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Day 13: Smart Planet CDM-1 Corn Dog Maker
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Be careful out there, everybody. Dangers lurk around every delicious corner.
Together, we can eradicate corn dog oil burns forever (but probably not). Happy Holidays!
Grab the Smart Planet CDM-1 Corn Dog Maker for $24.72 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Day 12: Lodge Logic L5SK3 Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron 8-Inch Skillet
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
About ten years ago, I bought an 8-inch Lodge cast iron skillet from a hardware store. I lovingly seasoned the raw cast iron, over and over, until it was ready to use. Even so, it would be years before the bumpy, dark gray piece of metal that I I bought transformed into the black, smooth, nonstick skillet that I love today. Some day, I will give this skillet to my son, and he will say, “Up yours, old man! I don’t want to be like you!” But many years later, he will thank me (maybe).
The good news is, you don’t have to spend years seasoning your skillet any more. At some point, the good people at Lodge decided that selling them pre seasoned and ready-to-use is a better deal for pretty much everybody. Pull it out of the box, and it’s ready to make the perfect grilled cheese. With a little bit of maintenance and common sense (don’t put it in the dishwasher, etc.), cast iron only gets better with time. Perhaps someday you too will pass along a well-loved cast iron skillet to your disappointed child.
There is a good reason why every cook you know loves cast iron cookware.
Grab the Lodge cast iron 8-inch skillet for $10.97 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Day 11: OXO Good Grips Pepper Mill
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Does this ever happen to you? You are merrily reading through a recently discovered recipe for Double Fried Triple Stuffed Jalapeño Chicken Tenderblasters only to reach “fresh ground pepper” on the ingredients list. Your excitement transforms into dread as you imagine the painfully slow torture of grinding 2 teaspoons of pepper by hand. Why? Because your pepper mill sucks.
Well friend, not all pepper mills suck. (Most of them suck. But not all of them.) And if you think it doesn’t make a huge difference in the preparation of any recipe (including garnishing your morning grits and gin), then you can… wait, you eat grits and gin for breakfast?
This pepper mill will knock your socks off. It’s that good. And it’s cheap.
The Oxo Good Grips Pepper Mill is so nice that we touted it twice. Yes, we love this pepper mill so deeply that we already pimped it out in an earlier blog post.
Grab the Oxo Good Grips Pepper Mill for $11.99 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Day 10: The River Cottage Meat Book
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Warning: Don’t buy this book for a person who is squeamish about animal butchery. The River Cottage Meat Book is comprehensive. Seriously, this is probably the only butchery reference you’ll ever need. I have owned a copy for about five years. (It’s also a hell of a good read, by the way.) Highly recommended :)
Meat starts with animals, so that’s where this book starts too. You’ll learn in painstaking detail how and why some animals produce better meat than others. Then you’ll learn how to butcher the animal (if that’s your thing), learn how to select superior cuts, see step-by-step guides to common preparations, and choose from hundreds of related recipes.
The vivid photographs make The River Cottage Meat Book a weird and interesting coffee table book, especially for L.A. Don’t expect your vegan friends to take kindly to your choice of reading materials.
This is a perfect gift for the amateur chef who is dissatisfied with the meat at the supermarket.
Grab The River Cottage Meat Book for $26.40 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Day 9: Toddy T2N Cold Brew System
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Cold brew coffee is less acidic, tastes smoother, and is more appropriate for cold coffee drinks than its steamy counterpart. Overall, many coffee drinkers agree that the cold brew method simply makes better coffee overall, hot or cold.
Our friends at Secret Squirrel Cold Brew (that’s Ben’s hand in their Facebook banner image holding the exact same bottle of coffee concentrate from the video below), sent us a sample a while back. Here is a very short video with Ben’s first impressions.
We liked the cold brew coffee so much, that we went out and bought our own Toddy Cold Brew System. Now we can make our own cold brew any time we want.
Be warned that it takes many hours (most people seem to prefer to let it sit overnight) to brew a batch of coffee concentrate. But once the cold brew process is finished, you’ll have a bottle of concentrated coffee “syrup” that you can dilute with water, milk—whatever floats your boat. And the concentrate will keep fresh for days.
The Toddy Cold Brew System makes an awesome gift for coffee lovers. Just think of the White Russians that you can make with this thing. “Hey, careful, man, there’s a beverage here!”
Grab the Toddy T2N Cold Brew System for less than $35 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com
(Photo credit: Liquid Planet)
Day 8: Presto 11 Inch Electric Skillet
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
When I moved into my first apartment, one of the first things that my mom bought me was an electric skillet. Her mother, my grandma, was an (oddly) outspoken electric skillet proponent, so I guess the love of this electric kitchen workhorse just rubbed off.
Why an electric skillet? If for no other reason, buy one just for the pineapple upside down cake. I’m quite serious. People will ask you to make it again and again, and the best part is, it takes almost no time at all to prepare and cook. Here is the recipe:
Electric Skillet Pineapple Upside Down Cake:
The cake will take between 25-30 minutes to cook. Check with a toothpick at 25 minutes. When the cake is done, let it cool for 10 minutes, and then carefully (c a r e f u l l y… CAREFULLY) invert it onto a platter that is much larger than the electric skillet (there will be molten sugar syrup oozing about).
This cake is great served warm, room temperature, or chilled. Vanilla ice cream and whipped cream are both acceptable accompaniments. But really, it doesn’t need anything. By the way, you could make the yellow from scratch pretty easily. Your call. It’s a bit better. But in my opinion, the box cake is fine and being able to go from ingredients to baked cake in less than an hour is pretty cool.
This electric skillet is one of L.A. Foodie’s favorite appliances in the kitchen. It’s great for pancakes, fried chicken, and that sweet, badass pineapple upside down cake.
Grab the Presto 11 Inch Electric Skillet for $24.22 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Day 7: Kitchen Art Ham Dogger
(See every gift in the full #FoodieGiftGuide here)
Quick! What’s the #1 problem facing America today? If your answer was “our national inability to properly fit a hamberger patty onto a hot dog bun,” then you are AWESOME, but you probably don’t read the news much.
I can’t think of a more fantastically useless gift than the Kitchen Art Ham Dogger. Here’s what it does: It forms hamburger meat into a tubular hot dog shape. Hallelujah! Here are a list of features:
You will be a white elephant gift party superstar. Your coworkers will tell the water cooler tale of the weird hamburger hot dog thing for years to come.
“Honey! We have lots of ground beef and lots of hot dog buns! Now what?”
Grab the Kitchen Art Ham Dogger for $11.19 (free shipping with Prime) on Amazon.com.
Photo credit: The Green Head
Day 6: Jewish Cooking in America: Expanded Edition
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Happy Chanukah!!
The holiday season is so wonderful in this country because we are incredibly lucky to have so many different cultures who seem to celebrate at around the same time of year. From a culinary point of view that says DELICIOUS no matter what your background or mother tongue happens to be.
While everyone is pretty familiar with some of the many contributions that people of the Jewish faith have given us, Joan Nathan’s book (for many of us) opens up our taste buds to an amazing new array of delicacies. Delicacies that will make you scream “Why have I not tried this before!?!?!?!” to the gods of food.
So, what are you waiting for? These recipes are delicious!
Grab Jewish Cooking in America: Expanded Edition for $27.39 on Amazon.com.
Day 5: Fred & Friends Ninjabreadmen Cookie Cutters
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
Guys, did you know that you can make gingerbread cookies in the shape of NINJAS???!?!?!
Let me say that again: YOU CAN MAKE GINGERBREAD COOKIES IN THE SHAPE OF NINJAS!!!!!!!
We stumbled upon this little gem in our hunt for cool foodie gift ideas, and couldn’t resist putting them on our list. Consider these the perfect capstone to your arsenal of Festivus goodies. Or heck, let them be your first piece of metaphorical artillery.
Just imagine what your holiday party will be like once you own these. Everyone’s having a great time and they are enjoying all of the delici- BAM!!! Ninjabread Man Cookies! Your guests’ lives are complete. You win holiday parties from here until the end of mankind, nay, until the end of time.
Look at these ninjas, they’re ready to ninja-kick your taste buds!
I don’t understand why you are still reading this post and haven’t ordered these yet.
Grab Fred & Friends Ninjabread Men Cookie Cutters for $7.99 on Amazon.com.
Day 4: OXO Good Grips 5-pound Food Scale with Pull-Out Display
(See every gift in the full 2012 #FoodieGiftGuide by clicking here)
If you have ever watched an episode of America’s Test Kitchen or read what goes into the formulation of a Cooks Illustrated recipe, then you know that these folks don’t f#%k around when it comes to testing. They put this scale through the wringer, and it came out on top with a “highly recommended” rating.
So I bought one. And damn. This scale is great. The readout pulls out. And the display is connected to a retractable tether, so you can read it even if your gigantic bowl of brownie batter is hanging over the sides. But the best part about owning a reliable and accurate scale is that your cookies (and cakes and breads, etc.) taste amazing. Measuring dry ingredients by weight instead of volume is magical. Find a well-reviewed recipe online that lists ingredients by weight (a lot of Alton Brown’s recipes do this). With this scale, you’ll finally get the proportions exactly right. (Remember that flour is especially tricky to measure by volume because it settles so much.)
Oh, and you can also weigh the big envelopes and packages that you’re always putting in the mail. With this scale, you’ll know exactly how much postage is required, and you won’t have to wait in line behind two homeless dudes and a grandma at the post office.
