As meat prices continue to rise, it is valuable to know how to use what in the past were called utility cuts. Which is a nice way to say if you don’t handle them properly you will be chewing them for a couple days. But when you do use the right process they will give you some of the best tasting meat you can cook up for friends and family. For that reason some utility cuts from … [Read more...]
Kitchens Were Made for Fun
A retired restaurateur, not quite ready to stop playing in the kitchen.
I have had the pleasure of watching amazing high end chefs, and classic American style diner cooking, creating a very diverse background with food. Add both parents teaching English, watching Julia Childs and Graham Kerr as a child, and learning to bake bread from my Finnish great grandma, and you get a decent recipe for a knowledgeable voice to write about food.
From recipe design to equipment testing, there is a broad spectrum of entertaining aspects of food and how we do what we do every day to feed our loved ones!
—Allen Bixby
Misen Knives & Cookware, Should You Buy?
Misen is the crowd funded kitchen ingénue that bombards all of us with Facebook ads or other marketing pops. That’s fine, we’re all for building a brand. Theirs is a quality knife that is comparable to products that cost twice as much, at least that’s what they are saying. This knife business has been parlayed into skillets, utensils and more. Is it the real deal or just a … [Read more...]
Dutch Oven — Cooking to History
Why “Dutch” oven instead of a multitude of other country choices? There may be as many as three different cooking devices all sharing that particular name. However, the most known version is the heavy pot with steep sides and a secure lid. History Funnily enough, the Dutch oven was the catalyst for the use of cast iron to make cookware, and actually a viable entry into the … [Read more...]
Making Omelettes: American, French & Japanese
The name omelet hit the west somewhere around 500 years ago in France. The dish however has likely been around as long as humans have been scavenging eggs, and had a round shaped area to heat and cook them in. That being said, the French did formalize the omelet in the west. Many Asian cultures have been making them as well, possibly the most well-known being the tamagoyaki … [Read more...]
Types of Knife Sharpeners and How To Use Them
Sharp knives are essential to being productive in the kitchen, and perhaps even more importantly your own safety. Cutting carrots with a dull knife, envisioning your finger rolling under the blade because you have to use so much extra force is frightening. Don’t misunderstand, sharp knives can make you bleed, but they offer control and cut easily enough keeping you … [Read more...]
Cooking Temperatures for Meat, Seafood, Candy & Baking
In this guide we will breakdown everything you need to know about basic heat reactions and cooking doneness temperatures for meat, seafood, baked goods and candy. Distilled down to the essence, cooking is applying heat to organic material to alter it in a positive way. Hopefully positive, although we know that too much heat can lead to disaster. How and why heat affects … [Read more...]
Electric Skillet Cooking
Depending on your generation, electric skillets may have played differing roles in the cooking you grew up with. First hitting the market in 1953, Sunbeam was setting the trend in the electric kitchen. The most notable feature of the electric skillet is that it offers a thermostatically controlled hot cooking surface. To this day, most ranges and cooking surfaces have … [Read more...]
Muffins 101 – Types of Muffins to Baking Basics w/ Recipes
Do you know the muffin man? Don’t bother in this case, he’s on the wrong side of the story. Classically, he’s seen as walking the streets of London hawking his wares, which are a yeast based, disk shaped, and soft bread dish. In fact, the name is a derivation of the French word moufflet meaning soft, and that version was a UK peasant food starting about a thousand years … [Read more...]