Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker- the old and the new

This week I had to say goodbye to a favorite kitchen appliance, an old Mr. Coffee Iced Tea Maker.  I first saw one in grandma's kitchen, years before I ever thought I'd be buying her house.  She had a fondness for kitchen appliances, and was on the cutting edge of whatever time-saving trend was being marketed in any particular year.  She was the first person I ever knew to have a Donvier ice cream maker, a bread machine, and a food chopper (I think it was called Oskar, or maybe Emmie).

Hello, Oskar!



Oskar, meet Emmie!

I come from a good Scottish tea-drinking family, so I really wanted an iced tea maker.  A lot of people happily use powdered ice tea mix, but I knew that the tea would taste much better if it was brewed first and then chilled.  Doing that in a Dutch oven on the stove was time consuming but effective.  But the have-it-right-now advantage of the machine sang like a sailor's siren call  to me!

It was a long time before I could convince myself that the appliance was worth buying though.  As I said, I'm Scottish, and the ice tea maker wasn't cheap for someone on a tight budget.  I finally spotted one at a church rummage sale for 50 cents!  It didn't have a manual, but the internet told me how to set the brewer up, and we've been drinking iced tea almost daily ever summer since then.

Sadly, the tea pitcher was not nonbreakable plastic, and over the years it got brittle and finally developed a crack.  My budget having improved some over the years, I went to Walmart and found an immediate replacement.

I kind of miss the sunshine yellow.

Other than having a non-breakable pitcher and a dial to set the strength of the brewed tea, it's pretty much the same appliance.  It does seem to brew more slowly, but that doesn't bother me too much.  This time I paid $20.  But given the fact that Jeffrey will buy bottled or fountain iced tea every day if we don't have it ready to roll at home, I can re-coup the cost fairly quickly.  This is an appliance that will see heavy use, so I don't mind replacing it with a brand new item.   And I use Red Rose tea most of the time, so that has the added bonus of being able to send away for the little collectible figurines that I love.

Cool Kitchen Stuff: Microplane Zester/Grater

On Black Friday, we picked up a bunch of good deals on cookware, dinnerware and kitchen accessories.  Younkers, especially, was full of good buys:  their Fiesta place settings were at a big discount, and Fiesta cookware and accessories were 50% off.  Their entire stock of Oxo Good Grips utensils was at 50% off, and the Oxo Good Grip containers were also discounted.  We bought several from each category, including some Fiesta servingware. 

The buy of the day for me, though, was the Microplane Zester/Grater. 

Microplane's products have gotten pretty much uniformly great reviews in Cook's Illustrated, Fine Cooking and other cooking publications and online cooksites.  Most consider their rasp-style graters to be the best of the best.  I used to own another rasp grater, but I found it more of a pain than not... it didn't work that great and was a pain to clean.   The Microplane one, though... honestly, one couldn't ask for a tool to work better.

Above, you see a zested lemon, the blade of my grater and a cup holding lemon zest.  It took me about 40 seconds to completely zest the lemon.  It took me about 15 seconds to completely clean the grater afterward.  It works just as well on Parmesan-Reggiano and other hard cheeses.

Best of all, I got this at 50% off.   Not that it is that expensive at full price, but at half price, it was a steal.  Easily my buy of the day.

Honestly, I can't recommend any kitchen tool more highly than I recommend this one.  I know that in the future, whenever I'm looking for a new grater - of any sort - I'll be looking at Microplane products first.

Another New Pan, and a Great Burger

Right before we left for Thanksgiving, another early Christmas present arrived:  A Lodge porcelain enameled cast-iron grill pan.   We didn't get a chance to use it before we left for the holiday, but I made sure to use it at the first opportunity once we were back home.  That opportunity ended up being Sunday lunch.

I decided to break in the new pan by cooking some burgers, and decided to make something a bit more special than the average burger.  Rather than cook up a burger and top it with bacon, cheese and so forth, I decided to mix as many of the garnishes as possible with the hamburger and incorporate them directly into the hamburger patties.

There are lots of recipes around for this sort of burger.  Sometimes they're called stuffed burgers, though often those recipes refer specifically to some ingredients (cheese, or mushroom, or jalapenos, or whatever) enclosed in meat, either by wrapping the ingredients in meat and then pressing the meat into a patty, or by sandwiching the ingredients between two patties which are then pinched together.  Another version has shown up in Cook's Country and some of the other America's Test Kitchen products, variably named "All-American Burgers" and "All-in-One Burgers."  Here's the recipe I used for mine.

Note:  Normally I prefer my burgers medium-rare, but the presence of the other ingredients can interfere with even cooking at low temperatures, so with these burgers, it is safer to go for medium doneness. 

Jeffrey's Stuffed Bacon Cheeseburgers

yield = 3 servings

1       pound 85% lean ground chuck
2/3    cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
6       strips bacon, cooked and chopped into small pieces
3       teaspoons spicy brown mustard
2       teaspoons A-1 Steak Sauce
1/2    teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/4    teaspoon table salt
1/4    teaspoon garlic powder
1/8    teaspoon onion powder
3       sandwich buns
         lettuce, tomato slices, ketchup or other favorite garnishes

Add the ground chuck, shredded cheese, chopped bacon, brown mustard, A-1 sauce, pepper, salt, garlic powder and onion powder to a large bowl.  Mix thoroughly, divide into three equal portions and lightly pack the meat mixture into patties about one inch thick.

Cook on a prepared, heated grill or grill pan.  Cook 5-6 minutes per side.  Transfer to a plate, tent with foil and let rest 5 minutes, then serve on buns.  Garnish to preference.


I should note that the grill pan performed wonderfully.   Lodge pans come pre-seasoned, but I seasoned mine again the night before.  This paid off, because even with the sticky, melting cheese, the burgers didn't stick to the grill pan.  Unfortunately, the melted bits and fat that dripped off the cooking burgers did stick pretty badly to the pan, making it a bit of a pain to clean up, but that tends to be the case with new cast iron.  Based on my experience with my Lodge skillet, that shouldn't be a problem after I've used it enough times for the pan to become well-seasoned. 

Cleaning aside, the results were quite good.  Juli wasn't home when I made the burgers, but she warmed one up when she got home, and she said the flavor and texture were so good she had a hard time believing they were cooked on a grill pan.  While I'm not going to go that far - nothing really takes the place of actual, outdoor grilling - I was still quite pleased.  This is a welcome addition to my cookware collection, and I think I can probably ditch my George Foreman indoor grill at this point. 

Christmas Comes Early for Jeffrey

I got an early Xmas present, and I'm as happy as I can remember ever being over any present I've ever received.  When I was a kid and holiday gift-giving was a much bigger deal to me, I doubt I'd have been able to imagine a bunch of pots and pans would not only excite me, but actually make me smile every time I used one of them. 

The present in question is the Tramontina Ultimate Cookware set, a 10-piece set consisting of six stainless steel pans, four with lids.

The Tramontina Ultimate Cookware Set
Clockwise, starting at the top of the picture:
12 Quart Covered Stock Pot, 4 Quart Covered Sauce Pan, , 12 Inch Steel
Saute Pan (skillet), 5 Quart Covered Dutch Oven, 10 Inch Saute Pan
Center:  2 Quart Covered Sauce Pan

Awhile back, Cook's Illustrated reviewed cookware sets.  To nobody's surprise, the much-vaunted All-Clad took the top rating.  There's a good reason for this:  Sturdy, long-lasting products designed with an eye to function and based on decades of actual use by working chefs and cooks.  This is as opposed to various celebrity lines designed more to look nice than to actually be useful, not to mention the various cookware sets out there that give you a lot of pans for a little money, but which don't stand up to even a year of regular use without showing a lot of wear and starting to have significant problems.  All-Clad makes great stuff, no question.  The only problem is, that top-of-the-line stuff comes at a hefty price.

The other two sets that made Cook's Illustrated's "recommended" listing both featured the same full-clad, tri-ply construction as All-Clad.  Tri-ply refers to a layer of aluminum sandwiched between and bonded to layers of stainless steel, while full-clad means the pan is made this way from bottom to rim.  Lots of cookware features sorta-tri-ply bottoms, typically involving aluminum discs encapsulated in stainless steel, but these can be problematic, as the try-ply and non-try-ply parts of the pan conduct heat much differently.  The result is uneven heating, which usually translates to lots of burning along the outer edges of the bottom of the pan.  Full-clad pans, on the other hand, heat evenly. 

The other two cookware sets CI recommended were made by Calphalon and Tramontina.  Both were much cheaper than All-Clad, but the Tramontina set - which cost only $10 more than a single All-Clad skillet - was selected as the best buy.   The CI folk rated its performance as on par with All-Clad.  Their only real criticism was that too many of the pans were too small to really be useful most of the time (and, truly, they had a point - a one-quart saucepan really isn't useful for very much other than melting butter), though they did notice that when you compared the same basic pan (two 10-inch skillets, for example), the Tramontina pans featured a tiny bit less cooking surface.

Tramontina (sold by Wal-Mart) released the Ultimate Cookware Set in response to that article.  They even include a copy of the issue of Cook's Illustrated that features that review!   The set features a selection of sizes and types of pans Cook's Illustrated considers essential (12 inch skillet, 4 quart saucepan, Dutch oven and 12-quart stock pot).  The selection is similar to that in All-Clad set CI reviewed, but with a Dutch oven and a larger stock pot than All-Clad.  This set has gotten rave reviews by users on the Cook's Illustrated bulletin board and elsewhere online, and while it is more expensive than the smaller 8-piece Tramontina set CI reviewed by about $100 (current cost is $259), that's still cheaper than the similarly-ranked and smaller Calphalon set, and you'd have a hard time buying two All-Clad pans of any sort for that cost. 

I haven't tried out all of the pans yet, but based on the ones I have tried, I can see why people love these pans.  They are sturdy, but very well-balanced, with solid, comfortable handles.  The lids fit perfectly and the pans themselves heat evenly and conduct heat wonderfully, such that they get very hot at only a medium stove top setting.  I'm still getting used to this last feature, honestly, and as a result, I've burnt a few things a bit when they cooked a lot faster than I'd expected based on the mostly-crappy pans I've been using for the past several years, but that has given me a chance to recognize another great feature of the Tramontina cookware:  it cleans up really, really easily.  Burnt-on onion and potato came off with a couple passes of the scrubbing surface of a kitchen sponge, and burnt-on sugary and tomato-based sauces came off with only minimally more effort.  The interior stainless steel surface does discolor a bit when exposed to higher heat settings and/or when stuff gets burnt on to the surfaces, but as stated in the manufacturer's information, a quick, light scrub with a mild abrasive cleaner (we use Bar Keepers Friend) corrects that, bringing the pan back to an even, mirror-like shine.

The arrival of these pans has pretty much filled up my kitchen rack.  As seen below, the two skillets have found a place at the right edge of the top shelf.  The second shelf is taken up almost entirely by Tramontina pans, including the new stock pot and Dutch oven, plus a smaller stock pot with a pasta insert and a double-boiler/steamer combination we bought awhile back.  The new saucepans are center and right front on the next-to last shelf.

And yes, I truly do smile when I go into the kitchen and see those shelves all nice and well-stocked like that. But not as widely as I tend to smile when I see the results of cooking in these new pots and pans.

And yes, "early Xmas present" aside, Juli gets to use them, too!

Culinary Confession!

I have to confess.  Until very recently  I have never had a decent set of knives.  I didn't realize how much it had impacted the way I cook things until Jeffrey asked me to take the fat off of 4 chicken breasts and then cut them into bite-sized pieces.  I realize this isn't a big deal for most cooks, but I had made myself a rule never ever EVER to cut up raw chicken.  I felt that there was too much of a chance that I'd injure myself when the knife slipped on the raw chicken, and considering that I make a living using my hands as both a musician and a clerical office worker, I didn't want to risk it.

My knife phobia probably started when I tried to open a stubborn package of bacon with one of the surgically-sharp knives at my parents' home, and sliced my thumb open.  Looking back, I was probably applying the amount of force I would have used with my own dull knives.

Anyway, this knife has Changed. My. Life.  Seriously!  This is the Wusthof Classic Ikon Boning Knife.  It cut through the raw chicken on my cutting board like butter.  Never again will I pre-cook the chicken, and then cut it up!  Culinary enlightenment has been reached!

Moral of the story:  You are only as good as your tools, so make the investment! This one thing, having a good knife, was impacting my enjoyment of cooking and causing my recipes to take much longer to get on the table as I tried to work around my own poor equipment. 

Silicone Baking Mat: A Handy Kitchen Accessory

Recently I picked up something that has been seeing a lot of use:  Silicone baking mats.  I honestly had never heard of them until our recent trip to visit Juli's parents, the one during which I did the batches of Coconut-Lime Sugar Cookies and Thin and Crispy Coconut-Oatmeal Cookies.  They had some made by Silpat, who apparently were the original producers of this sort of product.  I didn't end up trying those on that occasion, but I was intrigued by the idea.

Essentially, you use the mats to line cookie sheets, and bake cookies (or whatever) directly on the mats, rather than on the sheets themselves.  They are resusable, and they clean up really easily.  I found that idea quite attractive, both because anything that reduces clean-up time is always a good thing, but also because I wasn't fond of the cost and hassle of using parchment paper then throwing it away.

When I considered buying some, I discovered they are not particularly cheap.  Williams-Sonoma, for example, sells the original Silpat cookie sheet liner for $24.95, while Bed, Bath and Beyond sells the same (or at least a similar) product for $19.95.   That's not a tremendous amount of money, and I was considering ordering some, until a couple weeks ago when I found some silicone baking mats for a bargain price at - of all places - Aldi.

Kitchen Living is the brand sold at Aldi, and the price is great:  $5.99!   I picked up two of them.  Above, you can see one that has just been used to bake up some cookies (it's still in the cookie sheet), and one that has just been washed off.   They really do wash off incredibly easily; a quick wipe with a wet sponge removes even things like stuck-on melted chocolate and solidified, melted sugar.  Now, one should be aware the mats do stain, especially if one is cooking with colorful ingredients like pumpkin and cranberries, but apparently all brands of this sort of product are subject to this sort of staining, and it doesn't impact the performance of the mats in the least.

I'm getting great results from these, and given how little they cost, I consider them a great buy.

Kitchen Gear I Don't Truly Need, But Would Really Miss

There are some things that are pretty much essential for anyone who plans to do much in the way of cooking.  A good knife set, for example, or some basic pans and a set of measuring spoons and cups.  Then there are those that aren't absolutely essential, but which sure come in awful handy.  A reliable vegetable peeler, for example.  Sure, you can get the same result with a knife, but unless you're really, really skilled with a knife, a good peeler is faster and safer.

Then there are the ones that really aren't essential - you could certainly do without them - but which you'd nonetheless really miss.  Here are three items that fall into that category for me.

Capresso Grinder, Oxo Mango Splitter and (in rear) Williams-Sonoma Cookbook Holder

First up is our cookbook holder.  There are a lot of different cookbook stands out there, and they all provide the same function:   they save counter space by holding upright whatever cookbook(s) you're using.  Many, including this model, also feature a transparent cover of some sort, to protect the cookbook from stains and spills.  We purchased this glass and stainless steel cookbook holder from Williams-Sonoma (http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/glass-and-stainless-steel-cookbook-holder/?pkey=e%7Ccookbook%20holder%7C1%7Cbest%7C0%7C1%7C24%7C%7C1&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_-NoMerchRules ).  According to their website, they are the exclusive vendors for this model.  While I could get by without it, I really wouldn't want to.   It's big enough that I can have two recipes showing at once without having to flip pages, plus it is printed with conversion charts for standard measures.  If, like me, you have trouble remembering how many tablespoons are in a cup, or what the ounce to gram ratio is, you'll no doubt find this handy.

Next up is our Oxo Mango Splitter.  I don't know about you, but I've always found it a huge pain to slice up mangoes.  This thing works like a charm.  Place it atop the mango, press down, and just like that, you've taken out the pit and sliced what's left in halves, from which you can easily slice or scoop the mango flesh from the skin.  Whether you are using mango in a recipe or just want a quick and tasty breakfast, this tool is a winner.

Finally is our Capresso 501 Grinder.  Though designed and sold as a coffee grinder, I use it as a spice grinder.  I also have a marble mortar and pestle which has seen a lot of use and which continues to be the item of choice when I am grinding up a small amount of something (two or three bits of whole allspice, for example, or a teaspoon of dried rosemary).  But when I'm grinding up a lot of spices at once (to make a garam masala blend, for example) or simply grinding up a large amount of a single spice (as when I grinding hot, dried chili peppers into a hot chili powder) this is my go-to item.  It's a lot faster and a lot less messy than the mortar, and it holds a lot at once.  It cleans up really easily, and the clear cover lets you view the progress of the grinding as you go. 

So, those are three of my not-essential-but-I-sure-like-'em kitchen tools.  What are yours?

Tools of the Trade: Knives

It is sometimes said a cook can only be as good as his or her knives.  I don't personally believe that, as my mother was a pretty darn good cook and she never owned a set of knives that you could classify as even halfway-good.  Still, there's no doubt that a good set of knives makes cooking a lot easier or that good knives give better results.

"More expensive" doesn't always equal "better" when it comes to cooking - Cooks Illustrated's reviewers found that a cheap brand of non-stick skillet rates right up there with the elite All-Clad version that costs something like 10 times as much, and their taste testers have pretty consistently preferred domestic pasta brands you can find in supermarkets ahead of the pricey imported stuff - but from everything I've seen, knives really do seem to be one place where you get what you pay for.  That doesn't mean that the only set of acceptable kitchen knives is to spend a fortune on a set hand-forged by some Japanese master swordsmith, but the fact is, if you want to have a sturdy, reliable set of kitchen knives that holds an edge well and doesn't require ridiculous amounts of maintenance, you're going to have to fork out a little bit of money.

After doing a lot of research and after trying out a lot of brands, Juli and I decided to go with Wusthof knives.  Wusthof produces several lines of products that are consistently ranked quite high or top-of-the-class, and their knives are known for longevity and reliability.   Nothing is foolproof - and really, "fool" is probably among the kindest words one might use to describe a grown man that decides to use a $200 chef's knife to open a can of paint (I've seen the results of such endeavors, and I assure you, they are not pretty) - but assuming one uses them as directed, keeps them sharp and shows a minimal level of common sense, the better Wusthof lines can be expected to stand up to decades of use. 

Wusthof knives, shears, blade, steel and sharpener, Epicurean cutting board

We chose the Wusthof Classic Ikon line.  The Ikon knives get excellent ratings, both overall and within their price range, and I liked the curve and length of the handles - really, they feel perfectly fitted to my hand.  One can purchase this popular line in sets of various sizes, or as individual knives.   Probably the best bet, cost-wise, is to find a set that has most of the knives you think you're likely to use, and few or none you're not likely to use, and then supplement it with a couple individual knives to round out your personal set.  For most people, an 8-piece set is probably a good starting point.  The set we ended up purchasing was identical to this set, save that ours came with the 8-inch carving knife in place of the sandwich knife.  I knew I'd get a lot of use out of everything in there save perhaps the 4 1/2" utility knife, but as it turns out, that one has been among the blades that has gotten the most use, along with the 8" chef's knife and the paring knife.   I'm also quite fond of the Ikon kitchen shears.  They cut through chicken bones with only slightly more difficulty than they cut baking parchment, and the two halves detach, which makes them easy to clean.

So far, the knives we've purchased to supplement this set consist of the Wusthof Classic Ikon Santoku Knife, 5" and the boning knife.  Between those, pretty much everything we need is covered.  The Ikon line has a lot of other knives, including larger and smaller versions of some of the basic knives and a lot of more specialized ones - apparently the tomato knife is wildly popular - but right at the moment, there are really only a few additional purchases we plan to make.  In addition to a set of Ikon steak knives, Wusthof makes a knife called the Super Slicer.  Sort of a combination bread knife and carving knife, this thing is just plain slick.  It slices freshly-cooked meat or poultry and crusty bread as easily as the proverbial "hot knife through butter."  It's not a necessity, since we have both the carving kinfe and the bread knife and both work great, but it's on the  "maybe" list.  A more definite buy will be a meat cleaver.  Unfortunately, the Ikon line doesn't yet include a cleaver, and as far as I can tell, there aren't plans to add one any time soon, so I'll probably go with the Wusthof Classic model.

The Wusthof knives hold an edge well, but since sharpness is a must for cooking knives, it's also good that they are quite easy to sharpen.   I'm told some of the other premium brands, such as JA Henckels, are made of a much harder steel, and that while this might result in them holding an edge slightly longer, it also makes them a lot more difficult to sharpen.  In contrast, the Wusthof Icon line is made of a softer steel, which makes them very easy to sharpen.   When I need to sharpen up one knife in the midst of a project, I tend to just use the sharpening steel that came with the basic set, but every couple weeks (or slightly less, when we've been using them a lot), I run all the knives that have seen much use (other than the bread knife, which is not supposed to be sharpened) through the Wusthof Ikon sharpener I purchased at the same time as the basic knife set.  It's a lot more precise than the steel, but easy to use - a half-dozen strokes of the cutting edge of the blade through each side of the sharpener (one is set with ceramic sharpening stones, the other with diamond rods, both pre-set for the correct sharpening angle) is all it takes to return one of the blades to a perfect edge. 

Along with good knives, a good cutting board is a must.  We've been through a few of them, and for ease of cleaning we bought a glass board awhile back, but at a recent knife class Juli and I attended, we were told that glass boards are really tough on knives, so we don't use it for its original purpose anymore.  We also had to replace a bamboo cutting board bought from Walmart that was warped straight out of the gate because of the heat-sealed plastic it was packaged in.  In their place, we bought two Epicurean 13" x 18" cutting boards.  These pressed wood-fiber boards are durable as heck (I'm told the same company makes, or used to make, skateboard ramps, and uses the same process developed to make sturdy ramps to make the cutting boards), lightweight and stain-resistant, and they clean up more easily than any cutting board I've ever seen.