So the wife decided it was time I got a present. She bought me a new gas grill. The Charmglow 810-7420-S 4 burner grill was delivered the other day. Now my old grill was in a sorry state. The burners has basically rusted apart and when I dissembled it, they fell away into dust. My grilling of course was just horrible because the flame setup was just all over the place and there was no even heating.

We were looking over grills for the last couple months and I saw this Charmglow at the Home Depot website. The grill is only available through them. What I liked about it is that it had a double hood (see pic below). Each hood covers two burners. This means that you do not need to light all the burners if your just cooking up say, a London broil.

This can really save on propane when you are cooking. Another plus is that you can cook two different things on the grill at different temperatures. Each hood has a separate temperature gauge so you can monitor the heat. I am a bit skeptical about the gauges themselves and am going to test them against a thermometer soon. When I first fired it up, they heated so quickly, I found it a bit hard to believe. They were basically at 700 degrees in – (More…)

The final piece in our cast iron upgrade was the dutch oven. Since we have thrown out all of our Teflon, we have upgraded much of our cookware to cast iron for many reasons. Although we also use stainless steel and ceramic cookware, cast iron is by far my favorite. The Lodge Logic dutch oven is an absolute pleasure.

I have had the dutch oven for a month or two without a real chance to use it. I ordered it from Amazon (for less than $30) along with some other cookware. As usual, this Lodge Logic cast iron product came pre-seasoned. Not that seasoning cast iron is hard, it is just to be able to use the dutch oven right out of the box.

When I finally got some time, I cooked a couple stews and a pot roast in it. You instantly appreciate the even heating when browning meat. The lid is pretty heavy so it sits on the pot firmly. My wife commented the other night that this dutch oven was the easiest to clean out of all of our cast iron cookware. Before I get any grief from some of you, I clean up much of my own mess when cooking, but what is left after we – (More…)

Deep frying is not something I do a lot of anymore. Besides the general health questions around deep frying, it requires a bit of time and work. You have to maintain the oil in the fryer, and keep the unit clean. Having that much oil sitting around in an appliance in the kitchen can also be a bit of a hazard. If that oil catches on fire, it will burn for quite a while.

However, there are times you just want to cook up some fish and chips, or some old time fried chicken and that is when you really need one. I have always had one of those round electric fryers in a cupboard for that once or twice a year I fried something. Lately, we have been frying more things so it was time to upgrade.

After reading many reviews I decided to go with the Presto Dual Profry Deep Fryer. Once I received it from Amazon, I set it right up to cook. The heating element sits right in the oil which is a real plus. This makes the heating much more responsive and as you probably know, proper temperature is the key to good frying.

The tub that contains the oil slides right out of the unit and is dishwasher safe. In combination with the removable element, it makes it very easy – (More…)

The first thing I should say about this pan is that I have cooked many things in it, but never an omelet. We have cooked eggs in it, and that is one of the few ingredients I would not recommend for this pan. Eggs stick harshly to this model. This is more of a meat and vegetable pan.

The best feature of this item is how even the heating is. Unlike many other pans, the pan heats up quickly and the heat is dispersed the same all over the pan.

The handle always stays cool unless of course you put the pan in the oven. I cook up my Southern Comfort chicken thighs in this all the time. At 10 inches, it is perfect for a family of four or below. 12 inches probably would be better for more than that.

The pan is also dishwasher safe, but I always hit it with the brush before I put it into the washer. This is NOT a non-stick pan, but with all of the horror health stories revolving around Teflon cookware, I will take the stainless steel over it any time!

One of the drawbacks on this model though is that there are three little rivets on the inside of the pan where the handle attaches. – (More…)

I finally received the Lodge Logic 12-Inch Pre-Seasoned Skillet I ordered from Amazon. I took the free shipping option since cast iron cookware weighs so much it only makes sense. As I previously discussed, I am switching over much of my cookware to either stainless steel, cast iron or ceramic coated.

This skillet brings back memories of my childhood when my mother only had one frying pan and it was that huge heavy cast iron skillet. This looks almost identical and if anything, weighs more than what I remember.

The first thing you notice about this and any other Lodge cookware is that it comes pre-seasoned. Seasoning or curing is about binding oil to the cast iron so it seals up all the pores in the metal. This makes the cookware basically non-stick and also keeps the iron from rusting. Iron will rust quicker than any other metal. Fortunately with a wire brush or steel wool, you can knock off any rust that may ever infect your cast iron cookware.

Normally, you would have to wash the cookware in hot water, place on a hot stove to cook off the water, and then oil the entire piece – (More…)

First, let me say I have seen models GSH25JSTA and GSH25JST and they are identical. I am not sure what the A stands for. If the refrigerator is stainless steel, they add an SS at the end, example: GSH25JSTASS.

We purchased the stainless steel version about 2 months ago and have been trying it out. Keep in mind that the old fridge was one that came with our place and was extremely small. So any upgrade in size, especially 25ft was going to blow our minds. For this reason I figured I would wait a while before writing up a review; let me get used to it. 🙂

First, how about some pics?

Here is the front view with the doors closed:

And now with the refrigerator door open:

And let us not forget the all important energy guide sticker:

As you can see, it is a beautiful looking refrigerator! When I first saw it, I knew this was the one I wanted. I was looking at ones with the freezer on the bottom, but I just don’t like the idea of having one basket to put EVERYTHING you want to freeze in. This one has many shelves in the freezer for segregating your foods.

The unit has a digital control panel on the front that allows you to adjust the temperature of both the freezer and – (More…)

Since the news came out recently about the danger of cooking with teflon coated cookware, I have been slowly replacing much of mine with either stainless steel or cast iron. I love the flavor cast iron gives to the food you cook. One of the main health benefits when using cast iron cookware is that all the food you cook in it gets a healthy dose of iron.

I will be writing more reviews of some of the cast iron cookware we are receiving as time goes by as we have ordered quite a bit lately.

We were in need of a new griddle and those small single burner ones just were not big enough to feed a family of four in a timely manner. I try to save as much space in my kitchen as possible so I didn’t want another appliance, buying an electric griddle was pretty much out of the question.

Having purchased some cast iron products from Lodge before and being very satisfied, I decided to see what they had for griddles. Now if you have never bought a Lodge product, then you should know that all their cast iron cookware comes pre-seasoned, meaning you do not have to cure it with oil. So basically it is naturally non-stick when you receive it.

After reading the reviews of their griddle, I decided to give it a go. The one I purchased was the – (More…)

A lot of people ask me what my favorite cookbooks are, and after some time thinking about it, I came to the conclusion it is my notebook computer.  This little piece of technological mastery has helped me more finding and developing recipes than any other reference I have ever come across.

While I still keep my cookbooks handy, for just about all of my needs, all I have to do is open up my notebook, connect to the Internet, and do a quick search via Google on any topic or recipe I need to research.  Once I find information that I am looking for, I can bookmark it for a later date.  In fact, my largest recipe compilation is one of my favorites folders called Recipes.

I use my notebook to put many of my recipes right here on this site.  When I cook a dish for someone and they ask for the recipe, I can just turn the laptop on, and shoot them the link.  I remember the days it involved finding the recipe in a dog eared stack, re-writing it and then trying to explain each step that may not be in the documentation.

Not only are there good recipes online, there are many videos online that will show you tips and tricks.  Visitors to these sites can also add comments furthering your knowledge on the topic.  This just cannot be done in a static – (More…)

Last year I bought the George Foreman grill model GR35TMR and must say it was a big dissapointment. I had heard mixed reviews on this grill and since there are sometimes you just want to cook a steak, burgers, or chicken without firing up the grill, I figured I would give it a shot.

The first thing wrong with this grill is there is no on/off switch! If this machine is plugged in, the grill is on full blast. In order to shut it off, you must unplug it. Im sorry, but even Thomas Edisons’ first lights had a lightswitch. This was the first red flag thrown up when I took it out of the box. I mean, who looks to see if an appliance has an on/off switch? Is that considered an option these days?

I decided to try a london broil the first time I used the grill. Following the directions to the letter, resulted in a cooked steak to my preferred medium rare, but that was as close as the grill got to getting it right. There was absolutely no browning of the meat, it was grey. This, after preheating the grill as specified by the instructions. I could have gotten the same results by steaming or microwaving the steak.

I tried burgers, hot dogs, everything and found it to – (More…)

A couple of Christmas’s ago my girlfriend bought me a rotisserie made by Ronco. I always wanted to try one of these, so I cooked up a couple chickens, roasts, and kabobs. I was shocked how well this thing worked. There was only one problem, it was too small.

My parents last year gave me the larger model which is the Showtime Rotisserie ST4000. This was much better because I was getting tired of trying to find a chicken weighing 3 pounds or less to cook. The only thing missing from this model is a temperature control, which other models have.

This machine is great, which is saying something because most things that are “As Seen on T.V.” fall short of their claims. For cooking poultry and roasts, it is perfect. At least twice a month I cook a chicken on the machine. I occasionally cook a duck and other fowl too. By far my favorite dish to cook in the rotisserie is a standing rib roast. If prepared correctly, the roast comes out crunchy and spicy on the outside, and tender and juicy on the inside. I usually made up a rub consisting of a lot of course salt, garlic powder, and onion powder and rub it all over the meat and then as the commercial – (More…)