Hanukkah is early this year. How about a Star of David cake to celebrate? This cast aluminum bundt cake pan has a heat-reflective exterior for uniform browning and a nonstick interior surface.
Helen Chen's Asian Kitchen Porcelain 2-1/2-Quart Rice Cooker
Forget high tech rice cookers--this cooker couldn't be more simple. It sits inside a pot of steaming water on the stove. It can also cook other grains, including quinoa, millet, and barley, and can double as a serving dish. It holds 2-1/2 quarts.
These ergonomic knives were designed by a professional chef to feel more natural in your hand, and give more balance and control with all cutting tasks. The blades are made from high carbon stainless steel.
Last week was tough for chopping onions, garlic, celery, and anything else we could think of cramming into the turkey stuffing. The onions were especially tough - I'm really tired of seeing everyone cry as they cook, and in the middle of it - our old chopper just wasn't "chopping it'. We found this Dualit Mini Chopper, and with the large 17-1/2-ounce capacity we think this mini chopper could fulfill the bill.
This mini chopper features a powerful 260-watt motor and a dual-setting option for high- or low-speed chopping. Its tough stainless-steel blades stay sharper for longer and work efficiently when chopping vegetables and herbs, or when preparing foods such as baby purees, spice pastes, and pestos. In addition, the durable unit comes equipped with a safety lid with an interlocking design and drizzle hole to ensure the best results when making mayonnaise and dressings.
Last week was tough for dishes and clean up. We had what we'd like to call - an ongoing total mess in the kitchen. We realized we could use a new dish rack after day two, and then proceeded to find this gem. It's really sturdy - with plenty of room for plates as well as glasses. It also works great with pans - holding them at an angle when you get down to the end of the dish run.
On the holiday shopping front the Black Friday madness has begun, and also special deals on things kitchen gadget, and not so kitchen gadget. Amazon is going to have several deals on their Black Friday Deals Page kitchen related. Also you might want to check out the products this week that Amazon customers have voted on their Customer Voting Deals, as you'll be able to get a Nintendo Wii for less than $100 bucks to go with your kitchen contraption purchases.
Another great place to look is Sur La Table. They have an extensive listing of small appliances and kitchen gadgets in their holiday gift guide.
GearCrave also has a nice post about the 4 most essential kitchen gadgets for ThanksGiving - and we also think most of the gadgets work for your holiday dinners throughout the season.
Again - check out he Kitchen Contraptions Holiday Gift Guide 2007, and enjoy this holiday shopping week. Safe travels to everyone, and thanks for being a reader of Kitchen Contraptions.
We typically like our tea a bit more interesting, and why not our teapot too! The Soropot Teapot combines unique features plus an interesting design. The arched handle acts as a heat sink to keep the tea from oversteeping, and the arched support straddles a burner on the stove to heat the water in the middle container to that perfect boiling temperature.
The Kamenstein SmartSpice Rack is a digital cookbook and timer, all in one handy kitchen contraption. Convenient countertop unit also digitally displays recipes and tracks cooking time at the touch of a button. The 2 revolving holders house 8 bottles each, and you can skip scribble down grocery lists and recipes. Instead, remove the SmartSpice portable cookbook module and tote it around your kitchen or to the supermarket, because it digitally stores recipes. Search for over 200 easy-to-follow recipes by spice, herb or food type.
Most vacuum sealers take up a lot of space. The Frisper Freshkeeper is designed to deliver the power and speed of a professional vacuum sealing system in a compact design. It comes with professional-grade bags with a recloseable top.The bags open without scissors or a knife, so you can take what you need and then reseal.
A work of art or a bottle opener? You decide. The bottle opener is made in Japan from iron ore and finished with a “urishi” glaze, which gives it a black burnish.
Are you a half empty or half full kind of person? These pint glasses will work for either philosophy. The set of four glasses have a line at the halfway mark, with the Italian word for optimist above the line and pessimist below.
Forget mashing potatoes, ricing potatoes is the way to go. This ricer has an extra big bin. You also do not have to remove the peel before ricing. In addition the rubber-coated ridges allow the ricer to rest on pots without scratching them.
Kitchen Contraptions 2007 Holiday Gift Guide - Kitchen Gadgets, Appliances, and More
Time to think about holiday shopping. We've got lots of suggestions in every price range. Scroll on down and see what kitchen contraption you should be buying for that special someone this holiday season.
We've been sent a few items to review in the past, but never have we received 3 variations on the same kitchen gadget/tool as we did just last week. Before we received these three sets of tongs, we were very tong challenged. What type of old tongs did we have? We used a set of wooden and steel BBQ tongs for most things here in the kitchen - and to tell you the truth - it wasn't a pretty sight. The tongs didn't collapse, we often had food stuck all over them, and they weren't precise enough. Well - now that we have 3 different OXO tongs - life is much easier.
We really like all the tongs, and one would think having 3 sets of tongs is too much - it really isn't. Each of the OXO tongs can be used for different kitchen cooking tasks, and we really like the larger 12" tongs with the lock, as we can put them away in our giant bin of kitchen tools.
LG SolarDOM Hybrid Microwave - Microwave and Conventional Cooking
What we like is to have our cake and eat it too, and this hybrid microwave oven is a combination of microwave and conventional ovens. The "SolarDOM" is the latest and smallest of this hybrid oven craze. The SolarDOM is a top, capable of being placed on a counter like other microwaves. The compact light oven uses a Mega Heater System, which utilizes light waves created by a combination of different type of heaters - Halogen, Sheath and Ceramic, each with different heating depth ensuring that food is cooked evenly. Heat is circulated more efficiently because of the round cavity and the light reflector, which concentrates light waves on the food. All of these features are going to set you back a cool $550+ bucks.
These glasses had a dubious original purpose, but now they just look cool. They were originally designed to allow users to hold a drink and a cigarette in one hand. There are a number of different sizes and they come in a set of two.
KitchenAid 2-Slice, 2-Slot Digital Toaster with Bagel and Warm Functions
Not only does this toaster come in lots of fun colors, it is also great for toasting bagels. It has a bagel function that toasts the cut side of bagels, while warming the crusts. It also has a warming function that reheats previously toasted foods.
You know you need to get a new carving set, because last year you couldn't even cut the leg off the turkey in less than 10 minutes. What you need is a sharp innovative edge forged from a single piece of high-carbon stainless alloy. Look no further than the Wüsthof-Trident Classic Hollow-Edge Carving Set. This dynamic duo features hollow edges that reduce drag, allowing thinner slicing and optimal juice retention. This combo features a 8" knife blade, 6½" fork.
Remember last year when you had the less than stellar roasting setup for your turkey at Thanksgiving? The right roasting pan makes all the difference when your goal is to produce a perfectly roasted turky, and these heavy-gauge roasters will exceed your expectations. Not only will they make your turkey look better when lifting the bird from the oven, but they have excellent heat conduction and well-placed, ergonomically designed handles. You can roast up to a 24-lb. bird.
We love just about anything mango, but what we don't love is having to get the mango out of the mango. Mangos tend to have a very large seed in the middle, and the entire process can really take some time. When we heard OXO - maker of just about any kitchen gadget you could want made a mango splitter, we realized our mango intake could increase if we had such a gadget, and perhaps be a bit less of a hassle.
The OXO Good Grips Mango Splitter is pretty straight forward. It's much like an apple corer with two big soft grips on the side. The middle part of the OXO Good Grips Mango Splitter slides down over the mango seed and splits the mango.
First you'll need a mango, ours is a bit green but will do.
This device this is the system that sanitizes meat, fruits, vegetables, and household surfaces without the use of chemicals. It combines water and O3, a naturally occurring molecule, to okill salmonella and E. coli and reduce pesticide residue. You add water to the bowl and touch a button to add an electrical charge. It takes four minutes to clean the food. In addition, the unit comes with a spray bottle that docks in the sanitizer base and oxygenates the contained water in two minutes, so you can kill unpleasant odors, eliminate mold and mildew, and clean surfaces.
We've recently been testing the KitchenAid 7-qt. Slow Cooker. After many months of looking at the various slow cookers available, we decided on the KitchenAid because of the size - at 7 quarts you can also slow roast a chicken, and because of the general look and feel of it. Though we like stainless steel in our appliances, we thought having a nice red accent on our countertops when it's out in use would be great.
We like the color on our dark countertops.
We really like the 10-hour programmable timer with three-digit digital display. It's easy to read and you can adjust it as well. The cooking options that include auto, high, low/simmer, buffet, and keep warm, plus the unit can be set to automatically switch over to its "keep warm" setting after the cooking time has ended. You can even set it to buffet if you think your food is all done cooking at any time in the cycle.
Monthly Roundup for Kitchen Contraptions
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