New Kitchen Gadgets

My wonderful husband, Andy, who often feeds right on in to my addictions, gave me a $40 gift certificate (for Christmas) to my favorite cute little kitchen store in Sumner called Simple Tidings. On Tuesday, Andy and I had a wonderful day date where we had lunch, went running together and went shopping - all with gift cards we'd received for Christmas! Woo hoo!!

Here's what I got - marked a few things off my wish list!!



A ricer - makes the smoothest, best mashed potatoes ever, with no mixer required!!



A garlic press - to smoosh all that delightful garlic!!



A lemon juicer for when my hands get tired of squeezing on my own!



A masher - I had a plastic one, but NOTHING replaces the stainless steel version!

Electric Griddle

Growing up, we always had an electric griddle in the house. We used it for bacon, eggs, French toast, pancakes, grilled cheese and a million other applications. I just assumed everyone used electric griddles, but I was shocked to discover that most of the friends, in-laws and neighbors I've visited didn't own one. I don't think I could function without one. Cooking pancakes in a pan one or two at a time or making six at a time on my griddle seems like a no-brainer to me.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that my current griddle, that I've owned since I got married 13 years ago, was on its last leg. Like I said, we use it A LOT, so it was scratched up and was losing its non-stick finish, kind of an essential ingredient in an electric griddle. I longingly put a new one on my Amazon wish list (home to absolutely every item I want, including all my kitchen wishes) and hoped someone might pick it to send me for Christmas.

My wonderful sister and previous guest blogger, Kendis, answered my silent prayer and got me a new griddle for Christmas!! It is the exact one in the picture above! It's gorgeous, has a large drip pan (for fat or spills) and it was put to use first thing on Christmas Day morning!! Thank you Kendis for my new griddle and those of you out there who have never used one, but have considered it, trust me on this one...it is well worth the money and they really do last you quite a long time, as well as saving you some serious cooking time!

Tools I can't live without

Hello, my name is Karin Larsen and I am a kitchen tool addict. I can get lost in the kitchen section of Target for hours on end. Put a gourmet kitchen store like Williams and Sonoma in front of me and you might never find me again. I love kitchen tools, appliances and gadgets, but like Alton Brown, I only want to use "multi-taskers," that is, tools that can be used for more than one purpose. Here are a few of my "can't live without tools."


My beloved FOOD PROCESSOR...grater of cheese, mixer of pestos, chopper of nuts and million other things.


My heavy duty blender - not the Kitchen Aid I originally wanted, but a great substitute and a wonderful smoothie blender.


My electric kettle - boils water for my tea MUCH faster than my stove kettle. Use this almost daily for all sorts of boiling needs.


My Kitchenaid mixer - need I say more?


My cast iron skillet - cooks steaks, bacon, oven pancakes and more. The perfect transitional tool...from stove to oven.


Not everyone uses aprons, but I can't live without them. I do all my cooking wearing one of these beauties...note the Guinness one from IRELAND!! (Bought that in the Guinness storehouse!)


My handheld immersion blender - purees soups into submission, sauces into velvet and saves me a LOT of cleanup.


My salad spinner that I use to dry all my veggies and if you remember from last Christmas, the inner strainer was the perfect vessel for aging my beef! That's multi-tasking at its best!


My measuring cup beaker with lid. I got this for Christmas last year. It's the perfect measuring cup, but also serves as a great storage container as well.


Garlic/ginger grater - got this at the fair and it's a great tool when you need garlic or fresh ginger grated really fine! Notice the sharp teeth sticking up.


Ice cream scoopers that I don't use for ice cream! These babies are the best for scooping uniform muffins and cookies!


Scraper/scooper (not sure what it's really called)...this is great for scooping up diced veggies to go into the pot. It's also a nice tool for mincing garlic, scraping dough off the cutting board and more.


Microplane grater - THE tool for zesting lemons, limes and oranges, but also THE tool for grating harder cheeses like Parmesan. Also a superior fresh nutmeg grater!


The best peeler I've ever owned and I've owned a lot of them. This tool is quick on potatoes and cucumbers alike. It peels mangoes, apples, zucchinis and SO MUCH MORE.


Tongs - hands down, the best salad servers in the world. Also used for flipping meat and veggies on the grill or in the saute pan.


Scale - this beauty comes in handy when a recipe calls for 2 lbs. of potatoes or 6 oz. chicken.


Pepper grinder - if you're not using freshly ground pepper on your food, you are missing out!!


The newest addition to the Larsen kitchen - the probe thermometer! This baby rocks! You insert the probe in your meat, put your meat in the oven, keeping the magnetic thermometer monitor outside the oven. You tell the thermometer what temperature you want your meat to be and when the meat reaches that temperature, the thermometer beeps at you to tell you it's ready! No more overcooked meat ever!!

Squeeze bottles

If you make a lot of dressings, sauces, mayo, mustards, syrups (simple syrup), or anything else kind of liquid, go get $1.00 out of your piggy bank, hustle yourself over to Target and pick yourself up some squeeze bottles. Simple, plastic squeeze bottles that make storing and using your liquids sooooo much easier! I bought three for $.33 a piece and they are wonderful! I'm wondering why I waited so long to buy them! I've always got homemade honey mustard, balsamic vinaigrettes, special mustard blends, simple syrups and the like hanging around in my refrigerator in tupperware containers bigger than necessary, so I finally broke down and bought these! GENIUS! The almond sauce on my chicken satay? It went beautifully in a squeeze bottle and allowed the perfect amount of portion control! This one tool will help in so many different ways and it's very affordable.

A good knife is hard to find

Sorry about the lack of posts lately - I've been out of town repeatedly! But I'm back and today, I want to talk to you about the knives you are using. For years I used sub-par knives that never were sharpened properly and I would get so frustrated that I couldn't cut food properly and many times ended up cutting myself. Finally, I decided it was time to get a couple of good knives. Now, I'm not talking Wusthof knives, which are so gorgeous and so fabulous, but so expensive that little old me can't quite afford them just yet, but something that could still provide excellent slicing and dicing and if I was lucky, came with a sharpener that actually works.

As you've probably realized, I'm a Food Network junkie and I always loved Rachel Ray's Furi knives. Costco decided to partner with Rachel and Furi and sold a set of two Furi knives that came with the Furi sharpener for about $45 or so (that's pretty darn cheap for two knives). These are the "east meets west" knives that have a curved blade and a curved handle. I snatched them up right away along with another knife that was similar and was on clearance at Macy's. They cut wonderfully, but the true test was the sharpener and how it would work.

To my delight and surprise, the sharpener came with a DVD that showed the proper way to use the tool and when I used it, it was fantastic! It sharpened my knives quickly and wonderfully and I can go several weeks without having to sharpen again. I've posted a few picks of the Furi sharpener. It opens easily. You put it on a flat surface, place your blade in between the teeth and make a quick pull. Four to five quick pulls, wipe the blade on a towel and you are in business. It's really that easy!! It's almost impossible to screw up! **This sharpener didn't work so well on my traditional knives - it seems to be made primarily for curved knives, like the Furi knives, but it did sharpen by other curved non-Furi knives.

The knives have made cutting, slicing, and carving so much easier. I can finally chop an onion the way they show on TV and wow! what a time saver. If you don't have a good knife or a few of them, spend the money. You'll be shocked and how much easier cooking is and how much fun chopping can be! And try the FURI sharpener.

Useful kitchen gadget: the plunger

In keeping with my theme of AB (that’s Alton Brown), let me introduce you to my newest kitchen gadgets! For years I’ve watched Good Eats and have admired Alton’s gadgetry, particularly the plungers he used to measure out and extract troublesome, sticky products, like honey, or mayo, or ketchup. So, I finally broke down and bought two! As you can see, one is large (up to two cups), and the other is small (up to one cup), but what’s great about these helpful tools are all the myriad measurements listed on the outsides. For example, on each plunger, an equivalent table breaks down the teaspoon to tablespoon equivalent, the tablespoon to ounces equivalent, and ounces to cup to pint to quart and to gallon equivalents. Additionally, it allows measurement by milliliters, liters, cups, pints, teaspoons, tablespoons and ounces, all in one gadget.

These plungers let you build within them as well. You can dose out your required ¼ yogurt into the plunger and then pull the yellow plunger part down to the ¾ cup measurement and add sour cream, knowing that you will get an exact ½ cup. But the coolest thing about these plungers is their ability to capture all the honey (yogurt, sour cream, etc…) in the measuring cup and extract it into the dish you’re making. One swipe with a rubber spatula over the smooth top and the job is done! No more scraping around my measuring cups to try to get it all out. They are available at www.altonbrown.com

Hats off to the plunger!