Every Grill Girl Needs a Grill Wok

Cuisinart Non-Stick CNW-328 Grill Wok

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Combinations of skewered vegetables, fruit and meat tease our taste buds, while watchfully grilled vegetable mixes taste as good if not better than any steamed vegetables.  Thick asparagus spears and large portobello mushroom caps can sit directly on a grill grate but other vegetables tend to slip through the grates. An inexpensive grill gadget turns meals into culinary adventures and turns grills into kitchens.  If you grill a lot, and you enjoy grilled vegetables, a Grill Wok is a must.

Cuisinart’s Non-Stick Grill Wok makes it possible to grill and char combinations of vegetables over the flames. You won’t need to worry about sacrificing roasted jalapenos to the grill Gods. This makes it safe to cook chopped vegetables, roast peppers, or char green beans. Skinny asparagus cooks betters in the grill wok than directly on the grate. 

Seen Your Leftover Onions Lately? I Didn't Think So...

Hutzler Onion Saver

The onion is a staple food at our house, so there are usually half onions (red, yellow or both) buried somewhere in our refrigerator. For years, we just stuck the partial back in the produce bag or tucked it in a zipper bag and tossed everything back into the crisper drawer. Weeks later, we'd find it again beneath the potatoes, somehow converted into the spawn of the slime monster that ate Cleveland (the little Cleveland, in Texas). Apparently lots of people have had that happen to half onions, so the folks at Hutzler produced yet one more made-in-China plastic gadget for our kitchen: the Onion Saver.

Foodies No Longer Need Heavy Frittata Pans: Check out the Silicone

Lekue Frittata Spanish Omelette Pan

 

Years of searching for the perfect frittata pan led me to an unexpected conclusion and I’m not using anything else after this discovery and I was tempted this evening. Lekue is a provider of revolutionary kitchen cookware and the result of a research project between the Lekue and Alicia Foundation on microwave cooking to find the perfect solutions and designs for specific foods – like frittatas. This 100% platinum silicone BPA free frittata pan doesn’t look like a suitable pan. After all, it’s supposed to be a heavy duty pan capable of holding up in the heat of a very hot oven. This is a soft, rubbery, red silicone pan that resembles an omelet pan. It’s designed for the microwave.  

Before cooking your next frittata put away your pans.  This frittata needs nothing else when using the Lekue Frittata Spanish Omelette Silione pan. 

Chop up some garlic and dice a small onion. Put them in the larger diameter side of this frittata pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Stir to cover the onions and place in the microwave for 3 minutes (based on 800 watts – mine is 1100 and I converted to 70% power on everything). Cover the mixture with the other side of this pan. The onions are soft and the fragrance is wonderful.

Next, I put ¾ cup of diced ham on top of the onions, stirred to coat the mixture with olive oil and

onion mixture and return it at 70% for two minutes. Whisk four eggs with two tablespoons of milk, pour over the onion/ham mixture and sprinkle with a half cup of shredded cheddar cheese. Cook for three minutes at 70%, turn it over and cook for one more minute. The frittata is fluffy, sufficiently dense and not a hint of rubbery. It was quite good.

The microwavable Frittata pan comes with a multi-language, visual set of instructions for making a Spanish Omelet and a Vegetable Frittata as well as Okonomiyaki and Trinxat. The pamphlet has a visual list of ingredients used in the recipes, each represented by an icon and a multi-language list of names. This could easily be useful in foreign language classes. This is in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Norwegian, and Russian.

The top and bottom are hinged together so that they also fit together. The pan is 10 inches in diameter and two inches deep.  The silicone can take the heat of the microwave and it’s dishwasher safe. This lacks a handle, although the hinge can be used for that purpose. It’s not designed for use in the microwave. 

My final thoughts: Once you become familiar with the ingredient combinations (they are minimal) it’s easy to cook frittatas for two or a larger meal for one in a very short time. If you want a quick meal that’s not processed, try this. Add a side of asparagus or broccoli and enjoy. This was a Christmas gift and it’s a keeper! I’m continually impressed.

Plus: Quick, Healthy, Easy to clean, Did I say fast, Everything can be cooked in one pan

Minus: I'll let you know if one's ever discovered.

Grundtal Rails from IKEA

For the house that lacks ample counter space – or for the foodies who have too much stuff

IKEA’s Grundtal Series provides sleek, modern style for organizing your kitchen and a Grundtal Rail serves as the foundation to the system.  This stainless steel rail supports numerous organizer accessories.  

The rail is round (approximately 3/4 inch) and is available in three different lengths: 20 7/8 inches, 31 ½ inches and 47 ¼ inches.  It's supported by end mounts that hold the rail out 2 1/8 inches.  This is easy to assemble.  Fasteners are not included - walls require different mounting hardware and you'll need to select a fastener suitable for your walls.  Grundtal’s system strongly relies upon their product-specific S-hooks and while they have a variety of gadgets in the system, everyone will want multiple hooks for hanging just about anything.

Bev Key 3-in-1

Open Any Cold One in a Snap with the Bev Key

In summer when the barbecues are smoking merrily away and friends come together for backyard soirees, the coolers filled with chilled beverages are always a mixed bag. There'll be some aluminum cans for kids, designated drivers, and diehard dometic beer drinkers; a scattering of twist-offs for fans of wine coolers; and the old-school pry-off caps for the microbrew crowd. You don't need a collection of openers to fit the different hands and different caps, though, you just need to supply one small, simple tool: a Bev Key.

A Bev Key is capable of opening any single-serve glass or metal beverage container that doesn't have a cork: if you prefer your Diet Coke from a plastic bottle, you're on your own. It's a little donut-shaped recycled aluminum doodad that can double as a keychain fob, which you can use three ways: •   one side of the hole in the donut is toothed, so it can grab the projecting points of a twist-off cap, which doubles your grip. It's especially useful if the bottle is wet and cold •   the opposite side of the donut hole is squared off, so you can use it like a "church key" for prying classic caps. You do have to have good hand strength to make this work •   a slot in the edge fits over pull-tabs and pop-tops, increasing your leverage. Those with pricey manicures find this most useful.

A Bev Key packs all this punch into a two-ounce package, not to mention that it will also keep your keys

Zak Designs E-Z-Roll Garlic Peeler

Peel Garlic in a Flash

There are six numbered drawers in our kitchen, of which five are chock full of kitchen gadgets. OK, one has an image of a cluster of grapes instead of a number; that's the one with the wine gadgets. Anyway, all those little guys were Christmas presents (a long story), and most of them rarely see the light of day unless one of us happens to paw through a gadget drawer hunting for the strawberry huller, the citrus peeler, a pop-up turkey timer, the mini-spatula, the corn butterer... Other people have corncob holders, we have crumb sweeps and colander cleaners. Yup: kitchen gadgets galore.

There are some few gadgets who live outside the drawers because they get used regularly: one of those is our Zak Designs E-Z-Roll Garlic Peeler. Oh, sure, a real cook peels garlic by whacking it with a chef's knife to break the skin, but this thing isn't just fun to use, it's also started many a conversation in the kitchen. The scenario usually goes, a guest asks, "What the hell is that?"

RSVP Onion Goggles

There's no More Tears with a Pair of Onion Goggles

I'm the kind of macho dude who's not prone to tears, except perhaps when it comes to chopping onions. We share kitchen duties at our house, and most of my favorite recipes start with onions - and garlic, too. So a few nights a week you'll find me crying like a baby while I chop and mince. I've heard all the folk remedies - cut onions under running water, breathe through your mouth - but I just sucked it up and chopped away without a crutch. Without, that is, until someone gave me some RSVP Onion Goggles.

Onion goggles look a lot like Eurotrash safety glasses or fancy racquetball goggles in thick plastic wraparound frames. RSVP sells them in a boatload of colors, though mine are basic black with bright green trim. The no-fog lenses are slightly polycarbonate, with folding earpieces like conventional glasses. The noticeable difference is the thick layer of soft foam that rims the eyepieces and seals the goggles to your face. The combination of lenses and foam seals out the gases that onions give off; just like Johnson's Baby Shampoo, no more tears!