I have mixed feelings about Keurig brewers. There's no denying their sheer convenience—I mean, you literally just push a button to brew—but those disposable K-Cup pods are wasteful and tend to produce a subpar cup of coffee besides. The Ekobrew Stainless Steel Elite might be the best workaround for this problem. Rather than tossing out K-cup after K-cup, you simply fill the…
The iGrill 2 is a Bluetooth-enabled grilling thermometer designed for pros and serious enthusiasts but simple enough for amateur grillers to use. Building on the design and features of the original iGrill, the iGrill 2 has upped its probe capacity from 2 to 4 (though it only comes with two) and can now be magnetically mounted onto the side of your grill…
I only buy peanut butter of the all-natural variety, meaning the only ingredients are roasted peanuts and salt. The stuff is delicious, but it separates in the jar and it can be a pain (sometimes even a mess) to stir it back together. That is, until I discovered this peanut butter mixer. It's a curved mixing rod that pokes through a "lid"…
If your main method of making coffee is with a pour-over brewer like the Hario V60, it should have a special home of its own on your countertop. The Pour-Over Stand by JM&Sons fits the bill. It's a simple-but-stylish metal stand with a base made from salvaged barn wood, and fits any pour-over dripper up to 2.5" in diameter. The stand by…
After yesterday's post about the All-Clad 12" stainless steel fry pan, reader Jake Spurlock wrote in to let us know about a potentially better deal: the Tramontina stainless steel fry pan. The All-Clad is nice, but this $50 Tramontina is just as good at a third of the price: http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/08/equipment-the-all-clad-vs-tramontina-skillet.html I don't have any first-hand experience with the Tramontina but I was…
A common mistake I see people make is overloading their kitchens with skillets of all shapes and sizes. You really only need two to cover your bases, though: a cast iron skillet and a good stainless steel pan. For the latter, the All-Clad 12" fry pan is my recommendation. You might think I'm crazy for suggesting a $150 pan, but believe me,…
I'm at the point in my cooking "education" (part self-taught, part watching a lot of YouTube videos) where I'm starting to get fed up with my cheap knife set. Several of the knives are on their way out or were never really good to begin with, and the one knife still worth my time —a Santoku model—isn't the most versatile tool around.…
(Photo credit: Alex Bernson, Sprudge.com) While we're on the subject of coffee, we should talk about an awesome vessel for consuming the stuff. The KeepCup Brew—a brand-new glass version of the plastic KeepCup Original—is a reusable coffee cup that aims to do away with wasteful, disposable paper cups and look great doing it. If you frequently stop in for a quick cup…
For serious coffee fanatics, having an espresso machine at home can certainly be an expensive affair. Most of us aren't world champion baristas though, and prefer not to break the bank to get our fix. The Rancilio Silvia V3 is a commerical-grade machine that, in the right hands, will brew espresso on par with what you'd get at your favorite local coffee…
For a long time, my go-to recipe manager was Evernote. Then, it was Basil for iPad. It's been a while since that switch, but the limitation of Basil being iPad-only (amongst a few other quibbles) has finally started wearing on me, so I've been looking for another replacement. I should've known that our sister site The Sweet Setup had already compared recipe…
As I've mentioned in the past, the best tool in my kitchen is my cast iron skillet. My cheap metal spatula kind of sucks though, so I've been on the lookout for something better. Thankfully, The Sweethome did the leg work for me by testing a bunch of spatulas and naming the Mercer Hell's Handle fish spatula ($23) as their top pick.…
The same people who designed our favorite cheese grater are also the makers of a great coffee maker. Similar to a French press, the Eva Solo coffee maker uses a full-immersion brewing method. Just dump some coarsely-ground coffee and hot water directly into the glass carafe, seal off the top with the conical filter/stopper (also, make sure the outer neoprene sleeve is…
The majority of water-filter pitchers out there are terrible (or at best, uninspired) but that doesn't have to be the case. Enter the Soma water filter, which is a beautiful and eco-friendly water filter that puts the competition to shame. Made of sustainable materials—including burnt coconut shell and a plant-based, bio-degradable casing—Soma is the first water filter I've heard of that is…
Sometimes there's just nothing better than a simple bowl of steaming, slightly sweet, slightly sticky, Japanese-style short grain rice. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. It's possible to make this stuff in a standard stovetop pot (and I have), but it's a little time-consuming and requires close attention. A good, automated rice cooker like the Zojirushi NS-TSC10 makes the process way…
If you ask me, no kitchen is complete without at least one cast iron skillet around — they just cook food so perfectly and only get better with age. The one I own used to belong to my grandma and was given to me after she'd passed away. It has so many years of seasoning on it, I can't even see the…
I don't know about you guys, but in my household we tend to accumulate a lot of plastic grocery bags. We rarely just throw them away after grocery trips because they often come in handy later, so there's a big pile of them at the bottom of our pantry. I'm thinking we might pick up this Simplehuman grocery bag dispenser to free…
If there's one thing we at Tools & Toys (and many of our readers) are not in need of, it's another coffee-making contraption. I mean, the lot of us are nearly full-on baristas at this point. But this beautiful, upcoming device called the Ratio Eight coffee machine definitely seems worth checking out. This machine looks like a cross between a Chemex coffee…
Before the coffee geeks cry out with indignation: yes, I realize I am linking to a Nespresso product and Nespresso is a blight on the coffee-making world, but this is not one of their wasteful coffee pod contraptions. No, the Aeroccino 3 – no relation to the AeroPress – is merely a milk frothing machine, and a good one at that. It…
I'm a big fan of Dan Benjamin's Bacon Method site, which describes how to make perfect bacon every single time using an oven pan rather than a skillet. (Admittedly, I still like to use my cast iron skillet for this sometimes, but that's beside the point.) The site just went through a redesign this week, and now they've included a page of…
Baking pizza at home seems like it should be a simple project, but it can be a little tricky. The outer crust and the pie center don't always cook evenly, and you might even end up with some burnt zones. The Baking Steel, essentially a flat slab of steel that you use like a pizza stone, will conduct heat more evenly –…