I tend to be pretty flexible in the kitchen and make up for equipment deficiencies by repurposing other tools. One thing I just can’t deal with though is a dull knife. It’s one of my biggest kitchen pet peeves and something I find all too often when I cook in someone else’s kitchen.
When New West Knifeworks offered to send me some knives to review, I was excited by the chance to compare them to the knives in my current arsenal. While I’m always telling people that you only need one chef’s knife and one paring knife, I inherited pack-rat tendencies from my mother and have amassed quite a collection of kitchen knives over the years. To make this comparison as comprehensive as possible, I got some of the older ones out of mothball and gave them all a good sharpening so I could share how well the New West knives stacked up. continue →
There is perhaps no more ubiquitous kitchen appliance than the KitchenAid stand mixer. It’s not only good at what it does, it can take a beating and keep on mixing. Despite the premium on Manhattan counter-space, my KitchenAid, with its sleek silver finish and sexy lines, gets its own special spot on the counter.
Still, it’s not a perfect creature, and I’ve always been annoyed with having to stop the mixing to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Then there’s the perennial problem with the little dimple at the bottom of the bowl. Despite my best scraping efforts, the dimple always seems to harbor little pockets of flour. Sure, you can adjust the mixing head to go closer to the bowl, and some people have even devised “hacks” like not screwing down the bowl all the way. But all these are just hacks and it’s all fun and games until your food starts tasting like metal from the beater hitting the bottom of the bowl.
Oh, and did you know the original paddle isn’t dishwasher safe? I didn’t… until I pulled mine out of the dishwasher one day only to find my hand covered in gray metal residue. continue →
No Recipes feed
No Recipes email updates
