What is your weirdest kitchen appliance and what do you think of it?
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?
It's my coffee stuff. I'm the weird coffee guy. The refractometer is probably what most people would consider weirdest, and it is used to measure the amount of coffee in my coffee. I have lots of other odd bits and bobs like a moka pot, and hand grinders that most folks would find funny.
I really like coffee. Even bad coffee boiled on a tractor engine at a USDA field day. But I really like to fiddle with my coffee at home, and since I let myself have one 18 gram serving of beans per day I want to get the most out of it. So I like to bust out all the toys every once and a while and play around, even though most days I do a simple immersion brew.
I can agonize at the bakers for a half hour deciding what pastry to best bring home to have with my coffee. When I can't get out in the mountains, I can always play with coffee in the kitchen!
Edit: I still brew beer every once and a while as well, so if carboys, large pots with spigots, and glass tools to measure specific gravity are weird, then those as well.
Would love to hear more about changes you’ve made to your coffee brewing and things you’ve noticed through using a refractometer.
Lots of little things, like the difference between paper and mesh filters with finer coffee grounds. Not worrying as much about over-steeping in a French press, because the percent extraction stops meaningfully increasing after a minute or two.
Probably it has been most helpful for dialing in my grind size. I used to be too fine for my brew method, then overcorrected to too course and wasn't getting the variety of flavors from the lighter roasts. I've dialed in different grinds for different methods. I do a 780μm grind for French press now instead of a 1100μm, which makes a huge difference in flavor.
That let me turn my attention to dosing, playing with everything from 10 to 70 grams per liter, tasting, and then measuring to validate. I find that depending on how you like your coffee, the 40-60 range is the best at balancing acids and bitterness for flavor, but that even the lower doses get decent extraction with immersion methods and can provide a light cup of coffee for people who usually have to blunt coffee with cream and sugar. Maybe counterintuitively, some of the fruitier notes are strongest in a higher dose with a short steep, and are easier to get with a pour over method. So now I use a different method for the really light specialty roasts.
So just lots of little things. The refractometer gave me an objective element in my tweaks, which is especially important when you are tasting things days or weeks apart. I hope that helps.
That is exactly the type of info I’d been looking for. Having a refractometer would help me with a lot of things too from the looks of it. Thanks!
Glad it helps! That said, a more knowledgeable person could probably have dialed things without the tool, so if I knew as much as I do now I probably could get close to what I do without spending the money. They are pricey little buggers.
have you tried swedish egg coffee / cowboy coffee?
Quite often when I was younger, and only occasionally now. When I grew up I lived in a wood heated home in the rural foothills of mountains in the western US. We had a percolator for coffee, but for large groups would make coffee in a large pot, with or without an egg to clump the ground. It's sort of like a modern cupping method, but scaled up.
I personally preferred simply using course grounds and letting it settle vs using an egg. I find the egg interferes with the flavor. It does help with bitterness, but so does not over heating the grounds. The egg also interferes with the natural acidity of the coffee.
Anymore, I mostly make cowboy coffee when camping. It really is just a scaled up cupping procedure, but without dainty bowls and spoons.
nice! when i did it, i did the ground beans, crack an egg (shell and all) in and mix out around until it’s one lumpy mass, then the water. it was way better than it should be.
i mostly use an aeropress with the flow control cap these days.
The aeropress is a little bit of magic to be sure. I'm just surprised and delighted to see someone else has had the egg coffee experience!
this is the video has the first time I saw it in action. It seemed so practical for certain circumstances... and her reaction seemed reasonable. Its such a nice cup.
I've been rolling with a mesh filter since I got the flow control cap going. I like the results of the cap, but I find that the filter sticks to it and the whole thing is messier than it should be.
I pretty much only do that, the odd mokapot, and hoffmann's no press french press, which is a really nice cup.
Those are all great methods! My daily driver is also the no press french press! Do you ever do the inversion method with the aeropress?
The mokapot is my go to weekend afternoon coffee where I want to take my time and fiddle to get things just right. I actually heat it on a cast iron skillet on my induction hob so I can get a super dialed in temperature to control the bubbling.
Cheers!
I used to be inverted until the new cap. I never spilled it like those randos on reddit, though... no idea how they do that.
For the moka pot, getting the temp down super low is the best but tough with gas. I've got this 'precise boil' element that is alright, but you can barely see the flame. I assume you're pre-boiling water etc etc, which is the right way :)
Reading through this thread, I had no idea how much of a minimalist I am in the kitchen.
Yep, preboiled water nice and low heat. I tried on my gas burner but just couldn't dial it in. The cast iron skillet is a great heatsink to even out the temperature as well.
It's good to be a minimalist! Better than having a ton of uni taskers!
There are dozens of us! Well, at least 3.
I believe this is an eggcorn and the original phrase is "every once in a while" as in "for a period of time, also known as 'a while', I will tend to do this just once".
/pedancy
Idk if this counts but:
Gracula
It's a garlic crusher that looks like dracula. And it works really really well and is easy to clean. Supposed to be good for nuts/ginger/herbs too but my partner hates fucking with whole garlic so this was a delight.
I don't think we have anything weirder
Gracula, meet my Angry Mama (the microwave oven cleaner): https://angrymama.co/
This was given to me nearly a year ago and at long last I finally used it two days ago. I guess it just goes to show that you should never question your mother, because it works really well!
I almost sent the Angry Mother to my mother because in my childhood, nothing would make her angrier than microwaving something uncovered. But even in my 40's, sometimes it's wiser to not poke the bear.
These are both things that have other options but they're cute and sometimes you just want a steaming mama or a vampire cursed to crush garlic his whole life.
If we're gonna have a thing, might as well have a cute one.
This is why I have a ladle and a pasta scoop that look like the loch ness monster. Well, actually thanks to my girlfriend. I'm much too utilitarian to purchase something like that myself.
Same company! Their stuff has been decent quality along with being whimsical so best of both worlds IMO
I find a warm/wet shop towel and tilex work great as well.
Am I wrong to think this is basically a weed grinder but for garlic?
A weed grinder? Oh you mean a spice grinder but for cannabis? (Seriously, trying to look up herb and spice grinders is just a paraphernalia mine field, it's very annoying)
It's not as heavy as the weed grinders I've confiscated from students and has no metal in it. Ymmv. I don't grind weed, just garlic, so I have no idea.
Also, looks like a vampire. 🦇
Sorry I guess my Canadian was showing there. Basically it's a device in two halves with spikes (or teeth) that grinds whatever is in it as you spin both halves counter to each other (or the top while the base stays still). It can be made of metal or plastic.
I suppose one major difference would be the size of the teeth and how much space is between them as you rarely have to grind garlic up into a powder.
No I mean my students have grinders, and I've confiscated them, they're just small, heavy and metal usually. And i've been annoyed in the past looking for spice grinders and only being able to find paraphernalia.
But these are pretty large teeth and create more of a mince/crush garlic, not a powder.
My mom was looking for a spice/nut grinder, this may be something to pass along?
Honestly I've always liked the brand! I think they sell a "grindula" that may be specialized or just smaller so worth checking out their page
Ah I looked it up, it stores herbs in the base, otherwise no real difference.
This website is fire! Bookmarking for super cute gifts!
Check and see if you have a local store that sells them! I have a little gifts/kitchen store in our downtown that sells these and similar products! It's a lot of stuff I wouldn't necessarily buy, but it's worth shopping local even if you're buying national
I have had a thermomix for ten years, it's very useful for all manner of things, including making and kneading pizza dough. Maybe you'd find the resulting dough uneven though!
I'm all for uneven doughs. My specialty bread loaf is no-knead!
I really liked the idea of a thermomix but I couldn't imagine ever using it enough to justify the extremely high price. I saw a while back that Kitchenaid made a much cheaper clone of it but I still never bought it because most reviewers say that they're not as good at any of their functions as any given device it's supposed to replace. But maybe it's more worthwhile to have something "good enough" that's convenient?
My secret is that it was a gift so I didn't actually pay for it myself. Same for my sous vide tank and espresso maker. I also hesitate a lot if I'm the one who has to pay for the thing, for example maybe one day I'll finally grab an instant pot for myself (I know it's way cheaper but that's how much harder it is...)
I enjoy cooking, so I have a few contenders, but one, I think, takes the cake.
It would be my spätzle (sh-PAYTZ-la) maker. It came from Munich and I have yet to find one that looks like it that is available outside of Europe. Most of the ones in North America have a hopper that traverses back and forth over a perforated piece of steel. I find those cumbersome and difficult to clean. Mine looks more like this one, but the one I have has holes that are oblong shaped and not round like that one (which is critical for getting the right noodle shape). It also has a differently shaped handle and means to set it on the pot rim to keep it from slipping. Anyway, Spätzle is a German noodle that is fairly simple to make, but delicious (I mean, it's flour, water, egg, salt, nutmeg, and butter - what is not to love?). It is a uni-tasker, but I can't make authentically shaped spätzle without it!
Runners up include:
I've always just put the cloves in a bowl with a lid and shaken them for about 30 seconds, 95% of the cloves unpeel themselves, no uni-taskers needed.
Violence solves many of life's problems.
Depending on the garlic, sometimes I can peel them simply by smashing them with my thumb. There's a specific way to rub them to get it to work, but when it happens it doesn't damage the garlic as much as more violent ways tend to do.
Never noticed any damage, but does make me curious what you're doing with the garlic that damage to a clove would be an issue. I can't think of a time where I don't subsequently smash, slice, mince, or puree it afterward, but cooking is and endless landscape so there's plenty I don't know.
Damaging garlic makes it more harsh, so if you are trying to make it sweet for a garlic-forward recipe, it’s best to avoid doing that.
I don’t know for sure but I think if you cook it first it doesn’t matter, so if you roast it or stew it first it should be great.
And to be honest the majority of recipes it either doesn’t actually matter, and in some the sharper flavoring is actually better.
When I make forty clove chicken I keep about half the garlic whole (in skin usually) to give both the gentle and the stronger garlic flavor.
I have started using a bench scraper rather than a knife for squishing garlic cloves. Using a knife always made me think I was wrecking the sharp on the knife, and there's always a possibility of the knife slipping and cutting fingers.
I get a little thrill out of mcguivering solutions when I don't have a particular gadget.
I wanted to try Spatzl without buying the special tool, and landed on an ikea cheese grater with a large lip around the edge. Honestly, I was really satisfied with the outcome and sounds k8nd of similar to yours :)
I have a knife specifically for bread. It's basically a bread saw.
It's rarely used these days, but when I get into my "bread baking" moods (usually with my bread machine), it's a very important tool in my kitchen for Mr. Tired, he really likes even slices.
I also have a stool so I can sit while I cook or clean in the kitchen. Fibro really takes the energy out of me, and standing still/not walking or sitting for too long is so physically painful, I've basically given up cooking until I realized I could just... get a chair and sit in it - but I had to get one tall enough that I could still cut on the counter and stir things on the stove for ergonomic reasons. I really wanted a swivel or rolling chair, but everyone in my emergency contacts said no. It's been really helpful, and I've been cooking a lot more lately.
What does it do that a normal bread knife doesn't?
Takes the guesswork/margin of error out of uneven slicing.
If you flip through the photos it shows someone cutting bread with it. Looks like you use it what I would have expected to be sideways, the wooden frame makes a guide so you can slice an even piece.
lol nothing. it's just a silly tool we have. It's got the back part, so you can't get bigger slices than the width between the blade and the handle.
Ah yes, the cooking seat is the most important kitchen implement! There is a lot less I would be willing to make if I didn’t have one.
Absolutely! I would love to have a few more gadgets that I love - I got a veggie chopper and started using it recently, and it's fine, but I do still love my chef's knife and I spend a lot of time ensuring that stays perfectly sharp.
I don't have a jar opener or anything, because Mr. Tired does all of that for me.
Coffee stuff and tea stuff, I think, depending on what counts. In terms of typical "appliances" probably nothing truly weird.
But coffee/tea, for instance, the strangest one I can think of (that would make someone that recognizes most appliances go "wtf is that") is a manual hand-lever espresso maker
That and the hand grinder, probably
I'm looking into buying a Cafelat Robot as manual espresso maker. Seems like a great experience.
I’ve been very interested in purchasing a manual espresso maker. Is it a pain to get going or is it easy to just pull (push?) a few shots on a workday morning?
This one's quite easy, IMO. It seems a bit intimidating, but once you've done in a couple of times it's simple. Have to dial coffees in just like you would on any other espresso machine. Basically just putting the coffee in the basket, tamping it, putting the screen on it, warming the cylinder that goes on top of the basket (with gaskets), filling it with water, putting in the pressure gauged "top" part that pushes the water down and aligning the handle to press on it.
Most of getting quick with it is just getting used to doing it this particular way. Obviously more steps than an automatic machine, but none of them are that fiddly or time-consuming.
If I had to give any criticisms, the plastic lever/body creaks, but is very strong, but had I had more of a budget at the time, I would have gone with the metal ones, probably. It does feel weird to put a lot of pressure on it but it's not going to break or anything. The gauge helps you get the feel of how to press your shots the right amount (and if you want to draw down pressure towards the end of the shot, etc).
Other criticism is by default a pressurized removable "bottom" thing is attached to the basket, which is intended more for people using pre-ground store coffee, to give them a faux espresso crema. Low-end espresso stuff does this pretty commonly, and I don't entirely blame them, they know their market. It is removable, and I recommend that to make it more like a regular basket (either naked on the bottom or there's a non-pressurized 'funnel' kind of thing, either is fine just like a regular espresso machine).
As much as I do love it, and have pulled both bad and good shots with it, I am still very tempted to get a Delonghi Stilosa to try ever since Lance Hedrick recommended it- basically as the first "good" powered espresso machine he's found at budget prices (like $85 AND it has a stainless steel boiler inside, and is built in such a way that mods will be easy too)
I would like very much to have a seltzer water on-demand tap in my kitchen. Some discussion here but the solutions are pretty space intensive. We have a tiny kitchen and all the space is fully committed. Also, kegerators seem very energy inefficient -- unless they've gotten better since college, those mini-fridges represent a pretty large electrical load
roadfor what they do. I'd love to have something I could stick in the basement and pipe up to a kitchen tap.If I'm honest, the current process of filling cold water from the fridge and running it through the soda stream one touch is perfectly adequate, though I drink 3-4 liters of it every day, so I am doing it a lot and using up cylinder every 10 days or so.
It might be worth looking at commercial soda machine setups. It's been ages since I've worked in a restaurant, but when I did, there was a big CO2 tank with the soda syrups in the back of the kitchen and they were piped 30-45 feet to the soda machine at the front of the kitchen and 60-75 feet to the bar at the far corner of the building. I suspect something like that could deal with a setup in the basement.
I know someone who set this up with a tank in the kitchen, but it involved drilling a hole in the counter.
Thanks, I will check it out.
I was reading about these on buy it for life recently and the recommendations for Drinkmate and Aarke were both discussed. One of the appeals is the ability to adapt them for large CO2 cannisters that can last months and re filled up from commercial suppliers cheaper than the canisters.
This is what I do and it's very much worth the hassle of refilling it every few months vs dealing with exchanging the tiny canisters at the store.
IIRC it was about $100 for a 5lb tank and first fill, then $15 every refill after. I bought everything except the Soda Stream adapter from a local brewing company because I didn't trust the super cheap CO2 tanks on Amazon and the like. This one is certified and the clerk has checked the tank over every time which makes me feel a lot better about having a pressure vessel at home.
Please make sure if you do this to properly tie down the tank so it cannot in any way get knocked over. You do not want to snap the valve and discover the pleasures of rocketry (and potential suffocation) in your kitchen.
Here's the adapter for your machine, @first-must-burn
https://www.amazon.com/Upgraded-Soda-Adapter-Stainless-Gauge/dp/B0BGS6PDCY/
I have considered this route, but there's not really a good place to keep the larger cylinder in our kitchen. Plus the rocketry/suffocation hazards you mention. If I could find a rig to refill the small bottles, then I would probably put a big cylinder in the basement and keep the small bottles for convenience.
For what it’s worth, it isn’t necessary to use custom cartridges for a soda stream to make sense financially. My family really likes plain sparkling water, not soda. That is pretty much the cheapest scenario to compare soda stream cartridges to. Even still, I calculated that you just about break even compared with Costco sparkling water. You can of course save a lot with custom cartridges, but it isn’t the only way to make it viable.
I recently bought a pasta extruder. I don't need it, and it's neither financially viable nor is the noodle quality better than store bought dry pasta.
It was so damn expensive. I wanted one with metal parts and a capable motor, not those flimsy plastic extruders breaking as you fill in your first round of semola di grano duro. It was so damn expensive, and this repetition is intended. I'll ned to eat pasta till the end of my life to get it amortised.
But it's so much fun and satisfying, and using it makes you admire the art behind the commodity that pasta today is. The machine has enough oomph that you extrude pretty dry, non sticking pasta (important differentiation against the cheap flimsy ones). The possibilities are endless if you don't mind spending a multiple of the original hefty investment for extrusion matrices. I'm just beginning my journey, and had nice results with whole wheat and colouring with turmeric.
Seriously, don't buy a pasta extruder. Just keep using store bought pasta and admire the technology behind it. If you have a big family and lots of disposable income and time, go for it. I have neither of these, but still in no way I regret it.
That sounds like a complete waste of money. Care to share the brand/model so I can waste my own money too?
Sure! I bought a Häussler Luna. Big enough for around 300 g of semolina. I think this particular manufacturer is specific to the german/european market. An alternative (which I also considered buying) was a machine named La Fattorina. This one seems to be bigger, though.
I'm surprised! I find store bought fresh pasta is so much nicer than dry pasta, so I'd assume pasta you made yourself would be a lot nicer too!
FWIW, I have a ~$75 KitchenAid mixer-attached pasta roller, and I love the thing. It isn't as fancy as a dedicated pasta extruder, but for fresh flat noodles, it is (IMO) amazing. I also use it for flat-sheeting dough for tons of other things, from ravioli to rolled specialty breads.
We own two Kitchen Aid stand mixers. I don't know how weird this is, but it's gotten the most in-person comments of all our kitchen appliances, so I guess it must be a bit weird.
We wanted a second mixing bowl, and the brand name ones are ~$90 CAD new. Or... hop on marketplace and buy a used stand mixer for $100 and it comes with the bowl, and all the attachments (which we didn't think we cared about, but having a second set of attachments is a lot more useful, especially when you have a second bowl).
We very frequently use both bowls, though I think we've only had both mixers going at the same time shortly after we bought it. Our kitchen isn't quite big enough for that, and we really haven't found any need to mix things simultaneously in separate bowls.
My tofu press.
I may be mildly dyslexic. That is, my brain loves to hallucinate words or phrases I'd rather see than what's actually there. So...
I used to think the device was called "tofu torture". I love this!
How dare you. Tofu presses are not weird! I just used mine today! 😿
Ok maybe it’s a little weird. You make tofu at home too, right?
Er uh... no. 😉
But I should look into it. I'd love to be able to make "super firm" like I occasionally buy.
Do it! It’s not hard at all. Even better if you do it from homemade soy milk because it has more natural flavor to it that the factory stuff has been sitting around too long to retain.
What do you use as a strainer? Cheesecloth frustrates me, as I find I have to frequently throw it out.
For the soy milk, you just use a nut milk bag. The pulp is fairly easy to get out.
For pressing the curds into blocks, if you want to make that style, toy would have to use either a cheesecloth or a muslin. They are pretty easy to clean off too since the curds will be sticking together.
We've already had a few coffee replies so I'll go with my poffertjes pan and batter dispenser that I had to buy to be able to use the poffertjes pan.
It turns out that the Dutch are onto something and poffertjes are delicious.
POFFERTJES MY BELOVED
Uncommon: cooking chopsticks. They're a whip, tongs/spatula, fork, and rough thermometer all in one.
Gadget: food huggers. They're silicon cap for cut fruit and vegetables. Kinda works, but more often than not I'll use the entire vegetable anyway nowadays.
I’ve never really understood those things. Why not just eat the whole vegetable? They aren’t that big.
Main usecase I found:
It would be a shame to ruin the balance of a dish, in my opinion, because of the arbitrary size or amount of an ingredient.
So I can make it last two meals. We just use regular Tupperware or plastic wrap though depending on what it is. There's only two of us ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not weird at all really, but as a Luddite chef who loves to do things manually, it’s personally weird for me to own and regularly use an electric pepper mill. It’s simply undeniably useful to be able to grind pepper using only one hand.
Maybe more conventionally unusual would be my silicon pie crust insulator rings.
We had a Rolli.
I actually found out them on an Alton Brown's "useless kitchen gadgets" video my sister showed me at a holiday gathering a few years back.
Then soon after I noticed it hiding behind some pots and pans... I am pretty insistent on keeping our kitchen gadgets relevant and used (as our previous kitchen that we had at the time did not have a lot of storage space), and my SO likes any and every new shiny thing he can use once. He also doesn't hide them, so obviously the thing hadn't been used in a while.
Long story short, I immediately did a purge of all kitchen gadgets I suspected he wouldn't notice missing and kept them in a box until the next family holiday gathering (about 6-8 months later). A few he asked if I knew where they went, so those were rescued, but the Rolli (and a number of other items) were not.
I threw them away just before the holiday gathering, and I mentioned to my sister about my purge. She laughed and asked my SO if he missed the Rolli... totally threw me under the bus.
So... what is a Rolli? Searching "rolli kitchen" just gives me links for rolling kitchen carts.
I think this is it!
Oh dang, that was hilarious! Alton Brown is a trip.
I think I remember seeing this gadget getting made fun of before, but I definitely didn't remember the name. Thanks!
Yep, that's the one.
I did try it once just to make sure it was that ... epic, and it was, for various definitions of epic.
That's it!
I have a meat masher and it isn't what you think. It isn't a mallet or other tenderizing device. Rather imagine a plastic whisk, but instead of a whisk on the end of the handle it is a set of ridged fins in a star pattern. Allegedly it's use is to break up ground meat in a pan.
I was given the option between a meat thermometer or this meat masher. I am given a meat thermometer every year at work so I select this. I've used it once for the sake of testing its function. I hate it but I don't know how to dispose of it.
It's actually not bad for actually mashing ground beef, like in a chili, assuming you mean something like this. Though I also tend to use it more for mixing batter, and I tend to use a potato masher like this one to break up meat clumps. For mashing potatoes, I've started using a ricer.
I think straight in the trash isn't a bad call if you don't like it though.
I have one of these as well (ironically left in the house from previous owners when I bought it) and I've found I use it a lot for batters, like waffle or pancakes, it works really well and it's easier to clean than using a normal metal whisk. I wouldn't use it on things I actually need to whip but for thick batters, cakes/brownies etc it works pretty good
Thanks for the tip! Maybe this is the redemption arc for the batter beater.
A couple summers ago I picked up one of these ice shavers:
https://www.amazon.com/ZENY-Shaver-Machine-Electric-Stainless/dp/B07L848M2M
Super fun to bring over to the family get together and make snow cones for everyone and their kiddos. Or surprise some friends I've had over for some drinks and BBQ on a hot day.
Also gives me the ability to freeze and shave all kinds of stuff you can't get at a normal snow cone shack around here. Freezing and shaving fruits is a great treat without having the sugary snow cone syrups. (Although clean-up after shaving anything besides ice is admittedly rough haha)
I love shaved ice but an ice shaver is one of those “damned if I’m buying it” purchases for me. I already have an ice cream maker I will never use again.
One thing you might want to do if you haven’t already is to freeze blocks of milk or coconut milk to shave.
Salt Pig
My kid loves salt. Instead of overpriced and overhyped Osmo Salt, I convinced him to try Maldon Salt from a salt pig that looks a little bit... like a pig.
I have a salt pig that looks like a frog! The salt frog was an art fair ceramics purchase! It makes me happy (and my partner too since it was his gift)
https://imgur.com/a/YzoE9mB
Well that is cute. But what is Osmo salt? It seems strange to me to need to convince kids to eat since I don’t know anyone who hates salt. Oversalted things, yes, but not salt in general.
Osmo salt is overhyped, overpriced salt. https://www.osmosalt.com/
But my kid got excited by the advertising. So I bought some osmo salt. Which comes in a fancy glass container. Then I bought Maldon Salt. Which is legitimately good salt for sprinkling on top of tomatoes. But it doesn't come in a fancy glass container. Then we did a taste test comparison. While my kid preferred the taste of Maldon Salt when tasting blind, he still preferred Osmo Salt. Advertising works. So I got the salt pig. And the Maldon Salt goes in the salt pig. Now he prefers Maldon Salt.
I don't need to convince him to eat, or to cook, but I did want to discourage him from preferring osmo salt, purely on principle.
So now I have an incredibly cute salt pig, and we don't talk about osmo salt anymore, which you know, is a huge win, because he cooks a lot, and having easy access to salt makes cooking even more fun :)
I have a sous vide immersion circulator, which I think is a bit more common these days. But I’ve been using it lately at a relatively low temperature to create a warm environment for my fermentations; particularly for my ginger bug sodas. I live in an area that’s just slightly colder than fermentations tend to prefer, so this speeds things up noticeably. The downside is I don’t like the idea of running it 24/7 even though I suspect it’s using very little power compared to everything else in my abode.
If you want to run your circulator efficiently, what you aught to do is use a cooler as your container to keep in the heat. If your circulator is completely immersable, you should close the lid on it, but if not you can toss some ping pong balls on top of the water to minimize heat loss from evaporation.
That’s pretty clever! Unfortunately I don’t have a cooler large enough for this to be feasible for my needs, but I’ll definitely keep that in mind.
It's actually the gherry-rigged way to sous-vide; you would just fill a cooler with water a bit warmer than your desired temperature and then close it up. They keep the heat, so it cooks your food.
My family tried the ping pong ball trick but found them difficult to keep clean. A good ol' kitchen rag covering the whole top works just fine too! Though it's more for keeping things submerged when cooking.