"equipment" news and stories

I was just over at Crate&Barrel, swooning over all of the gorgeous new kitchen gadgets for spring. My new favorite? The oil and vinegar pump bottle, which allows you to pres a button and squeeze precise amounts of the mixture into a resevoir, where you can then pour it onto your salad, fish, bread...or directly into your mouth. (Wait. that would be gross. Scratch that).

Craving more fun, brightly-colored kitchen doodads? You know you are. Check out the marvelousness below.

One of the best ways to practice portion control is to get into the habit of measuring or weighing your foods and the easiest way to do that is to add a kitchen scale to your countertop. Such a scale can be used for weighing ingredients for baking (useful if you like to use cookbooks from outside the US), but more importantly today, they can be used to measure portion size to ensure that you don't break your diet by over-estimating portions. There are even some new scales that come programmed with the caloric value of various foods so you can find out exactly what you're about to eat. The WSJ's Catalog Critic put several popular digital scales to the test to see what worked, what didn't, and which one is really going to work for you.

Three of the scales - the Soehnle Food Control Digital Kitchen Scale, Salter Nutri-Weigh Dietary Scale and the Escali Cibo - all provided nutritional data and all were deemed to be more difficult to use than the standard digital scales. While it was convenient to have the calorie/fat information right in front of you, the testers felt that the difficulty of use would prevent most people from actually using them on a regular basis. Additionally, the caloric contents didn't take into account cooking method, so the counts were not accurate in terms of what food was consumed.

The two top scales - the Cuisinart Precision Electronic Scale and Polder Digital food scale - were both easy to use, with large buttons and clear functions in both standard and metric measures. You'll get the proper portion size quickly and easily and you can always use a website to check the calorie count if you need to.

The LA Times conducted a test that pitted a silpat against parchment paper in a holiday cookie bakeoff. (I'm not going to get into the fact that the article also states that "traditionally, careful home bakers have used clarified butter when greasing is required," though I have yet to meet a home baker who "traditionally" has done this.) They concluded that, while both parchment paper and silpats performed better than "untreated" pan in terms of spread and even cooking, the silpat performed better than the parchment paper in two out of three trials.

This is not a very fair test for the simple reason that the two things, although they share some of the same functionality, are designed to do different things. Would you compare a fork and a spoon, both useful utensils, and declare the fork to be superior because it is more proficient at stabbing food with its prongs?

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Not every home cook is content with working with the usual tools of the home kitchen, especially not if they follow the ideas and techniques of molecular gastronomists like Grant Achatz or Ferran Adria (or Steven and Marcel from Top Chef, for that matter). Wired has come up with a gift list for cooks interested in practicing nanogastronomy in their own home.

The first, and most obvious, gift that they suggest is a trip to one of the havens of molecular gastronomy, like El Bulli in Spain, Alinea or Moto in Chicago, WD-50 in New York, or The Fat Duck in England. Heston Blumenthal's Kitchen Chemistry includes a cd with video clips to help provide visuals for the technical information included in the book. Once the basics are in place, all the would-be chef needs are tools. Try an insulated whipped cream maker for experimenting with hot and cold mousses, a vacuum sealer for sous vide cooking or a dehydrator (also useful for raw foodists who need gifts) for turning otherwise wet foods into powders and garnishes.

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We've seen the pizza belt before and know of a Jello belt, citrus belt and corn belt, but a barbecue belt? Of course, geographically speaking a barbecue belt would probably cover most of South and Southwest, although this particular version will just cover your waistline. It is a handy way for a 'cue-lover to have all their tools at the ready. The tools aren't included, but don't you already have them?

The belt is made of 100% cotton canvas and has a hook for tongs, a holder for the spatula, pockets for seasonings, sauces and condiments, and a beer holder. Because we all know it's important to have beer on hand at a barbecue. You know, for marinades and such...