effect on the flavor. It's that fat/sodium reduction claim in addition to everything else that sets off my "spidey sense." What do you think? Would you buy it?
We can change the way we make eggs -- scrambled, poached, fried -- but what about changing the eggs themselves? Mix up your scrambling routine with quail eggs.
Peanut butter has always been a staple food in my life. As a kid, a piece of whole wheat toast, smeared with a dollop of peanut butter and topped with jam was a regular breakfast. I often had a pb and honey sandwich in my lunchbox (my mom was a fan of heaping on the peanut butter, making sandwiches so thick that they made lunch time conversations impossible) and it wasn't uncommon to have an afternoon snack of sliced apple or celery sticks with a tiny dish of peanut butter for dipping. 
When I saw this
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