Appliances...A to Z through our kitchen

From left to right - ish: Dazey Fondue Pot, KitchenAid Food Processor, Cuisinart Hand Mixer, Breville Immersion Blender, ChefChoice Knife Sharpener, Crock Pot Slow Cooker, TWO Taylor Digital Scales and a Waring Blender

 A few months ago, Harry and I decided to add a section called "What's in our kitchen?". Our thought was sharing some of the things that make our lives simpler and lead to us spending so much time cooking - other than a love of food. So, when I was trying to think of a theme for the A to Z April Blogging Challenge, "What's in Our Kitchen" was an easy one.

When most people think of appliances, their minds go to refrigerators, stoves, dishwashers - you know, the big stuff. While we have most of the usual characters (my heavy-duty dishwasher is Harry), it's the small appliances that make our kitchen lives so much simpler and have expanded our kitchen chops. Not to be confused with gadgets, these workhorses are tools, just as a carpenter couldn't get by without a power saw.

If you've been here before, you'll notice that our KitchenAid 600 professional stand mixer is conspicuously absent from the top photo. Please pause for a moment of silence...

Tragically, the KitchenAid 600 died a painful death in the midst of a major baking frenzy on Sunday, March 25, 2012. Four and a half years, thousands of loaves of bread, thousands of rolls and pounds upon pounds of ground meat and pasta. She served us well. And we will welcome a new 600 into our home within the next couple of weeks.

The food processor handles almost every chopping, grinding and shredding duty in our kitchen. But, when it comes to grinding horseradish, Harry prefers to use our ancient blender. A lot of people like to make their smoothies in a blender, but I prefer to make mine with my immersion blender in a cocktail shaker. The immersion blender (or boat-motor) is also handy for pureeing soups right in the pot - and with a quick rinse, it's ready to use again.

Not so conspicuously absent is our POS Mr. Coffee Coffeemaker. We still hate the damn thing, but are saving up for a good coffee/espresso combo machine.

While I've never made true fondue, our fondue pot is the BEST thing I've ever found for melting chocolate for Buckeyes at the holidays. I can melt the chocolate without fear of water possibly dripping in from the double-boiler method. And I don't own a double-boiler.

Harry used to make fun of me when we first started cooking together because my knives were so dull. He patiently sharpened each one by hand. That got old, so in addition to his stones we now have an electric sharpener in our kitchen. He keeps the knives tuned up between full sharpenings with a ceramic rod.

I can't forget our digital scales - they aren't just for diet-related portion control. We weigh our meat as we package it (with our vacuum sealer) and also weigh dough portions. We've learned that when our loaves of bread weigh the same, they tend to bake at the same rate.

While I'm not addicted to my slow cooker, I can't imagine not having it around. There are days when it just makes sense to throw something in it in the morning, and then dinner is ready with no rushing around. I also have a mini-slow cooker for dips and such. In the basement, we have two electric roasters that I love to use to make jam and fruit butter.

While I'm sure I've forgotten a few things, the only other thing I can think of right now is the ancient microwave that's on its final stretch. Honestly, I only use it to occasionally warm up my first cup of coffee and some leftovers for lunch. But, we use it enough that we'll probably replace this old one later this year.

What small appliances make your kitchen life easier? Leave a comment or a link to a blog post extolling the virtue of the small kitchen appliance!

Our KitchenAid 600 Professional 6-Quart Mixer

I'll admit the picture isn't that great. I was making bread the other day and thought "I've never really explained how important this machine is in our lives!" The sun was so bright but you can get the idea.This is a KitchenAid 600 Professional 6-quart stand mixer. It's actually our second and I'll explain that part later.

When we started The Wright Taste in 2007, I borrowed two KitchenAid stand mixers - one from Mom and one from my friend Heather. Each had a 4-quart bowl and I could make a standard batch of bread (two loaves) in each one. We had no idea how popular that bread would become and soon I was making 8 to 10 dozen loaves in one day. Those mixers were on from the crack of dawn until the middle of the night.

One day, Mom showed up and told Harry he needed to go out to her car. She decided we needed a bigger, more powerful mixer so nothing would happen to Heather's. So, Mom's investment in The Wright Taste was a KitchenAid 600.

Suddenly, I could mix FOUR loaves of bread at once. I can't count how many loaves of bread, dozens of garlic & cheese rolls and cinnamon rolls our mixer has made. The other night, we realized that we've had this mixer since around October of 2007. While for a normal kitchen, it's still an infant, our KitchenAid 600 has done the work of at least a hundred home kitchens in that amount of time.

In almost 4 1/2 years, Harry has given it the occasional tune-up (it's out of warranty now) and in 2010, we needed to replace some funky rotor thing that makes the attachments go around. It's due for another tune-up in which Harry takes it apart and cleans all the insides and with a little as we use it now compared to the way we used it then, it will probably last the rest of our lives.

We have practically every attachment available, if not all. We've ground meat, we've used it to make tomato juice and we've made pasta with the extruder.

About KitchenAid's warranty: I broke my first 600. I followed the instructions as to how much whole grain flour it recommended but my Multi-grain bread was too stiff. The KitchenAid started clanking something horrible and I'd only had it a few months. I called the toll-free number for service, hoping to have it repaired.

The rep asked me to turn the mixer on and he immediately heard the awful noise. No problem - we'll send you a new one right away. I had a brand-new in-the-box KitchenAid 600 delivered to my door in 2 days. They included a shipping label for the broken machine and FedEx came back the next day to pick it up. That's why we will continue to buy KitchenAid products that fit our needs - the service and I have proof of how much abuse one of their stand mixers will take.

Is there a tool in your kitchen that you can't live without? Feel free to leave a comment or a link to a post - I'd love to hear about it!

Roast Beef Po' Boys - almost - for the slow cooker

I say these are "almost" Roast Beef Po' Boys for a few reasons. First, I made our hoagie rolls in our standard 5-6 inches-ish length, rather than making something 8-10 inches like they do in New Orleans. My debris gravy is definitely not authentic. And, while we got them "almost" dressed, there's no such thing as a good tomato in Ohio in February, so they were missing a shirt.

But, yes, that IS gravy dripping down the side!

What is a Po' Boy? A sandwich filled with goodies by another other name is still a sandwich filled with goodies. Your area of the country might call them hoagies or submarine sandwiches or grinders. In New Orleans, Po' Boy is the local lingo. Of course, the most famous versions are usually filled with breaded and fried seafood - shrimp, catfish, crawfish, or oysters. To me, a Roast Beef Po' Boy (poor boy for those who prefer to spell the whole word) is like an open-faced roast beef sandwich all wrapped up in a bun.

Technically speaking, the debris floating in the gravy are bits and pieces of meat that have naturally fallen off the roast while it is braising. I didn't technically braise (slow cooking in liquid) my roast, but it's close enough for rock 'n roll when you're using a slow cooker. When I'm cooking with chuck roast, I prefer to use my slow cooker - turn it on in the morning and around supper time the meat is fall-apart tender. But, when I trimmed the fat, there were a few pieces of meat left in the rind plus a 3-ish ounce piece of roast. I pulled these little bits and pieces out of the fat and added them to my gravy.

Finally, a lesson in dressing your sandwiches in New Orleans. You don't have to say you want "lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayonnaise" on your sandwich, whether it's a po' boy, burger or muffuletta. All you have to do is say "dressed" and your sandwich miraculously comes laden with that specific quartet of goodies. Be warned: if you are in NOLA and you ask for your muffuletta to be dressed, they'll look at you funny.

The voice inside Harry's head told me to trim the biggest part of the fat off of the chuck roast before cooking it. I wasn't about to let that flavor go to waste, so there it sits waiting on its happy purpose. My knife also needed some love and I'm not as skilled in the meat-trimming department as Harry. I made a simple rub of Kosher salt, ground black pepper, paprika, granulated garlic and ground oregano and slapped it on both sides of the meat.

Then, something very strange happened. Harry was at work and the voice in his head told me to sear the meat. Usually, when I'm making a pot roast I just throw everything in the slow cooker and forget about it. I have a strange fear of cooking things at too high of a temperature but this worked very well. Just a few minutes and the flavor at the end was well worth it.

I don't think it's possible to eat beef without onion as flavor. I had a half of a huge sweet onion in the fridge and just sliced it real quick and covered the chuck roast with it. You can't see it but on the very bottom of the crock is the fat I trimmed from the roast - I just used it to make a nice bed for the seared chuck. After the onions, I poured in a half-bottle of Great Lakes Brewing Company's Edmund Fitzgerald Porter (again, I think Harry's voice was speaking to me) and drank the rest. My cooker has settings ranging from 4 hours - high to 10-hours slow. I used 6 hours - high and it was about 7 hours (automatically turns to warm) before I started the gravy.

After pulling out all of the bits and pieces of meat from the fat and setting them aside, I strained the cooking liquid into my saucepan. I added about a half-cup of water and brought it all to a boil, including the bits and pieces of meat. Then, I made an easy flour-water slurry and added enough to thicken the gravy. I also added about a teaspoon of red wine vinegar and even though Harry was sitting there, his lips didn't move when some strange voice told me to add some butter to finish the gravy.

Now, a secret I read yesterday from New Orleans Magazine that the locals won't share with us Yankees is this: they all add a few splashes of hot pepper sauce to their Roast Beef Po' Boys. I have to agree with the logic - the Frank's didn't really add any heat but the vinegar cut through the richness of the gravy for a nice contrast. (The mayonnaise is buried under the shredded iceberg lettuce and yes, I sliced those pickles myself.)

I've actually only had one Roast Beef Po' Boy in Louisiana and it wasn't even in NOLA. We stopped at Abita Brewing in Abita Springs, LA to have a beer and decided we needed to eat. No, I don't think mine is as good as that one was but this sandwich is killer. Harry thanked me for not making them 10 inches long because he still would have felt the need to eat two. This size is just right!

Roast Beef Po' Boys for the Slow Cooker - serves 6
2 1/2 to 3 pound beef chuck roast, trimmed of large fat and rind
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon granulated garlic
1 teaspoon ground paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground oregano
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 ounces amber beer or porter (yes, you can use wine or water or beef broth)
1 cup sliced onions

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups cold water, divided
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon butter

6 hoagie rolls or submarine sandwich buns, toasted
shredded iceberg lettuce
dill pickle slices
mayonnaise
tomato slices (if available)
hot pepper sauce (if desired)
lots of napkins

In a small bowl, combine salt, pepper, granulated garlic, paprika and ground oregano. After trimming the chuck roast, rub both sides of the meat with the rub ingredients.

Heat a large, heavy-bottomed skillet over medium-high heat. When heated add the olive oil and swirl around, then place the roast, flat-side down, in the skillet. Allow to sear until a nice crust forms on the bottom, about 3-5 minutes. Turn the roast over and sear the other side. Remove from heat and set aside for a moment.

Layer the fat trimmings in the bottom of your slow cooker, then place the seared chuck roast on top of the trimmings. Cover the roast with the onion slices then add the 6 ounces of beer. Cover the cooker and let roast for 6 to 8 hours or until very tender.

Remove roast to a plate and cover with foil to keep it warm. Remove any small pieces of meat that might remain in the slow cooker or the fat and set aside in a bowl. Strain the cooking liquid into a saucepan, add 1/2 cup of water and the bits and pieces of meat, then bring to a strong simmer.

In a cup or bowl, mix 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour with one cup of cold water until smooth. Slowly add the slurry to the simmering liquid, whisking to prevent lumps, until the gravy is thickened. Add the red wine vinegar and continue to cook for 5 minutes until the flour taste is gone. Whisk in the tablespoon of butter and the gravy is finished.

To assemble the Roast Beef Po' Boys:

Thinly slice the reserved roast beef. On each toasted hoagie roll, spread mayonnaise on the top half. Pile several slices of roast beef on the bottom half of the bun and then ladle on some gravy. Top with tomato, pickle, hot pepper sauce and shredded lettuce and serve with several napkins.

The great homemade yogurt experiment - round one

This was my breakfast this morning. Yeah, I love a hearty breakfast filled with peameal bacon, scrambled eggs, whole wheat pancakes, biscuits and sausage gravy and any host of other breakfast yumminess. But, Harry's working 6-7 days a week and I'm still working on actually eating breakfast every day AND I made my first batch of homemade yogurt in more than 20 years.

Back in the day when I was young and married and filled with adoration of making everything from scratch, we made yogurt often. The father of my children had purchased one of those Salton makers when he was a teenager and yeah, it worked OK. My memories are hazy but I do recall that the yogurt was usually very dry and sour to the taste, and I always had to flavor it heavily to get the kids to eat it. Then, we got divorced, I got custody of the kids and he got custody of the yogurt maker.

Even though I was reduced to buying yogurt at the store, I'm pretty sure I got the better end of the deal.

A couple of years ago, I came across an article from my friend Angie, How to Make Raw Milk Yogurt . I've lived in this area my entire life. I'll admit to not being involved in the local farmers market scene until about five years ago, but those raw milk people are very, very secretive. I was interested in getting my hands on some to make a sourdough starter. NO ONE would talk to me. The one person who admitted to knowing someone who might be able to get some raw milk wouldn't help me out - I guess he was afraid I would follow him.

So, I was stuck buying my milk at Kroger because I didn't have time to go to the Hill's Market to get some low-temp pasteurized milk.

I found a post via Pinterest (are you addicted yet? shoot me an e-mail at debbieandharryskitchen at gmail dot com and I'll send you an invitation) from Emily at Keeper of the Home explaining the slow cooker method of making homemade yogurt. Emily was making 8-cup batches in a round slow cooker. But, I had read a few other yogurt-making blog posts that indicated my huge, oval slow cooker might not work well with a small amount. So, I'm starting with a half-gallon of organic whole milk that, unfortunately, is ultra-pasteurized but at least it's not UHT.

For my yogurt starter, I bought (mistakenly, because I meant to get full-fat) an organic fat-free plain Greek yogurt. In reading through comments from other homemade yogurt-makers, I found that I should try to get a yogurt that has at least five active cultures.

Time to start - by the way, the actual working time about 20 minutes.

Plug in your slow cooker and turn it on to heat up while you are heating the milk. I put mine on the "High - 4 Hour" setting. I poured the milk into a heavy-bottomed saucepan and heated it over medium until it was 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir the milk every once in awhile so it doesn't stick to the bottom and scorch.

As soon as the milk hit the right temperature, I put it into half a sink-full of cold water (make sure the water doesn't come up over the top of the pot!). I don't know if I was supposed to leave the milk 'still' but I kind of stirred it around with my digital thermometer until the temperature was right around 100 degrees.

I took my starter yogurt out of the fridge when I started heating the milk. The picture is deceiving - it was a 5.3 ounce container. Add about one cup of the cooled milk to the yogurt to temper it, then add the yogurt/milk mixture to the rest of the milk in the slow cooker.

Turn off and unplug your slow cooker and wrap it in a huge, heavy towel. I took care to tuck the towel under the sides of the cooker. And, in the words of my favorite kitchen geek Alton Brown, 'just walk away'. Leave the yogurt sit idly for 6 to 10 hours. Emily said she usually leaves hers for 8 hours (again, she makes one-quart batches). I unwrapped the yogurt at 9 hours and immediately put it into the fridge where it slept overnight.

Emily suggested resting in the fridge for 12 hours. Mine was there for a little longer than that because the satellite guy showed up early to install the new receiver/DVR so we can feed our "Walking Dead" addiction. After he left, this is what I found. I was shocked that the yogurt seemed so firm! Wow - I actually did it. I made homemade yogurt and I have visions of smoothies and dressings and just yogurt with granola for breakfast dancing in my head. I also saved back one cup of the yogurt in a separate container to start my next batch.

For my first try, I'm very happy. The full texture, once I poured it out of the slow cooker into a container, is a little less thick than your standard Greek yogurt. But, one of my teenage memories of yogurt is staying with a family near Barneveld, Holland and pouring the yogurt out of a carton like milk, then adding a spoonful of this wonderful woman's homemade strawberry preserves. The taste of this yogurt is actually very mild. I was trying to explain it to Harry last yesterday - think about a mildly dry wine, it doesn't suck your cheeks into each other when you taste it and there's just a bit of sour tang.

So, for breakfast this morning, I had some of my homemade yogurt over some really good granola I found in the natural foods section at Kroger. I sprinkled on just a pinch of turbinado sugar, but the granola has a natural sweetness from pomegranate, acai and apples that balanced with the tart of the plain yogurt - I really didn't need the sugar but it sure looks pretty.

The yogurt experiment will be ongoing. I'd like to make smaller batches more often just so I don't risk letting any go bad. I need to know how many times I can "inbreed" my starter before it stops working. I'm sure if I were to use this to start a salad dressing, I would definitely drain it for awhile to thicken it. I'm also thinking about trying a yogurt cheese.

Dear Mr. Coffee...never again

I bought this Mr. Coffee coffeemaker on February 2. Today is February 18 and if I had time to go to a store, it would be in the trash already.

When my old Mr. Coffee took a crap after two years in 2007, Harry had found an old percolator when we were moving to the farm. I believe it was circa 1970s due to the ugly floral motif on the side. BUT, that percolator made the best coffee I'd had at home in years - until it finally died a few months later.

Enter Harry's Hamilton Beach coffeemaker. It wasn't very compact but it had all the elements we needed: automatic start, auto-shutoff and reliability. And it was reliable until around the first of the year.

Our coffee routine is simple: I set up the coffeemaker before I go to bed so that the coffee is ready when Harry gets up at 1:00 a.m. to go to work. He has time to drink about one cup and fills his sippy cup with one for the road. That leaves at least a half-pot of coffee for me and unless the cat crawls on my head to wake me up, I try to sleep until 5. Even if I wake up at 3, the warmer has shut off by then. I usually put my first cup in the nuker to warm it up and turn on the burner on the coffeemaker to warm up the rest of it.

We'll forget the fact that maybe I should just make him a half-pot and then make fresh when I wake up.

So, around the beginning of the year I noticed that the warmer didn't always come on when I turned it back on. There were also a few times that I tried to make another half-pot because I was in a mood and it refused to work. I'm used to intermittent wipers but an intermittent coffeemaker is a bad, bad thing.

Timing happened to be working that I had to take Dad to Columbus for a doctor's appointment on February 2 and lo and behold, there was a K-mart right across the road from the office. PERFECT! We went in, headed to the small appliances and I looked around. There was a Hamilton Beach coffeemaker exactly like the one that had just breathed its last - well, almost exactly.

It was red. Never in the more than 25 years of having my own kitchen have I even remotely considered the possibility of decorating with red anything. It would look great in my SIL's kitchen with all of her apple-y decor but not in my log cabin with custom knotty-pine cabinets.

Besides, black hides the splashes better - I'm just being realistic.

So, I selected this compact Mr. Coffee coffeemaker because it had a timer and auto-shutoff. It was $29.99 and when I got to the register, I found out I had $8 in K-mart rewards. Woot woot!!!

Since I brought home this machine two weeks ago, I've not had a decent cup of coffee. Twice in two weeks, the filter has bent over when I move the water arm over it, leading to grounds floating outside of the filter and not only dripping into the coffeepot but just making a general mess inside the basket-holding area. A mess that takes forever to clean because of all the nooks and crannies and the fact that wet coffee grounds are akin to Cream of Wheat - they keep multiplying.

I tried to blame the constant dribbling from the spout on the fact that it was designed by a right-handed person with no consideration for the left-handed consumer. I tried pouring with my right hand and still dribbled everywhere. These aren't drips, they are dribbles. Then, I told Harry about the messy problem and he's having the same issue.

The spout on the carafe is too small - it is intended for people who don't need a cup of coffee in them in order to pour a cup of coffee. It is so small, you can only pour slowly, gently. I want my coffee and I want it now.

So, Mr. Coffee, while I can't return this P.O.S. machine to K-mart because I got rid of the packaging and, honestly, with the price of gas it's not worth the trip, I wanted to let you know that I will never buy anything branded Mr. Coffee again.

DISCLOSURE: Obviously, this product review was not paid for by the Mr. Coffee company. All opinions expressed are my own.