Does it make sense to go to culinary school?

July 14, 2013 by
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Amy McKeever over at Eater recently took a hard look at The Pros and Cons of Culinary Education.  As her introduction reads, " "The best known culinary schools in the country come with price tags that range anywhere from$35,000 to $54,000 for a two-year associate's degree or up to about$109,000 for a bachelor's degree. All this for a career path… read more

How to clean your coffee grinder

July 12, 2013 by
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The Chow has some very practical advice for anyone that loves to grind their own coffee beans - 4 Ways to Clean Your Coffee Grinder. After all, you can't put the grinder in water. The answer is very practical: "...grind something in the grinder that will absorb the oils and odors without adding any of its own." Examples include instant… read more

A surprise answer to the question: What is the best all-around metal spatula?

June 19, 2013 by
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America's Test Kitchen (which publishes Cook's Illustrated) recently told us to Say Hello to the Best Metal Spatula. Somewhat surprisingly, they propose that a fish spatula is actually the best spatula to use for all kitchen purposes as "With its maneuverability, surgical precision, and crisp, high-end construction, this spatula could not be beat."  And despite its light-weight nature, it supported a… read more

The creation of a new verb – To Ottoleng.

June 15, 2013 by
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We all have our favorite cookbooks and Tim Hayward in the Financial Times looks at how much our choices reflect current entertaining trends. Perhaps this particularly resonated with me since I lived in the UK for most of the period he covers but I think it should ring true with many EYB members.  How often have we gone to a… read more

The nine top grilling gadgets from Cook’s Illustrated

June 11, 2013 by
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Father's Day is approaching and, although it may be overdone, it still strikes us as appropriate to pass on some ideas for grilling gifts. And rather than compile them ourselves, we're handing over the job to real experts - the testers at America's Test Kitchen (Cook's Illustrated). Here are their 9 Favorite Grilling Gadgets for Outdoor Cooking; check out the article for… read more

The surprising – and not so surprising – items people steal from restaurants

June 9, 2013 by
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Over at examiner.com, they have an interesting article on Top Items Patrons Steal from Restaurants. Some aren't terribly surprising - salt and pepper shakers, sugar, creamers. But there are some real surprises and some peculiar stories. Tied with salt and pepper shakers for first as most popular stolen items was one we hadn't thought about - toilet paper. Apparently bathroom items… read more

Insider tips on how to make a perfect date at a farmers’ market

June 6, 2013 by
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It's June - a traditionally a romantic month - so we thought we 'd stray a little from a pure food topic and note this wonderful article, Why Farmers Markets Make the Perfect First Date. Forrest Pritchard, author of Gaining Ground (the story of how he turned around his seventh-generation farm) and owner of Smith Meadows is a seasoned veteran… read more

Mario Batali: Why a successful food blog is like a restaurant menu

June 5, 2013 by
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Atlantic Magazine recently reported on an interesting discussion among Mario Batali (no introduction needed), Deb Perelman (Smitten Kitchen blog), and one of their editors about the digital side of the culinary world. The entire article, How a Restaurant Menu is Like a Website, is well worth reading as the two chefs make several interesting points. Here are three that struck us as… read more

How to write recipes worthy of publishing

June 4, 2013 by
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One of the real pleasures of learning to cook well is the creativity that comes from creating your own recipes. And while sharing those triumphs with family and friends is great, it can also be fun to submit original recipes to cooking contests or food magazines. In an article from the blog Will Write for Food, Kristine Kidd - the… read more

The difference between grilling and barbecue

May 21, 2013 by
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At least in the northern hemisphere, it's now officially grilling/barbecue season - and we understand that it's actually never not grilling season down under. So we thought a brief primer on the difference between barbecue and grilling, courtesy of this video at Southern Cooking, might be helpful to all our members. So what is the difference? It's simple: Barbecue is… read more

Remembering the great food commercials

May 15, 2013 by
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The Daily Meal has a wonderful list today for all of you of a certain age who might have spent a fair time in front of a television set (we plead guilty) in the U.S. It's a list of The 11 Most Iconic Food Commercials of All Time, plus links to the actual commercial on You Tube. As they say, "They're… read more

Specialty kitchen tools – which do you toss & which do you keep?

April 23, 2013 by
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Food Republic recently ran an article dealing with specialty tools, "Spring Cleaning: 5 Outdated Kitchen Tools You Should Toss Right Now." To some degree, we found the list surprising, since of the 5 tools they mention, we consider 2 of them to be remarkably useful: Egg separator: This makes sense - your fingers do the best job Garlic press: Sorry,… read more

Chefs’ favorite knives

April 18, 2013 by
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The Kitchn recently pointed out this article from details.com, which asked six chefs to name their favorite knives: April Bloomfield, Marc Forgione, Jesse Schenker, Stuart Brioza, Chris Shepherd, and Stephanie Izard. The answers are an unquestioned victory for the Japanese - all of the knives are of Japanese origin - with strong and thin seeming to be the most attractive… read more

Some of the best food moments in movies

April 16, 2013 by
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Awhile ago we published a blog on The best food movies and movie scenes, which proved to be quite popular. We had a lot of nice responses from our readers about their favorite scenes, including the escargot moment in Pretty Woman, the Solent Green jelly moment, and this scene from Tampopo. So when we saw this blog on Serious Eats, Staff Picks:… read more

Making a pepper mill more user friendly

April 15, 2013 by
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ATK's Feed recently published some helpful tips on managing a pepper mill. Most cooks have learned the mantra that freshly ground pepper is much more flavorful than preground, but that still doesn't mean that pepper mills are especially user friendly. Here are some tricks to making them a bit more useful (check out the article, 3 Terrific Pepper Mill Tricks,… read more

Is “A” graded Maple Syrup better than “B”?

April 14, 2013 by
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It's maple syrup season here in the New England, so we thought we'd take a moment to discuss grades of maple syrup and dispute the claim that an "A" is better than a "B."  We should note that the grades depend whether you're buying maple syrup from Canada or the United States, since the two have different grading systems. Canada, which… read more

Time to play hide-and-seek

April 12, 2013 by
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It's Friday (at least here in the U.S.) so we wanted to be a little frivolous and this posting from Epicurious touched the spot. In Top Ten Places to Hide Your Snacks Kemp Minifie aims to help those of us who'd like to make the cookies, chips, caviar, whatever just a little harder to dip into. Or, alternatively, keep them to… read more

It’s time to harvest the spaghetti crop

April 7, 2013 by
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Recently, a member of a very erudite cooking bulletin board raised the  fact that it is now the spaghetti harvest season in Switzerland. The Swiss have, to a large extent,  convinced the rest of the world that spaghetti is made in Italy from a wheat dough, but true food cognescenti are aware that spaghetti is actually grown on trees. Like… read more

What’s your favorite song to cook to?

April 5, 2013 by
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The Daily Meal recently posted a fun list, Best Songs to Bake To. And they have some good ones, which they've posted on Spotify if you'd like to download them. Here's the list: I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) - The Four Tops Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns In Bed - Kinky Friedman Good Lovin'… read more

Busting common food myths

March 30, 2013 by
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Angela Keller, writing for the Daily Meal, took on some common food myths and busted them all. Here's a short list of the kitchen myths she refuted - you can check out all the myths and the full details in Busting the Most Common Kitchen Myths: Salting water makes water boil faster Never rinse your mushrooms Store coffee in the… read more

Which food words make you laugh?

March 22, 2013 by
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Kerry Acker at Epicurious wrote a column yesterday - Food Words are Funny! which certainly sent us into the weekend with a smile:  "I woke up this morning and laughed out loud. Why? Because, for some inexplicable reason, the first thing I thought about as I crawled out of bed was the word pumpernickel. Seriously, is there a funnier word out… read more

The fate of the family dinner

March 10, 2013 by
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The demise of the family dinner has been forecast since at least the 1950's, when TV dinners and tables became popular. So we were a little surprised that NPR brought the subject up again in "Family Dinner: Treasured Tradition or Bygone Ideal." But we wanted to hear if they said anything new. Well, kind of. As a result of a… read more

Choosing the best heavy-duty kitchen scale

March 5, 2013 by
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Over at America's Test Kitchen, they've been evaluating heavy-duty kitchen scales. In Heavyweight Champion: The OXO Good Grips 22-lb Food Scale,  they acknowledge that the bigger sibling of their favorite smaller scale takes the prize. As Lisa McManus writes, "It's durable, easy to read, and stores away very neatly since it's flat. With this scale in the ring, other models… read more

Garlic meets the microwave – quickly peeling or roasting a head of garlic

February 25, 2013 by
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Here's a quick tip from Chow for a Monday morning. Heat a head of garlic in a microwave for about 20 seconds and the cloves will slide right out of their skins  - no mess and no sticky problem. This video demonstrates. And while we're on the subject of microwaving garlic, check out the Kitchn's tip for roasting garlic in… read more

The best food movies and movie scenes

February 23, 2013 by
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We're doing a two-part food and movie blog this weekend in honor of the Oscars. Today we're looking at two compilations - from Serious Eats  of  their favorite food movies  and Boston.com's collection of chefs's favorite movie scenes. In 12 of Our Favorite Food Movies, Serious Eats lists movies that are either about food or have great food scenes. Here's… read more
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