Cooking For Engineers®

Recently, I received a wireless thermometer from Thermoworks to try out. Their newest product is called Smoke and is specifically designed to help people barbecue and smoke food at home. Smoke has two parts - a base unit (which takes two of Thermoworks standardized Pro-Series probes) and a wireless receiver unit - which lets the user track the air temperature and the food temperature without going outside to the smoker.
Thermoworks is selling the Smoke at $99 and this would definitely welcome tool for anyone who likes to slow cook food outside.

These days when I reach for a spatula to turn food in a pan, I've been finding myself grabbing the GastroMax Slotted Turner more often than not. Tina bought this spatula for me after months (or maybe years) of listening to me complain about our various spatulas. After buying the GastroMax Turner, my complaining has stopped.

Having a fundamental understanding of what is going on in the kitchen can not only help you avoid disasters but also assist in making the right decision the first time you try out a recipe or wing it. Understanding how heat transfer affects your cooking is a first step in realizing why we'd choose a particular cooking implement or specific heating method (steaming vs. baking, frying vs. boiling) for one dish but not another. In this article, Burr Zimmerman describes how heat transfer works as it relates to cooking.
Burr Zimmerman has 11 years of (amateur) cooking experience, 9 years of chemical engineering experience, and 7 of trying to combine them.

In most American supermarkets, beef is sold with a USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) Quality Grade. Most people know that USDA Prime is the best (and most expensive) beef you can buy, and it is somewhat rare to find. USDA Choice and Select grades are common in supermarkets with Select being the cheaper option. But, what do the grades mean and how are they determined? I'll try to explain...