the Kitchn - Articles and Posts from Slashfood

Posts with tag the Kitchn

Ikea's New Kitchen Gadgets - Feast Your Eyes

Posted Apr 15th 2009 10:00AM by Alex Van Buren

We've already acknowledged our obsession with IKEA glassware. Now over at The Kitchn (the design arm of Apartment Therapy) they are waxing poetic about the design of Ikea's new spring kitchen accessories from the stylie triple-threat servingware above (TROLSK) to some "cake doilies" called -- no joke -- DRÖMMAR. Um, are we the only ones who think that maybe sometimes the Swedes just make this stuff up to trick us? Like, they just started putting Elven lingo in these catalogs years ago and are waiting to see if we'll catch on?

Anyways. Check out the 15 items The Kitchn has their collective, design-nerdy eye on. They're as curious as we are to see which ones stand up in the kitchen (report back if you've tried one!), and none of the featured items will cause you to shell out more than a ten-spot.

MealBaby lets you coordinate those new baby meals easily

Posted Oct 27th 2008 3:02PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs

Back at the end of August, my cousin and his wife had their second child. In the face of this happy news, I did what any loving relative would do. I pulled down a casserole pan and started cooking. I put together a baked pasta dish with browned organic sausage, lots of wilted spinach, ricotta cheese, homemade marinara sauce and whole wheat elbows.

However, when I turned up with it at their door, instead of looking relieved to have a meal ready to pop in the oven, my aunt (who was there taking care of the two-year-old) looked harried. I wasn't the first to bring a dish by that day, nor was I the even the third. Their refrigerator was bursting at the seams with deli containers of pasta salad, roasted chickens from the local gourmet market and a pot of turkey chili. If only MealBaby had been around just a few short months ago, we could have avoided that traffic jam of food.

MealBaby, you ask? It's a new (free) online service that allows you to organize and schedule meals for new parents, people recovering from illness or surgery and anyone else who just needs a few homecooked meals. Once you have an account (and signing up is easy), you just set up a meal calendar for a friend, family member or yourself. You can invite as many people as you'd like to participate, and once they sign up for mealtime slot, the system blocks out the date and sends them a reminder email a day in advance. People can even participate from far away, as there's also an option to buy a gift certificate to a grocery store or restaurant built into the system.

It's a brilliant way to coordinate meals and ensure that your lasagna is greeted with an appreciative smile instead of an overwhelmed grimace.

[via The Kitchn]

Tip of the Day: Chopping chocolate

Posted Sep 23rd 2008 6:00AM by Shayna Glick
Filed under: Tip of the Day

It may not be difficult chopping up a block of chocolate, but here's a tip to make it that much easier.

Continue reading Tip of the Day: Chopping chocolate

Plagued with fruit flies? Re-Nest shows how to end the invasion

Posted Sep 5th 2008 3:01PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: How To

All summer long, I've been buying up bags of tomatoes, quarts of peaches and at least two melons a week. I can't get enough of the sweet flavors and amazing freshness of the produce from my local farms and markets. I have, however, had more than enough of the fruit flies that often tag along with my edible hauls. For the last two months, my kitchen has offered shelter to these diminutive insects and their flitting around is starting to make me feel truly crazy.

Thankfully, just as I was about to round the bend and consider stripping my kitchen bare in order to free myself of the fruit fly plague, Re-Nest has come through with a technique for getting rid of these pests. It involves a cone-shaped piece of paper and a glass of apple cider vinegar and is apparently supposed to work wonders. I'm planning on setting one up when I get home tonight. Hopefully the fruit flies will soon be no more!

[via The Kitchn]

Faye Hess shares her intense passion for food

Posted Aug 11th 2008 12:04PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Books, Television/Film

I am currently totally and completely enamored of Faye Hess. I discovered her over the weekend, while catching up on the backlog of feeds in my reader. She is a New York City-based (well, Queens to be exact) chef who has made a series of four cooking videos that are entertaining, instructive and appealingly quirky. Oh, and did I mention that her food looks delicious?

During the nicely edited and captioned videos, she carries on a conversation with the camera that is so natural, passionate and easy that you can readily imagine that you are actually standing in her long, slightly slant-y kitchen with her. While preparing a garlic and butter sauce for freshly made gnocchi, she holds up a handful of sage to the camera man (who I'm guessing is her husband) so he can enjoy the scent. In that moment, I inhaled deeply myself, expecting a noseful of of rich, green woodiness. All I got was the faint wisps of bacon from the morning before.

Thanks to her inspiration, I'm planning a gnocchi attempt soon. I've also subscribed to her blog and ordered her book on Lulu (and I'm counting down the days until it arrives). She's made a passionate fan out of me, and I'm certain she'll do the same to you.

[via The Kitchn]

Slashfood Ate (8): Friday frito mixto

Posted Aug 1st 2008 2:02PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Slashfood Ate

an A-frame chicken coop over a raised bed garden

It's Friday afternoon. It's August. I, for one, would rather be at home doing something interesting with the quart of blueberries that have been patiently waiting on the bottom shelf of my fridge for the last week than sitting behind my computer. However, someone must hold down the internet, and so I carry on, doing a little work for my real job and searching the internet for tasty bits to keep you Slashfood readers salivating.

Of the many things I love about the city in which I grew up, one is that fact that people are permitted to keep chickens in their backyards inside the city. Tour de Coups is an annual neighborhood tour of the coops in which those chickens live. How I wish I could have gone!
My cousins Dan and Sabrina are just weeks away from the arrival of baby #2 and the whole family is waiting excitedly. This week, both The Kitchn and The Wednesday Chef have asked for tips on good foods to take to new moms. I'm bookmarking both posts for near future inspiration.
A week doesn't go by without someone doing something new and clever with bacon. This week heralded the arrival of the Bacon Alarm Clock and the Chocolate Covered Bacon Cake.
Loobylu tells the story of her mother's chocolate cake and how she never seemed to be able to make it correctly. A baking session with her mom revealed that her mom had given her a recipe that wasn't quite right. Cake sabotage!
A clever tip from Not Martha about how to preserve your beer bottle cap when opening, thus enabling you to put it back on the bottle and save the balance of your beer for another time.
College cafeterias go trayless to save on food waste, a nation of undergrads wonders how they'll carry five plastic cups of juice now.
The New York Times Paper Cuts blog features the The American Cookbook Project and I lose a half a day in productivity.
Kristin at Cookthink shares how she learned to pan roast a piece of fish so that it stays tender, flavorful and delicate.

A good trick for saving summer herbs for future use

Posted Jun 23rd 2008 6:02PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs, Summer

Last weekend, my friend Angie handed me two plastic bags that were bursting with fresh herbs from her garden. This Saturday, after lunch at my cousin Amy's, she led me outside with scissors and a bag and asked that I "please take all the basil you can carry!" I am currently awash in an embarrassment of fresh herbs.

Last night, as I was rearranging the fridge to make room for the remains of the chicken I had roasted for dinner, I came across these multiple bags of herbs, seemingly undiminished despite active use and thought to myself that I better find a way to preserve them soon or I was going to have to add them to the composter (I now have a indoor composter in my living room, more on that later).

As I was reading through my feed reader this afternoon, I came across this tip on The Kitchn and realized that it was the answer to my herbal abundance. Emma recommends chopping herbs and then freezing them into cubes in an ice tray. Each well gets half filled chopped herbs and then is topped off with stock, wine or water. When they're frozen, she pops them out of the tray and stores them in a plastic zippered bag for future use. Much like how people are always recommending freezing stock into ice cube trays, only with more of verdant kick. I'm looking forward to saving some of the thyme Angie gave me for the fall.

Pints, quarts and gallons in an easy to remember graphic

Posted Jun 11th 2008 7:04PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs

While the official start of summer is still a couple weeks off, the current bounty of strawberries makes me feel like summer is here. The current strawberry crop also means that it's canning, preserving and freezing season (how else will you be able to have gorgeous local berries in November?). These are the days when I find myself wishing that I had paid more attention to elementary school math, on the days when we learned how to calculate cups per pint, pints per quart and quarts per gallon. It's just the kind of knowledge that's useful when you're trying to figure out how many jars or freezer bags you need.

Lucky for me, those clever folks over at The Kitchn have put together a graphic that takes the guesswork out of calculating volumes. I've never seen anything like this before but I've always been one for an easy pneumonic devise, so I am sold. The design they came up with is as nice to look at as it is helpful. I think it would look quite fantastic on a poster or a white floursack kitchen towel.

Turn your ugly pan into a lovely pan

Posted Apr 29th 2008 6:55PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs, Food Gadgets, New Products

Everyone has one. A really ugly piece of cookware that they love too much to get rid of but it still embarrassing nonetheless. Mine is my griddle. It was originally an unassuming square of aluminum when I picked it up at a junk store six years ago. Since then it has gotten blackened and worn, with four perfectly seasoned circles where I always cook pancakes. I adore it, but when other people see me cook on it, I start to blush a bit and try to hid it from their gaze as much as possible (however, when they taste pancakes or french toast from my griddle, they chow down happily and are quite willing to ignore the pan from whence their brunch was cooked).

The Kitchn wants to see pictures of your ugliest, most embarrassing, most horrifically terrible pan. They have five really lovely Staub honeycomb frying pans to give away to the people with the worst pans and the best sob stories to go along with those miserable pans. Head over to The Kitchn for all the details so that you can enter to win a beautiful pan to replace your wretched cookware.

The Kitchn offers tips on how to not waste food

Posted Apr 2nd 2008 9:02AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Vegetables, Fruit, On the Blogs

It's hard not to waste food occasionally. You make a pot of chili and the leftovers get shoved to the back of the fridge, only to be discovered when they've grown a fuzzy green coat of putrid fur. Or you spend good money on some fancy mini-cucumbers, just to forget them in the bottom of your crisper drawer.

Wasted food happens, but you can take steps to minimize what gets thrown out. The Kitchn is currently hosting a Kitchn Cure, in which they are helping people get their kitchens clean and ready for Spring. They've posted a list of Tricks and Tips on how to avoid wasting food. One useful suggestion they offer is to keep a small whiteboard on your fridge to write down the fresh produce and leftovers you've got stashed away in there, so that you won't forget what you've got to nosh on.

An idea evolves...bacon cups crafted with pancetta

Posted Mar 24th 2008 2:05PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Pork, On the Blogs

cups made from pancetta and filled with scrambled eggs

Remember a few weeks ago when we told you about Megan/Not Martha's ingenious bacon cups (which it turns out she made for a potluck that was hosted by The Gluten-Free Girl. These blogger circles sure are small)? The folks over at the Kitchn took Megan's idea and adapted it using pancetta for terrific results. The pancetta works more easily than the bacon did mostly because it is comes in a round shape to start out with and so adopts the cup shape more readily than strips of bacon do.

This idea may be too late now to use for Easter brunch, but would be a fun way to serve up snacks at your next cocktail or dinner party (it would also be fun to whip up for a March Madness event).

The careful cleaning of contaminated kitchen tools

Posted Mar 11th 2008 2:02PM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: On the Blogs, Food Gadgets

I first bought an instant read thermometer after watching Alton Brown use one for the 87th time. At that point it finally sunk in that it might be a useful piece of equipment to own. And, in the three+ years that I've had one, I've found myself turning to it time after time to check roasted chickens, tenderloins and the temperature of water for proofing yeast. However, I've never really paid much attention to the manner with which I cleaned my handy little thermometer, just giving it a wipe down with a soapy sponge and calling it a day.

A recent post over at the Kitchn has just made me realize that I should probably be spending a bit more time and energy on ensuring that this thing that I stick into potentially undercooked meat and poultry is thoroughly cleaned. Their tips include submerging the stem of the thermometer in boiling water for thirty seconds or using a chlorine/bleach solution.

How do you ensure that your kitchen tools stay clean?

The Kitchn asks, lemon inside or out?

Posted Feb 26th 2008 10:02AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Poultry, On the Blogs

I roasted my first chicken sometime in the spring of 2002. I was 22 and living on my own for the first time in my life. I bought the chicken at Reading Terminal Market, for the extravagant price of $13 (it seemed awfully spendy at the time since I was making approximately that much an hour). When I got it home, I rinsed it with cold water, patted it down with paper towels and perched it in a battered, shallow roasting pan that I had picked up at a thrift store. Following my mother's instructions, I sprinkled the outside with salt and garlic power. Inside, I slipped a halved lemon, a sprig of rosemary and a small, roughly chunked onion.

I've only very slightly improved on this method in the last six years. These days, I slip herbs under the skin, scatter whole cloves of garlic in the pan around the bird and rub the skin with a little butter in the final half hour in order to help crisp the skin. However, I always slip that halved lemon in the cavity. Over at the Kitchn, they've tested two roasted lemon chicken methods in an attempt to find a superior method. In one they perch lemon slices over the skin of the bird and in the other they put the lemon inside. Check out the post to see what they discovered.

What's your chicken roasting technique?

How to season your cast iron cookware

Posted Jan 3rd 2008 11:11AM by Marisa McClellan
Filed under: Real Kitchens

My parents have a pretty happy marriage. They've been together for more than 37 years now, without too many major controversies. However, there is one issue that continues to stick in both of their craws and it stems from the fact that my dad is a lover of cast iron cookware and my mother can't stand the stuff. You see, in the first couple years of their marriage, my mom gave away a cast iron pan that my dad had lovingly scrubbed and seasoned. She didn't think that cast iron was hygienic and so banished it from the kitchen. He still mourns the loss of that pan, even now.

I don't have a ton of cast iron in my own cookware collection, but the few pieces I do possess are rapidly becoming beloved. I adore the 7-quart Dutch Oven I acquired a couple of years ago, and my 13 inch skillet is finally starting to develop that shiny black finish that is prized by cast iron fans. If you happened to receive any cast iron pots or pans this holiday season and you're looking for tips on how to season your booty, look no further than this post from The Kitchn, which will guide you through the process, step by step (it even includes helpful pictures).

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Ikea's New Kitchen Gadgets - Feast Your Eyes

MealBaby lets you coordinate those new baby meals easily

Tip of the Day: Chopping chocolate

Plagued with fruit flies? Re-Nest shows how to end the invasion

Faye Hess shares her intense passion for food

Slashfood Ate (8): Friday frito mixto

A good trick for saving summer herbs for future use

Pints, quarts and gallons in an easy to remember graphic

Turn your ugly pan into a lovely pan

The Kitchn offers tips on how to not waste food

An idea evolves...bacon cups crafted with pancetta

The careful cleaning of contaminated kitchen tools

The Kitchn asks, lemon inside or out?

How to season your cast iron cookware

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