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 –…
The guys at Studio Neat, makers of the Glif tripod mount for the iPhone and the Cosmonaut stylus for iPad, are putting on another Kickstarter for a...cough...neat kit for making super-clear ice at home. It uses an insulated, block-shaped ice mold to freeze water from the top down, pushing impurities to the bottom. The resulting ice block looks like this: Using the…
I've been cooking a lot of pasta at home lately, and it's gotten a bit tiresome transferring noodles back and forth between the cooking pot and our colander, possibly losing some noodles along the way. The 5-quart Bialetti Pasta Pot looks like it'll solve this problem for me, because you can merely lock the lid into place and easily pour the hot…
There have been a lot of coffee makers and accessories on Tools & Toys over the years, but somehow, the Toddy Cold Brew System has never been featured (only mentioned once by yours truly). Maybe Shawn and Stephen just aren't big fans of iced coffee, but it's definitely one of my favorite things in the world, and this system is my favorite…
I enjoy having freshly grated cheese over a store-bought package, but what I don't enjoy is the inevitable cleanup afterward. The way most graters are designed, the cheese just falls all over the place if you're not careful, but not so with the Eva Solo Grating Bucket. It catches everything at the bottom of the grater, and you can simply pour out…
The kitchens of many coffee nerds are practically overflowing with coffee paraphernalia, but a lot of that stuff isn't very well-suited for traveling. Electric burr grinders are no exception to this, which is why hand grinders are so great. They can be tossed into a bag alongside your AeroPress for easy traveling. And if you're willing to put in a little elbow…
The generically-named Belkin Kitchen Cabinet Tablet Mount is a great way to use your tablet (ok, let's face it, your iPad) in the kitchen without putting it in danger of being spills and accidents. With an easy-to-install arm that requires no tools, putting this mount in is a snap. It's compact enough to fit easily in a silverware drawer, and comes with…
When it comes to kitchen accessories, do you prefer the boring old-school tools, or gadgets that look like they were stolen straight out of a MoMA exhibit? If you're in the latter camp, you should check out the Rösle Pizza Wheel. This beauty is perfect for cutting thin-crust pizzas and flatbread, and it disassembles for easy cleaning. Alternatively, you could just hang…
We've mentioned the standard Bonavita Gooseneck Kettle ($42) before, but the kinds of coffee nerds who experiment with AeroPress recipes are likely to want very precise temperature control. And that's exactly what the Bonavita Variable Temperature model ($90) brings to the mix. It rocks the same 1-liter stainless steel design and distinct spout that allows for greater pour control, with the addition…