Kitchenware Plus

Getting the Most Out of Stir Fry Pans

2011-05-17T16:26:00.002+01:00

If you have the right pan and ingredients, a stir fry is probably one of the healthiest meals you can make.

A good stir fry pan will disperse oil evenly, meaning you can get great results out of using far less fat and calories. It will also ensure your ingredients do not stick to the bottom which requires you to constantly pour in more oil until your dinner is virtually deep fried. This is why it is important to look out for a non stick stir fry pan which can cope on very small top ups of oil, or even just a splash of water in some cases.

It is also good to remember that when it comes to stir fry pans, bigger is better - a large pan and a flat, rounded base will ensure the ingredients are evenly cooked all the way through.

I use Prestige pans when making stir fries and find that they tick all the boxes. Choosing a classic cooking brand such as this is a good way to ensure your pans are long lasting, which makes the meals the best they can be.

It is also important to check that the handle won’t heat up too much during cooking, and although it seems like an obvious thing to say it is easy to get caught up in a bargain and buy a pan with a mental handle. I learned that the hard way– safety first!

At the end of the day, if you buy a good quality pan you will need less oil and be able to cook your ingredients much quicker. And isn’t that the whole point of a stir fry?

Are Cupcake Makers Worth the Money?

2011-05-17T16:06:00.004+01:00

As you all know, cupcakes are the fashionable cake of choice, even if getting the sponge base perfect is a bit tricky.

The thing about cupcakes is that they need to be made in batches, which takes a lot of time if you are making them for a big event. This can lead to an array of sizes, shapes and tastes as you whiz from oven to icing and back again. In my experience it is very hard to ensure all the bases match.

This is what led me to buy a cupcake maker after much deliberation. I know you might think this is cheating, but I justified it craftily by arguing that it doesn't matter what you use to bake the batter, as long as you put it together yourself.

I have to admit I didn't expect it to work but it was surprisingly useful - you simply pour the batter into the cupcake shaped dips in the machine, close the lid and exactly seven minutes later you have perfectly baked cupcakes. No opening and closing the oven required. I am usually a little unsure of so called time savers but this one seemed to do the trick.

So if you have been considering one it's definitely worth a shot - it gives you a lot more time to get the icing perfect.

Le Creuset Cookware (Video)

2011-05-10T15:31:00.002+01:00

We've often spoken of our adoration for the Le Creuset range of cookware. This is an excellent little YouTube video showing the manufacturing process inside the Le Creuset foundry, enjoy :)

Furniture ideas

2011-03-14T12:20:00.002Z

Furniture ideas.

You could:

Build your own furniture. my dad used to do a bit of this now and then, but I have to say that as someone who didn't train as a cabinet maker, his efforts were, while impressive, still kinda of the home made genre.

Import from abroad.Or find someone who imports from abroad - and see what original Mexican, Shaker, or Indian stuff is out there. This is one way of ensuring that guests don't say "Oh we've got that table/chair too..."

Like making your own stuff, but not as difficult - you could carry out your own modifications to what's there already. There are a few websites devoted to this hobby.

And for buying, there's a wide choice from online furniture stores, meaning that shopping expeditions are more a matter of leisurely browsing than a day's car parking and traipsing.

Kitchenware Sheen style

2011-03-11T15:54:00.002Z

Charlie Sheen's been all over the internet this week, but this video of his cooking tips is the best yet. Well scripted ("this isn't a spatula! it's a cooking wand!") and tiger chef hatted, this is great fun.

Sadly no embed feature, so here's

a) the URL: http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/bfb12aea47/charlie-sheen-s-winning-recipes?playlist=featured_videos

and b)a picture of a tiger:

Pots and pans: the kitchen quest

2011-02-08T11:46:00.002Z

Pots and pans are great. But only if you get the right ones. Something from the discount shop might please your accountant but if you want something that lasts the distance, you need the quality pots and pans.

You know you've got good pots and pans by the heft and the finish of them. They're the kind of gear that's made to last, and if there's a non stick surface, it's one that's also made top last.

You'll spend a lot of your cooktime with your pots, they almost become like old friends - all those ragu sauces you'll simmer there, all that vegetable stock reducing, egg frying, oh yes, the life of a pot is a happy one.

The marriage of great cookware and great ingredients is central to the philosophy of this brand I've been thinking about, Anolon, making it a great choice for the home chef. Just remember that when you've got your high quality pots and pans, you will also need to buy good ingrediants too.

Kitchen books

2010-11-24T16:08:00.002Z

An essential piece of kitchenware is the chef's selection of books. In these books there will be everything that the chef ever needed boiled, grated, fried, toasted, blitzed, mashed, macerated, chilled, broiled, blanched, pickled, chopped, peeled or even just poured out of a packet.

Whether it's a book about what is supposedly the world's best restaurant, Noma, or even just the most basic student recipes for chili and spag bol, every kitchen needs its cookbooks.

Of course, some chef's take cooking that bit further than everyone else. Heston Blumenthal (who else) recently did a programme on medieval feasts, which was inspired by his research of centuries old cookbooks. Most of us would probably make do with an old Keith Floyd book from the 1980s.

MasterChef - The Professionals

2010-10-26T15:35:00.003+01:00

No, not Bodie and Doyle, but real professional chefs.

Good series. I particularly enjoy the way it avoids all reality telly histrionics. If people win, they lower their eyes and smile, often with tears of relief in their eyes. If they lose, off they walk, more often than not with tears in their eyes. What they DON'T do, reality telly stylee, is jump up and down screaming like they do on The Apprentice.

The great thing about Masterchef: The Professionals is that it's heads down, no-nonsense cheffing. Totally not dumbed down - which in this era you would expect.

Star of the show isn't Gregg Wallace, or Michel Roux, Jr - or any of the contestants. It's Monica Galetti, Roux's sous-chef - a slightly over-serious woman who pulls hilarious faces when the contestants have made a mistake.

Digg

2010-08-26T15:54:00.001+01:00

Do the funky toaster

2010-06-08T15:12:00.005+01:00

Most mornings it's difficult enough to get out of bed. Rain battering off the window, a stream of less than cheerful news on the radio, and that's after enduring three snooze cycles of the thin electronic brain-sapping bleep of the clock-radio.

Once you're up and about and washed and dressed, things improve a bit. But there's still the entire daily grind ahead - squeezed public transport, the day's work schedule, all that stuff, stretching far off into the horizon of the day. At breakfast time all this is too much to contemplate, so it's best to make breakfast the fun meal of the day. Best foot forward and all that.

The best way to ensure a fun breakfast is to make sure you've the tools for the job. Since bread is bread and tea is tea (or if you're me, coffee is coffee) then it's going to be the appliances that make the difference. You need a good durable tosater that works well, and a decent kettle. Furniture websites mightn't be the place you'd think to look first, but I think I've found a very good breakfast tea & toast combo: toaster above, kettle here. The toaster actually comes in a range of colours, to suit your default morning mood. My morning mood being fairly Zen most days, I've opted for the lime green.

Top Celeb Chefs

2010-05-10T11:58:00.004+01:00

Top 5 Male Celebrity Chefs

As we all know there are plenty of celebrity chefs out there that do their work for the community or have their on T.V programme but what i was wondering and would like to know is who is the best or even who your favourite male chef amongst them?

Here's a list of 5 that I think are in the best and well known leave a comment on who you would choose or even if you think I've missed out on someone let me know.

1. Jamie Oliver

2. Gordon Ramsey

3. Ainsley Harriot

4. Antony Worrall Thompson

5. Gary Rhodes

Cook Like A Pro

2010-04-28T14:23:00.003+01:00

Cooking With The Best

Ever wondered what it would be like to be one of the top chefs in the world? Well now you can actually find out with the help of Jamie Oliver.

Recently I was browsing round a kitchen appliances website when I came across a range of professional cooking appliances from the famous chef. I seen a great deal on a set of pots and pans, not only do they look great but you could also get them for £160 saving a tidy £75. You can't go wrong with stainless steel in my eyes it looks great and from my experience easy to wash.

Let me know if any of you out there have ever purchased some of the "pukka" mans appliances and wither you have found them to be as useful as I did.

Make Your Own Smoothy With The Help Of A Blender

2010-04-14T15:26:00.000+01:00

5 Star Blender

A blender is a fantastic kitchen appliance to have because you can put pretty much anything in it (food related) and it will blend it down. I myself usually like to make some freshly made fruit smoothies or the likes of homemade soup can be blended down if you don’t like your vegetables as thick.

I recently bought a new Dualit Blender for just under £100 and I must admit the value for money is brilliant. I still haven’t found a fault with it yet and I don’t think I’m going to its probably the strongest/best one I’ve had yet I strongly recommend it.

Winning The Fight Against Wine Bottles

2010-04-14T11:53:00.000+01:00

Cool Gadget For Opening Your Favourite Wine Bottle

Have you ever had that problem of trying to remove the corkscrew from your favourite wine bottle after a hard day’s work? Invariably, it ends up either in the bottle or ripped to shreds.

Anyway, i have tries to seek out a solution to this problem, and whilst searching around the internet, I came across this gadget - the rather unusually named Screw Pull Barware made by Le Creuset. Apparently it’s been recommended by wine experts around the world and looks pretty funky compared to your average bottle opener - all you need to do is push the foil cutter onto the bottle and twist, simple as that!

At just under £10 you can’t really go wrong with this if you don’t like it it’s not much money lost but if you do like it and it helps causing stress free nights over fighting with a bottle of wine then this is the gadget for you.

Collectable Kitchenware

2010-04-08T10:01:00.003+01:00

I have been exploring the internet recently for anything new about kitchen products, when I saw a little bit in an article about a exhibit to be shown later this year in the Museum of Guernsey.

The exhibition is about the lives of the Channel Islanders under occupation during WWII, but the part that interested me most was about the lives of those interned, or deported, by the German occupiers, and how they had to make to with anything they could, even when it came to kitchenware.

This cup was made out of a recycled Red Cross box, and shows not only ingenuity, but impudence in that they had engraved a large "V for Victory" on the front. Because the conditions, this cup is the only one of its kind, so very collectible, and I dare say it for actual use in the kitchen. It just goes to show that it's not always about the newest thing, sometimes old things can fascinate too.

Henckels Knives

2010-03-02T15:43:00.003Z

Zwillings J.A. Henckels have been producing knives since the 1730s. Forming in Solingen, Germany over 200 years ago, you know that this company has the experience of generations of steelworkers in its favour.

It is this experience that has allowed Henckels to maintain its level of craftmanship, whilst simultaneously keeping up to date with new technology and techniques in sharpening and tempering the materials that they work with.

Henckels Knives are the ultimate in kitchen perfection. So much that they are endorsed by many top of the range chefs, from around the world, showing that the quality of their knives overrides any cultural preferences.

But you will truly never feel the difference unless you try one for for yourself. You know you want to.

Top Ten Kitchen Gadgets

2010-01-14T11:15:00.007Z

Recently the Independent newspaper ran a poll to find out which were the UK's Top 50 Kitchen Gadgets. I think for reasons of space, and your time, I shall keep the list to the top Ten.

Here were the results

1 - Microplane Grater
"Once you've used one of these you can't go back. Microplanes make light work of cheese, lemon zest, chocolate, you name it. And you can get a nifty little attachment for ginger and garlic so you don't take your fingers off while you're grating. Apparently, it was invented to smooth wood, until a Canadian woman discovered it was great for grating, as it were"

2 - Bengt Ek Wall Clock and Timer
"It's true that most cookers come with timers these days but aside from the fact that I can't work mine, it also means that if you go outside or upstairs you won't hear it ring. This rather lovely retro clock comes with a detachable timer so you can disappear as far from the oven as you wish - even to the shops - and still remember to take the cakes out of the oven. You probably won't, by now, be surprised to learn that it's a Swedish design - that old form-and-function chestnut again"

3 - Amboine Nutmeg Grinder
"Regulars in the kitchen will know that Peugeot doesn't just make cars, it also makes, for some reason, the best grinders and mills. And for anyone who's scraped their fingers and knuckles and spent 10 minutes lying on the floor trying to relocate the nutmeg that just bounced off the mini grater, this is for you. A beautifully designed grinder that comes filled with seven nutmegs and will grind as much or as little as you require with a simple turn of the handle. It's also worth mentioning that it has a similar gadget for dried chillies"

4 - Sink Top Chopping Board and Drainer
"The thing about this category is that it isn't things that you really need as such, but they combine beauty and usefulness and, as such, will make some of those boring jobs, a little less dull because you will enjoy using the equipment. So this board fits neatly over the sink - creating more worktop instantly - and you can chop your fruit and then rinse, or chop and scrape all those ends and bits of peel into the collapsible colander and then remove it and take to the bin or compost. See, it's almost fun already"

5 - Kyocera Ceramic Knife
"A few months ago, I went for a cooking lesson, during the course of which I learnt how to make a lot of fancy things that I will never attempt to reproduce. However, I did pick up one piece of useful knowledge and that is the brilliance of the ceramic knife. It's incredibly sharp, never blunts, never needs sharpening and makes light work of meat and vegetables. It's lightweight, harder than any cutting tools except diamonds and stays sharp for ever. The only danger is that you might drop it. Once you've tried cutting with this you won't go back to steel"

6 - Remosaka Electric Cooker
"A friend of mine was given one of these recently and it's a brilliant bit of kit. It makes your oven practically redundant and uses hardly any electricity so it's cheap to run. Invented before the Second World War, it sank into obscurity before two Czechs scraped together all the money they could find to buy the machinery in 1990. Roast chicken, toad-in-the-hole, toasted sandwiches, casseroles and frozen pizza. It will even make cakes and scones. And as it just plugs in, it's totally portable"

7 - Stainless Steel Rotary Grater
"My grandmother had one of these and using it is my earliest cooking memory. I have no idea what we were making but just that it was immensely satisfying turning the handle and watching the cheese fall out into the bowl. One of these makes light work of recipes that call for large amounts of grated cheese and I seem to recall she used hers for parsley and some herbs as well. Good for getting small children interested, as it's a safe gadget with quick results"

8 - Compost Bucket with Charcoal Filter
"Many of you will be struggling to see how a compost bucket could be life-enhancing but aside from all the self-satisfaction that comes with recycling your food into more food for your plants and all that eco-friendly stuff, they can sometimes, in the summer, feel a bit whiffy. This rather attractive, silver compost bucket comes with carbon filters inside the lid that will absorb the odours and stop any pesky critters flying around your kitchen. The lid fits tightly and there's a carrying handle too. See, I told you it would improve the quality of your life"

9 - Potholders
"Everyone needs an oven glove, but Danish company Eva Solo has taken that basic item to the next level. This is a corrugated silicone, heatproof, dishwasher-proof, bacteria-resistant, bit of kit that also protects your hands from the hot pots. Perfect for anyone who doesn't like the lumpiness of oven gloves and who tends to grab a tea towel in a hurry. Comes as a set of two"

10 - Salter Disc Kitchen Scale with LCD Display
"The Ultra Slim Salter Disc Kitchen Scale has an easy to read LCD display. The Aquatronic function allows for liquid measurement, and Add & Weigh allows for weighing multiple ingredients. Capcity: 5 kg / 11 lb. Dimensions: 21.5 x 5 x 18.5cm. Batteries included. 15 year guarantee"

I personally am not too impressed with all of this new gadgetry, but I think some that I have highlighted are worth a look. This list leaves out some of the more traditional kitchen appliances, but it does give an idea to the way kitchenware is going this year.

hi out there

2010-01-14T10:51:00.004Z

I've just decided to start a new blog to keep up to date with all the new things coming out for your kitchen. From new brands, ranges etc, right up to innovations and new appliances from across the world. I'll try to keep it up to date and keep my posts to the point. Bon appetit.