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OXO Good Grips Pepper Mill #FoodieGiftGuide

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.

Source: amzn.to

Digital Food Scale #FoodieGiftGuide

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.