Cooking

Electric pressure cookers can handle a variety of tasks. Traditionally used to speed up cooking time by increasing pressure inside the cooking vessel, the modern varieties are capable of much more. While they will always be a popular option for kicking out a pot roast in a minimum amount of time, some models can also brown, steam, slow cook, and talk. Yes, talk.

The Technique 6.5-quart Oval Voice Guided Pressure Cooker ($119) can not only cook up a meal, but it can also talk one up, too. The multicooker features convenient and versatile cooking settings that include steaming and … Read more

It doesn't take much to add flavor to food; fat usually does the trick. However as delicious as it may be, one doesn't necessarily always want to add bacon to every meal. Luckily, flavor can be incorporated into food via many other methods. Sauces, marinades, herbs, and spices can be introduced to veggies and proteins by slathering, bathing, basting, stewing, or even injecting them. And there is always room for one more method.

The latest gadget to come along and promise flavor maximization and fat minimization is the T-Fal Balanced Living GC420852 Curved Grill. Featuring a design similar … Read more

Browning creates flavor. It is a simple statement, but one with deep-toned implications. The effect is what is called the Maillard reaction and it is what occurs when amino acids and sugars get together with a heat source. The resulting party creates new flavor compounds, and that all equals delicious. Achieving this deliciousness is as easy as getting out a sauté pan. Or in this case, the multicooker.

The West Bend 82011 Pressure Cooker may be appropriately named, but pressure cooking is only one of its capabilities. The versatile countertop appliance is really a multicooker that combines five appliances … Read more

Football season is upon us. That means months of football food lie ahead. As fall is ushered in by the kicking of an oblong ball, millions of cheering fans will be applauding the spread. No, not that kind of spread, the food spread. But no matter if the gathering is in the parking lot of the stadium or at a football party down the street, there needs to be a way to get the goods to the game.

A winning recipe for five-alarm chili just isn't worth it if it can't be shared among friends (or unleashed upon … Read more

The Breville BRC600XL Risotto Plus Rice and Risotto Maker is an automatic rice maker that does more than just make rice. An elegant interface offers user easy operation via a set of no-nonsense buttons. The dedicated cooking functions include settings for: risotto, saute, steam, and slow cook as well as the ever-popular automatic rice-making mode.

The multi-cooker is designed for easy automatic operation, but with the inclusion of so many cooking modes, versatility on the countertop is a big feature. The saute function not only provides an easy way to build flavor by browning ingredients before fully cooking, but it … Read more

Baking can be a furious endeavor. Throw a cook into a fully stocked kitchen with a set of measuring tools and anything can happen. That doesn't mean everything has to happen, though. Any chef could live without the spills and the messes that inevitably occur from trying to use something that was designed for another purpose. Worse yet is when a commonly used item gets in the way.

Baking scales, like any other piece of kitchen equipment, are only as useful as far as they can be used. Sounds simple enough, but all too often utility is lost due … Read more

Learning how to cook can be a frustrating experience. This should not be the case. Aside from an occasional overcooked steak, the process should be an enjoyable one. And considering that one gets to eat the results of one's labor, the aftermath isn't too bad either. (Unless that steak is really overdone.) Understanding that learning how to cook can be thought of as a game, a research team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology has created a cooking simulator designed to give novice cooks instantaneous feedback.

As a novel approach to culinary education, the system is composed of … Read more

Space is always a concern in the kitchen; it can also be an issue in the great outdoors. While that might not make much sense at first considering that the great outdoors is both great and outdoors, people who enjoy their time in nature tend not to want to get bogged down with stuff. But getting away from it all doesn't have to mean getting away from everything.

No matter if hiking or camping, everybody has to stop sometime to eat. And that means, cutting, slicing, and dicing. For those looking to trek beyond gorp, the Snow Peak Set M Chopping Board … Read more

The Electrolux Design Lab is a yearly competition that challenges design students across the globe. This year's competition asked students to create home appliances that would "provide a fuller sensory experience." Perhaps one day, some of these entries will be used in the home kitchen. Below are a few highlights:

Ingresure (seen above) is by Jongwoo Choi. It is a gadget designed to be a taste tester. Instead of chef's tasting their own creation, they would use the device to taste it for them. The idea is that the Ingresure would give amateur chefs the assurance … Read more