Heya! So I've got a new fridge, a GE GTS22KGNRWW 21.9ft³. Skipping over the fridge water line bursting and causing thousands of dollars of damage followed by the fridge crapping out, we're just trying to make sure the fridge is OK before the warranty expires and because we have a baby in the house.

The ambient air was still above 41°F a few hours after we got it, so I cranked it to full blast and put a glass of water in to have a better testing point. The ambient air has been fluctuating between like 39-44° F and the water glass measured between like 39.0°-41.0° F after about 24 hours with occasional use. I know I'm worrying because the last fridge just crapped out and spoiled a ton of food, and I know opening the door always causes it to drop (which I'm obviously doing to test it), but it seems kind of high to me for a brand new fridge if 41 is really the upper limit. Is this an acceptable range, or should we ask for someone to come out and look at it?

I’m finally making the plunge to getting a bread maker, now that the price of bread has gone up to a stupid amount and I finally realized four months of buying bread every other day will pay for the machine itself. (Flour is cheap, yeast is cheap.) There are only really three machines available where I live, so I’m pretty set on the machine itself.

Since I’ve never had a bread maker, do y’all have any advice, favorite recipes, suggestions?

Hello, as the title implies, I am looking for a temp controlled teapot.

I own an ember mug and have to say, it is one of my favorite purchases/splurges. For those that do not want to click on the link, this is a temperature controlled mug that holds a hot temp for liquids in a mug wirelessly. It does this with quite good precision IMO, have not whipped out a thermometer to check accuracy.

I have been looking for some time for a teapot that could do the same. The requirements I have are that no plastic or otherwise health adverse heat volatile materials come into contact with the heated water, and I would like it to be a teapot, because I like the ritual of pouring the tea out of the pot. I want to be able to steep and pour the tea from the same temp controlled vessel(I don't mind heating water and then pouring it into the temp controlled teapot), so I'm not looking for a temp controlled kettle, necessarily.

I think last time I looked I ended up on pages showing things like this set up, which I'm open to, but would like some guidance or reviews, if possible.

Thank you!

Bonus, what are your favorite mint teas or other teas that have a sensory experience outside of temp?

EDIT: On the same website I linked, I forgot to direct people here. Has anyone ever used a teapot warmer like the ones on that website?

As a regular baker with whole grain wheat, I'm consistantly disappointed by the quality of flour I am buying, so I have finally got to the point where I have placed an order for some from an online source - in this case, Azure Standard. They make a big deal about their process, using a unifine mill - apparently something they had a hand in reviving when it had commercially failed. In trying to figure out why this was such a big deal I went into a bit of a black hole looking into wheat milling.

Part of that was learning about home mills. It seems almost insane to me, but people buy some very expensive mills in order to make the best quality breads. You can even buy impact mills, the same general concept that makes Azure's unifine mill such an attractive proposition, and it looks like a popular manufacturer in that niche has just introduced one that's less than $200, which I think makes it pretty attractive for less, uh, intense bakers.

I've been seeing a lot of weird kitchen appliances in recent years. Thermomix cookers have been a big thing for a few years. "Smart" or "AI" Ovens have been in the news a lot more recently, and it wasn't too long ago that sous vide specific cookers and electric pressure cookers were unusual. An odd one that I'm particularly interested in is a soymilk maker, which will grind, filter, and cook them.

Do you own a weird kitchen appliance? What do you think of them? Is it something you think other home cooks would like to have?

Have a friend who has raved about using these for cooking meet during the work day and pan searing it for a quick easy and delicious meal. Plan on doing that with steaks/chicken, but wanted to see if anyone else on Tildes owns one and has any tips or favorite use cases to share.

After several bad experiences lately, I am interested in grinding meat at home. Does anyone have experience in this practice? I have a KitchenAid stand mixer and after some research, I am interested in buying the meat grinder attachment. However, there are literally dozens of weird Chinese brands on Amazon purporting to sell an identical set for much less. AliExpress is even cheaper.

Has anyone bought and used the KitchenAid version? Has anyone tried a cheaper version?

Thank you for your advice.

Thank you to everybody who commented; I'm going to look for the official KitchenAid attachment at a good price.

Hey, so there's been an ice buildup in our fridge creeping along the back. After a while it hit the front, and tadaaaa, it finally got bad enough the door didn't close fully... So most everything outside of one big pile of vegetables got defrosted overnight. (On the plus side, I walked into having a nice big pancake breakfast!) We threw out the meats and moved the veggies to our other freezer. This at least let me finally disassemble everything and see what's in there. It looks like this in there:

https://imgur.com/a/YnGB3Zz

When we noticed this was happening a few months ago I turned off the ice maker switch in the back and, but it still kept doing this. There's still a ton of ice in the top tray, and set the temp to the max. But the fridge is right up against the left wall there, making it difficult/impossible to get the trays here out with the door blocking it. Additionally the right side has a dishwasher immediately next to it, so a decent amount of heat goes up the back. Then ALSO I found that big chunk of ice frosted on a pipe, so I wonder if it split? I'm unfamiliar with fridge design, so I don't know exactly what would give me the right answer.

I'm wondering what to do. My thoughts are that I've finally got the bottom tray/shelf/bucket thing out, so I could hammer the shit out of it and at least clear the bottom up... Then if I could get the top tray out I could see if removing all the ice in the top would stop the creep. I'm guessing that's a big fat no. At that point, is it possible to remove the ice module that I actively do not want anyway to see if it fixes anything, or is it integral to the freezer design? And at that point... Should we just get another fridge? Are there fridges without this busto icemaker shit nowadays? Thanks!

Help me Tildes! My refrigerator is leaking and I live in an apartment so I need to get a new fridge ASAP so that I don't cause water damage to my downstairs neighbors! Does anyone have a brand recommendation? All I really care about for this is avoiding brands that are known to be shitty.

I also will use this as an opportunity to replace the absolutely horrible microwave that came with this apartment. While all fridges are basically identical to me, I am very opinionated about microwaves:

• There must be a 30 second button that either starts the cooking or adds 30s more to the existing cooking
• 1-6 must be quick-access "microwave for this many minutes" buttons, so that i can press 1 and then 30 to microwave for 90s or 4 and then 30 for 4:30, etc
• I would really like a decent popcorn button that has a microphone to determine when to stop
• Multiple power levels that are actually good at being lower power (I am fine with power level 50 meaning "be on for 50% of the time" etc, I think that works pretty well)
• idk if this even needs to be said in the year 2024 but a spinning tray
• auto-stop on door open so I can press just 1 thing
• If I press 'stop' or open the microwave after it stops it's "haha I'm done" beeping sequence, it STOPS BEEPING (my current microwave keeps beeping even if I press stop and/or open the door and I hate it so so so so much)

Edit: Thanks everyone! Based on recs here I bought a fridge without an ice machine and not LG, and it will be installed on Monday! I don't live in a rented unit, but usually I just say "apartment" rather than "condo" when I'm talking about neighbors.

I didn't go for freezer on the bottom cos those all seem to be drawers and I guess I do have an opinion about fridges, which is that I don't want the freezer to be a drawer, I feel like I'd get too cold pulling things out of it. So I got freezer-on-top, fridge-on-bottom.

There was 1 microwave with all the features I wanted plus the feature I didn't know I wanted where the numbers are arranged the same as a phone instead of [12345][678910] in 2 rows (why would you reinvent how to display numbers like this????) so I bought that one, and everything will be delivered on Monday!

Came home today and found wet clothes in the dryer. Which was weird because earlier, I had found the same load in there wet and just thought I had forgotten to start the dryer. Low and behold, when I stood and watched it, about ten seconds after starting it, it started beeping and gave out an F01 error code.

While googling it, it seemed that the code meant the relay electronics board had failed and needed to be replaced. I thought, I can probably do that, but the board seemed to be more than $150, which is more than the callout fee on our home warranty ($125). But what we most needed was a working dryer!

While looking for the exact price and a source to order the board, I found this video describing a simple fix for a blown solder connection. I unplugged the washer, opened it up, and the board was blown in the exact same spot as in the video. I soldered a jumper in, put it back together, and lo and behold, the dryer runs!

I have an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, even though it hasn't been my day job in a long time. So I could at least evaluate the plausibility of the fix, and I had the tools and know-how to do the soldering. So definitely not a fix for everyone.

Money is tight right now, so fixing the dryer for $0 (and in half an hour no less) was big for us. Sometimes you need a win, and today was a day I really needed one!

What fixes around the house are you most proud of, saved you some money, or kept a piece of equipment out of the landfill?

We bought our house over eight years ago and it came with a number of appliances. Within the first year, both the refrigerator and the dishwasher crapped out on us. We replaced them with new Frigidaire and Whirlpool models respectively, but I definitely haven't been satisfied with them. Now my washer and dryer are acting up and I'm not sure how much longer they've got.

When our fridge first started giving us issues, we had someone come out to try to fix the existing one. He basically told us that it would be around $400 to replace the failing motherboard on it — and given how simple that fridge was, it was essentially the price of a replacement. So you can't fix anything—you just throw it into a landfill and buy a new one.

The principle of "you get what you pay for" doesn't seem to apply, either. I don't need a fridge that has a 20-inch OLED screen for connecting to a Samsung account. Paying more just seems to get you more features that are likely to cause problems down the road.

Before we bought our replacement dishwasher, I got a subscription to Consumer Reports. The one we got was one of their recommendations. But it's just… not a good dishwasher. Little parts of it keep failing (e.g., the top rack's glassware holder-spine-thingies). And it's leaking, too!

So, to bring it back around to the subject title, how do you even find reliable appliances? Does anyone even make reliable appliances? It seems like there has been a race to the bottom among all of the appliance manufacturers (not that this is a unique to appliances, as this Vox piece explains). Long-term reliability doesn't move units off the showroom floor, so it doesn't get prioritized. (Plus there's the whole economic disincentive for "durable goods" to actually be durable.) And with model numbers changing annually, there's no good way to keep track of which models have proven reliability.

If you were to set up someone with a brand new kitchen, what are the components that you would suggest to them for getting that 80% of functionality for 20% of the investment (Pareto Principle)? These are especially things that I would consider to be worth a healthy investment as a buy-once-have-it-forever situation. Some things that come to mind:

A cast-iron pan: high skillcap and can cook almost any type of food
Stainless Steel Stock Pot: cooks most things stovetop that the pan can't handle
Chef's Knife: A good quality, sharp knife makes all the difference in the kitchen
Mason Jars: Preserve food, bring them to bulk stores, drink water out of them... top-tier utility

Things that are on the fence in my mind:
desktop blender/immersion blender/food processor: I love all of these appliances, but how important are they? A food processor is maybe the highest utility & makes meal prep way easier. Also unlocks recipes like hummus and salsa.
a large cutting board: small cutting boards suck, but how high of a priority is upgrading it?

Let's have a discussion where you state your case for an individual appliance/tool (or argue one of these suggestions) and see what other people have to say!

Seeing that this is taking off a bit, I'm going to try compiling some of the response data here:

Level 0 - Starter Kit

• Stainless Steel Pan (+3)

• Aluminum Stock Pot (+3)

• Vegetable Peeler (+3)

• Plastic Cutting Board (+3)

• Spoons / Spatulas / Ladles (+3)

• Chef's Knife (+2)

• Paring Knife (+2)

• Serrated Knife (+1)

Level 1 - Booster Pack

• Weighing Scale (+4)
• Baking Trays (+2)

Level 1a - Cooking I

• Immersion Blender (+2)
• Box Grater (+2)
• Dutch Oven (+1)

Level 1b - Baking I

• 2L jug (+1)
• Measuring Cup (+2)
• Pain De Mie Tin (+2)
• Wire Rack (+1)

Level 2 - Intermediate

• Instant Read Thermometer (+1)

Level 2a - Cooking II

• Food Processor (+1)

Level 2b - Baking II

• Immersion Whisk (+2)

Level 3 - Advanced

• Cast Iron Pan
• Mason Jars
• Air Fryer