The Egg-Perfect Egg timer Review
Yes, I laughed when I saw this small egg timer that was supposed to deliver perfectly cooked hard, soft or medium boiled eggs. Since I already know how to cook hardboiled eggs properly this item just seemed useless.
I thought of the many people I see online saying that their hard boiled eggs yolks never turn out yellow and those who follow recipes (like my son) and are spinning eggs on counter tops to see if they are done. So I decided to give it a try against the normal directions most of us follow for hardboiled eggs.
The timer claims to calculate cooking stages based on temperature, not time and adjusts for number of eggs, water and altitude. It claims to darken as the eggs used are at the stage indicated on the timer.
I started the eggs in cold water, placed on stovetop and inserted this egg. I put my reservations aside and boiled them gently until the egg darkened to hard boiled (yes it matched my other time almost perfectly). I removed them from the heat – and let them cool. The Norpro Egg-Perfect Egg timer is short on directions for after they are boiled. I attempted to remove the shells (extremely difficult) this is because the instructions do not indicate how long to cool, etc., but other than that – they were perfectly cooked hard boiled eggs. Perfectly done, and not overdone, yellow yolks.
Bottom line – at $4.99 this egg timer might come in handy for soft boiled eggs because more people seem to have difficultly in obtaining that stage than hard boiled. If you love gadgets or know a beginner, this product does work (still need a bit more directions for after removing the eggs from the pan than given in my opinion.) So if this is something you need, its an inexpensive option for an item that actually works.
The Saga of Cooking software
After years of binders, recipes boxes, file folders and various other methods of keeping all the recipes I’ve clipped from magazines organized, I broke down and purchased recipe software from Cook’n.
I read all the reviews, I pondered the cost. I thought long and hard about whether I would devote the time to actually loading all those recipes (since time is something I don’t seem to have enough of – why you ask did I start a blog? Crazy I guess). I waited for the CD to come. It arrived in a brown box – a secret from my family who already thought I was insane with the whole “cooking thing”. I installed it and then the real trouble began. I became obsessed with entering recipes every spare moment I had.
You can create a menu for the week and the software will create your grocery list from the recipes you’ve chosen. I had the only typed grocery list at the local market. Now my family could make fun of me in earnest. Even my butcher, Earl, thinks I’m tweaked. I spent Sunday nights pouring over all the possibilities to create the next 5 days meals. 2 nights beef, 2 nights ethnic, 1 night chicken? The possibilities were endless and for several weeks I had enormous grocery bills from creating my gourmet menus. Finally, I returned back to earth.
After that stage, I entered the collect more cookbooks stage, as if I didn’t already have enough recipes to enter. Somehow I envisioned I would have the largest compilation of recipes ever. Bananas Foster, got it. Coconut custard pie, Turducken, check and check. The honest truth is that all of these are already available on the internet. I was completely hooked.
There are numerous reasons that owning the software is a blessing. I finally took all my old family recipes from their yellowed recipe cards and have them in one place. Not to mention all the magazine clippings from 1991 from Southern Living. I can search for a recipe by an ingredient. If I have left over turkey – I search turkey in the software and every recipe comes up to choose from. Have pork loin in the freezer I need to use and no great ideas? Cook’n. it’s motivated me to keep that meat moving. It also has allowed me to enter recipes from cookbooks that I had been saving for just one or two recipes. Then I was able to paperbackswap them (there’s an additional article here on this site) and get more cookbooks, which led to more obsessive behavior.
I can search internet recipes and enter them directly or I can print out a cookbook for my niece of my mother’s and grandmother’s recipes for a gift. For those of you watching sodium or fat, it has nutritional values associated with most recipes. It was easy enough for me to figure out how to use (which was the real bonus after having a previous company’s software which had such a long learning curve I gave up on using it.)
Apparently they have started an app for your smart phone, but I’m not that techno savvy yet. I just wanted to have all my recipes together, organized and not in several places with no way to identify where my Christmas cookie recipes were.
If I had to focus on one item it does for me – it’s the grocery list. Having a full time job, husband, kids and the life that most of us are living today, I can pull a menu together – hit the grocery list button – check off what I already have in the house – and print. It shows the quantities needed as well as the item. It makes my grocery shopping a breeze compared to the old days.
All in all, Cook’n was a very good investment in my house of both money and time. It is foodie software. I bought Cook’n for my friend and she used it for about 2 weeks and reported back to me saying that “it’s too much work to enter the recipes.” She ended up buying numerous e-cookbooks off of the Cook’n website and she enjoys her software that way. She hasn’t added any new recipes in over a year, but claims that the Cook’n cookbooks are more than enough. I guess not everyone caught the bug like me. But if you’ve got the itch for organization and new recipes….. this is foodie genius.
Cook Like A Rock Star by Anne Burrell
I admit I’m biased about Anne Burrell so before I review her cookbook, I need to be honest about My daughter’s obsession with all things Anne Burrell.
My daughter happens to have a great deal of physical problems and we rescheduled a visit to Johns Hopkins Hospital to visit with her surgeon to be able to have Anne Burrell sign my daughter’s cookbook. Upon waiting in line for hours, what does my daughter do? Bursts into tears so that she couldn’t say a word to Anne Burrell. Cookbook $27.99, moment with Anne Burrell, priceless.
With that in mind, I will do the best I can to review this cookbook objectively, but I admit to a strong bias.
I breezed through the recipes in Cook Like A Rock Star while waiting in line to see Anne Burrell at Williams Sonoma. On first glance, I thought it was another Italian cookbook with high end ingredients which would require a lot of work (a Mario Batali spinoff – since he does write the foreword). I was pleasantly surprised to note that while you can feel Mario’s inspiration in this cookbook, Anne definitely has a mind of her own and this cookbook is all her.
While this cookbook would strain my 24 year old son’s budget (with items such as Figs stuffed with gorgonzola & walnuts or Rockin’ Porchetta with fall veggies,) there are some items he could afford such as Rosemary & Lemon Roasted Chicken or Halibut in paper. The thing to note is that this cookbook was not intended for the beginning cook. I think this cookbook is good for all ages but really hits all us 40 or 50 something year old cooks who yearn for something creative and different to try. Some are old standbys (rack of lamb or rib eye) and some are new (Taliolini with Salsa Cruda and Ricotta Salata).
I have tried several recipes; the Pasta Fagoli, Risotto without a recipe, Dry Rubbed Bone In Rib Eye and Braised Lamb Shanks. All were excellent. I will make all four recipes for my family again. I am looking forward to trying the Rack of Lamb crusted with black olives.
Most of the recipes in Cook Like a Rock Star are not Wednesday night – get home from work – and whip them up style recipes. They are Sunday afternoon, drink a glass of wine – with good music – while prepping – type of recipes. While a lot of these recipes might not be your cup of tea (say the Duck Breast), if you haven’t yet learned to make pasta at home, there is a very good recipe for basic pasta in this cookbook – along with Anne’s technique for making pasta.
I am forgetting Anne Burrell herself. She adds her feelings and musings on mise en place (prep), tasting as you go, pantry items and many other culinary virtues. She is funny, but crisp, which also makes this an easy to read cookbook.
Since I have a large collection of cookbooks, I am always looking for a cookbook that is different and challenges me to strive for a higher calling in the kitchen – Cook Like A Rock Star is all of that. I believe everyone who strives to be a better cook should have this cookbook in their library to have for that special someone who you want to wow!
Thermapen Instant Thermometer – Worth the Money?
After years of wasting money on different brands of instant read thermometers and having less than desirable results, I recently got a Thermoworks Thermapen. For most home cooks, you are probably asking what is a Thermapen? It is an extremely accurate digital instant read thermometer. Thermoworks the company that manufactures Thermapen is renowned for their scientific equipment and has branched from thermometers for the science community to the culinary community.
For the home cook, their Thermapen is pricey at $89 compared to the instant reads you will find in all the kitchen stores regionally. Having previously owned Rosle, Taylor, All Clad and Williams Sonoma’s instant read thermometers, ranging in cost from $20 – $42, I can attest to the fact that none of these other brands even come close to the Thermpen’s accuracy and speed.
All but the All Clad thermometer have left my kitchen due to either not working consistently, registering 10 – 15 degrees off (unfortunately normally this results in overdone meat,) or requiring a full 45 seconds to register any legible temperature. I have owned many other brands, but they were so insignificant in this arena, I can’t even recall the brand names.
As much as I love All Clad, their thermometers are the only product I have ever purchased from them that I am disappointed with. I recognize that I am tweeked for all things kitchen related, but, If I had all the money that I wasted on the other brand’s instant reads, I could own several Thermapens.
In fairness, I am comparing a commercial grade thermometer to a mass produced “home kitchen” thermometer. There is a world of difference in both quality and price. The Thermapen offers splash proof which means you can use their thermometer with wet hands. The digital temp tonight read within seconds and was spot on. I could actually watch the temperature change as I slid the thermometer into the roast. I pulled the roast from the oven at 125.4 degrees and let it rest and was delighted to have achieved a perfectly rare roast upon carving. The All-clad showed its temperature at 114 taken seconds after the Thermapen.
The additional automatic shut off (I’ve killed numerous digital thermometers by them being left on in a drawer) is a nice feature as well. For some, the ability to flip between Celsius and Fahrenheit may also be a plus. This doesn’t really add any benefit in my kitchen. The Thermapen is hand-assembled and tested and uses a professional thermocouple circuit design. These thermometers are used in professional kitchens and by the safety inspectors who check temperatures in restaurants. Thermoworks is also a US company. I do happen to like that as well.
The downside, this particular model is $89. Most home cooks probably cannot justify $89 versus $20. If you’re only going to use the thermometer as a guide of when to pull and not rely on it for accuracy, then $20 will work for you. If you are a control freak in the kitchen (like me) and don’t want to waste good money on an expensive roast this holiday season (specifically if you like your meat rare or medium rare rather than well done) then perhaps it’s an investment worth making.
As I said at the beginning of this review, there really isn’t anything in the kitchen stores that compares to the Thermapen as far as professional instant read. The nearest comparable professional instant read online was over $200.
I consider the Thermapen an accurate, fast, easy to use thermometer which doesn’t require elaborate instructions or me to deduct 15 degrees and hope the roast isn’t medium well after resting. I also like that the Thermapen doesn’t tell me when the roast is done by some of the new “enforced” settings like their “medium rare” setting instead of when the roast is at 130 – 135 degrees.
As a final note, Thermoworks does offer a less expensive super fast pocket thermometer which isn’t water resistant and a waterproof pocket without an auto on/off switch for $19 each. I haven’t tried any of these, but for $19, I am thinking of giving them a try. Both of these thermometers are marketed for the average home cook and are comparable to Taylor’s non-digital instant read. Perhaps if I get around to purchasing one of these models it would be a more fair comparison that the one I’m trying to draw here.
Bottom line – A quality product which is a stretch for a lot of home chefs but definitely delivers what it promises.