There are options for the backyard and the kitchen in different configurations. The one below is a combination fireplace and oven that looks just great next to the family xmas tree.

 They don’t come cheap (think thousands….) but can you put a price on perfection?

Photo and model shown: Wildwood

Every once in a while I get the urge to make something like corn chowder or a cold corn salad when we have an abundance of fresh sweet corn. It is one of the primal tastes of summer.

Getting the kernels off the cob can be a somewhat arduous task– and with a knife in the wrong hands– a dangerous task. So, leave it to the great minds at OXO to come up with a novel solution.

Teaming with the clever designers of TODA (The Office of Design and Architecture), they’ve developed an ingenious new gadget that seems poised to be very, very popular when it hits the market.

From TODA’s website:

OXO approached TODA with the task of designing and engineering a simple, handheld device intended to assist in the removal of corn kernels from the cob of cooked corn. The objective was to deliver a comfortable, safe and functional product that would meet the product performance requirements. This was accomplished with a development process involving product and consumer research, concept brainstorming, and refinement with a focus on ergonomics, form and function. 

Photos: http://www.notcot.com/

2007 Bundts® Across America Recipe Contest Has Bakers Taking Off Their Oven Mitts and Turning Up the Heat

This year’s theme: Holiday Bundts, A Pan For All Seasons!

MINNEAPOLIS (April 1, 2007) - Pre-heat the oven, bring out your favorite Bundt® pan and put that frosting away! Nordic Ware – maker of the iconic pan – is hosting it second-annual national recipe contest inviting bakers to submit their most creative, best-tasting Bundt creations. This year, Nordic Ware’s theme calls for recipes that celebrate 10 popular American holidays. Each recipe entered into the contest will be judged on originality, taste, texture, visual appearance, use of ingredients and an essay describing how the entry represents in it’s own special way, one of America’s popular holidays. Because there is a Bundt pan for every season, bakers will be encouraged to make good use of one of the many seasonal Bundt designs from Nordic Ware. Bakers will be required to capture the essence of the Bundt cake meaning no elaborate use of frostings. The contest runs from April 1, 2007 to September 1, 2007.

“We are so excited for our second “Bundts Across America” contest which celebrates a dessert baked for generations in virtually every kitchen in America,” says David Dalquist, president of Nordic Ware. “This contest is a celebration of the bakers that continue to re-invent the Bundt cake with their creative flair. Our contest was a huge success last year so we are excited to continue this tradition in 2007.”

Margo Murdock, the 2006 “Bundts Across America” grand prize winner, received a trip to New York to sit in the audience of the Martha Stewart Show, to celebrate National Bundt Day! In addition, she also was awarded an elegant family reunion party held in January and $1000 worth of Nordic Ware products. Margo’s (slightly!) intoxicating spin on the traditional cake was called “Chocolate Cabernet Flavors Di ‘Vine’ Wine Cake.” Last year’s theme called for recipes that were representative of the state they hailed from. Murdock’s winning recipe featured a creative combination of chocolate devil’s food cake, black cherry gelatin and California Cabernet Sauvignon wine, creating rich and complex flavors from a simple list of ingredients. As a busy third grade teacher in Stockton, California, Margo says she’s learned that making great food doesn’t have to be stressful or complicated.

Contest Rules:

Bakers must create recipes for one of the following popular holidays: Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas. Nordic Ware staff and a team of experienced culinary experts will carefully evaluate each recipe and pick 10 finalists. The 10 finalists will be invited to participate in the national bakeoff contest to be held in San Francisco in October where another team of culinary experts and representatives from Nordic Ware will judge the final cakes and one grand prize winner will be selected from those 10 finalists. The grand prize winner will be announced on or around November 15, National Bundt Day!

Prizes:

The ten finalists will be treated to a fun-filled expense paid weekend in San Francisco, which will include participating for the Grand Prize at the bake-off being held at the famous San Francisco Baking Institute. The 10 finalists will also receive a $500 Nordic Ware gift certificate and the grand prize winner of the “2007 Bundts Across America” will receive $10,000 in cash!

The “Bundts Across America” contest is sponsored by Nordic Ware. The Bake-off will be held at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Since 1996, the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI) has trained hundreds of professional and aspiring bakers from all over the world. SFBI is recognized within the baking industry as a place where artisan baking is respected, appreciated and celebrated.

How to Enter:

To enter, participants must complete the official entry form found online at www.nordicware.com or send the entry via mail. The entry packet must include a detailed, original Bundt cake recipe (including ingredients, exact measures, preparation instructions, garnishes, type of pan, baking time and temperature) on a separate sheet of paper. Entries must also include a picture of the individual Bundt creations, along with an essay of 50 words or lessdescribing how your Bundt recipe best represents the holiday you have selected from the list of eligible holidays. No entries will be accepted prior to April 1, 2007. All entries must be postmarked by September 1, 2007. Entries can be mailed to: “Bundts Across America” Contest, P.O. Box 16297, St. Louis Park, Minnesota 55416.

Let the baking begin!

“Celebrating Over 60 years of American Made Traditions”

The Nordic Ware family has prided itself in providing long-lasting quality products, which will be handed down through generations. Their business is firmly rooted in the trust, dedication and talent of their employees, a commitment to producing quality American-made products, a desire to provide excellence in service to their customers and their never-ending search for innovative new kitchenware products.

Put one new sheet of Bounty to the test on any household mess, share the details on onesheetchallenge.com and you could win a $30,000 kitchen makeover. For more information and a complete list of prizes, check out www.onesheetchallenge.com.

 Katie Brown has some tips for you on the website, too….

It comes with a stainless steel handle which makes it easy to carry, even when hot.

 As you can see in the picture, the grill sits on a wooden trivet, providing stability while protecting your table from the heat. There’s also an internal heat shield and bowl that stops the charcoal from contacting with the porcelain.

Available from the A+R Store: $300

Cooks Illustrated have done their usually thorough head to head testing to determine which charcoal burns hottest. Let’s see what they found out…….

What’s the Hottest Charcoal?

Conventional wisdom dictates that hardwood (or “lump”) charcoal flames up fast and furious, while charcoal briquettes burn low and slow. For that reason, most of the outdoor-cooking guides in our library (including our own) recommend briquettes for barbecue (cooking ribs and briskets) and hardwood for quick, direct-heat grilling (cooking burgers, steaks, and chops). Two dozen grilling gurus couldn’t be wrong, right? We headed to the test kitchen’s back alley to find out.

We filled 6-quart chimneys with either hardwood charcoal or briquettes. Just before lighting the match, we outfitted the cooking grate with seven thermocouples — wire probes that feed temperature data to an attached console — and set about recording heat levels at five-minute intervals. We ran the tests a dozen times and then analyzed our data.

The results were startling. In every test, the briquettes burned as hot, or hotter, than the hardwood. In the grilling tests, the fires produce nearly identical heat for about 30 minutes-enough time for most quick grilling tasks. From there on, the hardwood coals quickly turn into piles of ash, while the briquettes slowly lost heat.

As we’ve always contested, slow-cooking a pork shoulder for eight hours would be a high-maintenance affair with hardwood. Our briquettes took nearly three hours to fall below the 250 degree mark; in that time we’d have to refuel the hardwood fire twice. The slow, steady descent of the briquettes is perfect for this job.

So what about our old assumptions? Hardwood is, in fact, the hotter-burning charcoal, at least when comparing charcoal pound for pound. But most outdoor cooks measure out charcoal by volume (filling a chimney), and a 6-quart chimneyful of briquettes weighs more than twice as much as the same volume of hardwood.

And briquettes are cheaper: Filling a chimney with lump charcoal costs about $2 compared with just $1.37 for briquettes.

Photo from www.lazzari.com

This post originally appeared on The Hampton Smoker

Released June 12th in Japan, Pepsi Ice Cucumber is the newest fruit-flavored beverage to hit the market. A limited edition creation, the beverage mixes the cooling, soft flavor and perfumey scent of cucumber with the sugary fizz of ordinary soda. I hope it hits the shelves here in the US of A, but we rarely get the really interesting stuff.

I’ve had more than one picnic overturned as a tablecloth is blown around by the wind– knocking over glasses, flapping into the food and, worse yet, catching aflame from one of the candles on the table. That’s where these attractive table cloth weights can come in handy. Easy to store, attractive and inexpensive, these can prove real handy when the evening winds pick up.

$3.57 from KitchenNiche.ca

They claim it doesn’t smoke out the house, but we don’t have range hood, so we hang a sheet in the kitchen doorway when we use it. The first time we used it we thought it smelled just like K.C. in the living room.

It’s not large enough to fit big objects like pork shoulder all that easily, but with some creative use of aluminum foil, you can make it work. Getting a handle on how much wood to use and how long to smoke things takes some trial and error. We’ve oversmoked a few items and, well, not even the neighborhood dog would eat it.

One tip, consider smoking things for a while, then finishing them up in the oven. Hey, I think I’ve heard of other bbq folk doing that– even with their big ol’ stick burners. I doubt they’d admit it point blank, though.

Read more about their system for the blind and their induction cooking systems at their website: Here