Cooking For Engineers®

Recently, I received a wireless thermometer from Thermoworks to try out. Their newest product is called Smoke and is specifically designed to help people barbecue and smoke food at home. Smoke has two parts - a base unit (which takes two of Thermoworks standardized Pro-Series probes) and a wireless receiver unit - which lets the user track the air temperature and the food temperature without going outside to the smoker.
Thermoworks is selling the Smoke at $99 and this would definitely welcome tool for anyone who likes to slow cook food outside.

These days when I reach for a spatula to turn food in a pan, I've been finding myself grabbing the GastroMax Slotted Turner more often than not. Tina bought this spatula for me after months (or maybe years) of listening to me complain about our various spatulas. After buying the GastroMax Turner, my complaining has stopped.

The Little Partners Learning Tower will probably be useful only for parents, but, it is so good at what it does, that I think everyone should know about it. If you don't have young kids, but, you know someone who does, this might be the ultimate gift that will be used for years to come.

As a fat used for cooking, butter provides a unique flavor and aroma to many dishes. The problem with butter is that before you get to its smoke point, the milk solids have gone past browning to burning. Removing the milk solids and impurities allows us to retain much of the flavor of butter while being able to cook at higher temperatures. Butter without milk solids is called clarified butter or drawn butter (although some restaurants serve just melted butter as drawn butter). The process (clarifying butter) is quite simple.