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Has anyone gifted you food or a kitchen / cooking gadget that you particularly liked?
Coming up to Christmas and gift-giving is on my mind and I wondered if you've ever been given food or a food-related gadget that you liked? I guess we can also talk about the misses too.
I like chocolate, so small amounts of nice chocolate are something that I like.
I got a rice cooker one Christmas! It's nice to set and forget and it frees up space on the stovetop. I use it just about every day.
I'm also always happy to receive homemade preserves like jams and pickles! My aunt made a bunch of spicy pickled green beans last year and I thought they were great.
I also don't mind those little bags of soup mix or a mason jar with a "hot chocolate kit" in it, even though some people might think they're a bit hokey. I also once got a grinder with a mix of dried red chillies and salt in it during a $10-and-under Yankee Swap and I fought to keep it.
I got a sodastream last year for schristmas. I drink a lot of soda water, but not much flavored soda. For plain soda water, the cost of refilling the co2 cartridges is almost the same as a case of sparkling water from Costco, so it would have taken a long time to break even if I bought it myself. I really like the fact that it takes much less space than a case of water, and there is only a single disposable item in the entire process (when you swap containers, there is a disposable plastic tamper seal, which is reasonable).
I am also looking into getting an adapter to use a paintball co2 cartridge and getting it refilled, so hopefully that will bring the cost per bubble way down.
I would be very careful about your sources of gas. Non-food-grade (or better) compressed gas has a lot of oil residue that becomes aerosolized and dissolved in the water. Food-grade gas will be either high-purity or include non-toxic oils, or both. There may be filters that you can use on them but I'm not sure about their effectiveness.
Same goes for whippits, FYI...
Thanks for the advice. I have a few local gas supply shops I found online. I have to make sure one of them has food grade co2. I am looking at buying the containers from sodamod, who seem to do a lot to ensure quality and safety. But it's supposed to be around $2-5 to refill a paintball cartridge with food grade co2. That's hard to pass up when sodastream's exchanges cost $15. Also less of a carbon footprint shipping metal canisters around.
Then again, a paintball cartridge holds about 25g CO2 while a sodastream bottle holds about 425g of CO2.
I'd wager that the sodastream refills would be cheaper.
Are you thinking of the tiny cartridges? I am considering getting something like this. This one is 12oz, which should be around 340 grams. Smaller, but not by much. And much cheaper to fill.
I usually can't stand random kitchen gifts but the only ones that I have received are ones that I explicitly asked for:
-A wall mounted magnet bar to hold knives
-A whetstone
I love this.
The best random kitchen gadget I've been gifted is an automatic soap dispenser (mine is a Simplehuman). I put my dish soap into it, and that makes it much easier to do the dishes, since normally you have one too few hands when you try to hold a sponge, a dish, and pump soap at the same time.
My parents always buy from Lee Valley so I'm going to link to there for ease - also all their products are also very good and reliable :P
Just got these quarter-size baking pans and I <3 them - They're such a better size for washing and storage
These actually work the way you want silicon food covers to work - I got my first set as a gift and bought a second set and we pretty much eliminated saran wrap
Oil sprayer! because Pam is useful, but it's nice to be able to use higher-quality oils
Sous Vide! My girlfriend got me a sous vide for Christmas last year and I absolutely love it. It's about as easy to use as a microwave (probably easier because sous vide recipes come with time and temperature instructions, whereas a microwave is usually a guess-and-check experience) and you can use it to cook a perfect steak, perfect chicken, perfect salmon, perfect boiled eggs, perfect mashed potatoes, perfect anything. My favorite thing is using it when I meal prep my lunches. I throw in a couple chicken breasts and get to work prepping a bunch of salads. By the time everything is washed, cut, and put into containers, the chicken is ready. I compulsively eat half a breast and throw the rest in the fridge. Even on day four or five, it's still moist and (obviously) delicious.
A nice cast iron pan. It can be a bit of a pain in the ass to clean and maintain compared to a teflon pan, but its so versatile and I like the fact that it will last forever.
A few years ago my aunt bought me one of these pineapple tools at which my initial response was "yay, another useless single-use gadget to take up space in my kitchen" (not to her face, obviously!) but when the summer came around and I bought a pineapple I was basically an instant total convert. Sure, it's single use and it does take up space - but it works so darn well it's worth it.