Michael Ruhlman » gifts

Holiday Gift Week:Sous Vide Supreme Giveaway!

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:35:12 +0000

Sous vide slow-cooked egg with Noodlecat ramen noodles, veg dashi broth.
Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Yep, the good folks at Sous Vide Supreme are doing a promotional giveaway of one of their superb sous vide appliances—and a vacuum sealer! (Details below.) About ten years ago, sous vide cooking (cooking food at low precise temperatures) entered the professional kitchen in America. It's now solidly in the home kitchen with various devices for sale. For the best price/quality ratio, Sous Vide Supreme has, since its arrival in 2009, been my favorite tool. It's fabulous for home use. I slow-cook beef ribs for 48 hours for tender and juicy ribs. You can transform eggs in ways no other method can. I love putting a soft-boiled egg into soups, as in the above ramen dish. I use it monthly Click to Continue Reading

Holiday Gift Week: Dalton-Ruhlman Products

Michael Ruhlman — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 15:57:51 +0000

Was it two years ago? Three? Donna and I had people over on New Year's Day and an old high school friend, Mac Dalton, said, "Michael, I gotta show you what I do. I make things. What do you want to make?" "This," I said, standing at my stove, and held up a spoon I'd awkwardly bent for basting. "I can make that," he said. And he did. Chef Jonathon Sawyer of The Greenhouse Tavern picked it this year as one of his holiday gift ideas for Food & Wine. I love these spoons. They're elegant just to have in your hand. We immediately started to make more useful kitchen tools. Here's our whole catalogue, available on my site. Another thing happened. I'd partnered with OpenSky, an Internet commerce site that finds really cool products, sends them to me, and asks me if I'd like to recommend ...

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Holiday Gift Week: My books!

Michael Ruhlman — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:23:39 +0000

I can already feel Donna rolling her eyes. I'm like that, um, ham, who runs out onto a Broadway stage and flings out his arms ... and then silence. Well, it is my theater here, and I don't exactly sell tickets, and at least it's not a political ad! Brian Polcyn and I are very proud of our new book, Salumi: The Italian Craft of Dry Curing, about how to make your own pancetta, guanciale, coppa, and other dry-cured wonders in the grand and ancient tradition of Italy. There's a reason one of the oldest examples of early civilization still exists. Because everyone can do it, and because it's delicious. Granted, not everyone wants a piece of meat hanging from the chandelier for three weeks, but for those demented and wonderful souls who do, this book is for you. You ...

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Holiday Gift Week: Cookbook Picks for 2012

Michael Ruhlman — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:38:12 +0000

Modernist Cuisine at Home and Consider the Fork are two of my holiday cookbook choices. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

I get sent so many cookbooks we had to build more shelves. So while I don't get deluged the way the NYTBR does, I do see a good deal of what's being published. The stuff I get seems to be what publishers are most hopeful about (and therefore worth the price of the book and postage). I will note below the books that I actually purchased (because I already have more cookbooks than I need or even want, that's saying something), as well as my pick for favorite book of the season (it's not my own, btw). I was sent the above Modernist Cuisine at Home by Nathan Myhrvold with chef Maxime Bilet, a pared-down version ...

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Holiday Gift Week: Small-Ticket Items

Michael Ruhlman — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:45:48 +0000

A great gift for the season. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

Kitchen tools need not be expensive to be valuable. The above Benriner mandoline is one of my most valued kitchen tools for uniform slicing, julienning, and making brunoise (a julienne turned into a dice). By far my most valuable electric device in my kitchen is the hand blender—I use Braun that seems to be unavailable, but I bought this Cuisinart version for my mom ($47) and it works well—these devices all do the job of pureeing soups and sauces, easy whisking, quick mayonnaise, and I make vinaigrettes in the cup attachment, which will even emulsify a great Caesar dressing will pureeing the garlic. Every kitchen needs a scale, the most reliable way of measuring, especially if you're baking (which is why more cookbooks are including, if not leading ...

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Holiday Gift Week: Big-Ticket Items

Michael Ruhlman — Sat, 24 Nov 2012 14:30:40 +0000

Lamb braising in my Le Creuset Dutch oven, which is a fantastic gift to give that special someone. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

It's time again for my picks for the big-ticket items, those expensive appliances and pots that are game changers, but real investments. I've just started a relationship with Le Creuset, the company that makes the best enameled cast-iron cookware on earth. My go-to pot is the 7-quart Dutch Oven (they're made in France and the company wants me to call them French ovens, which I find interesting since there really should no longer be a nationality attached to the thing; my preferred name for this one is "My Favorite Pot"). It's what I bought my beloved Dad long ago; now, sadly, I have two of them. My other favorite is the braiser, the ...

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Holiday Gift Week: My Favorite OpenSky Tools

Michael Ruhlman — Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:30:08 +0000

Making a roux. Photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman.

I'm going to devote the next several days to my top picks for holiday shopping for kitchen tools, as I did last year. I'll have a day for big-ticket items, lower-priced tools, and my favorite cookbooks of the season. I'm starting with my favorite tools that OpenSky has sourced for me—first, the higher-priced items and then lower-priced items, and concluding with my top pick for every kitchen on my or anyone's Opensky page. The above Fagor induction burner is killer for so many reasons. It gets pans really hot really fast really efficiently. It's portable so you can use it anywhere that there's an outlet. We used it last night in the dining room to keep the gravy hot. It's a great extra burner for big cooking ...

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Give the Gift of Sous Vide

Michael Ruhlman — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:58:21 +0000

Sous Vide cooking manual. Photo by Deborah Jones

Cooking sous vide, wrapped food submerged in warm to hot water, is a relatively new form of cooking now available to home cooks. The method truly does allow for transforming food in ways previously not possible with such precision. The best example of what it can do is short ribs. Short ribs cooked at 140˚ F. for 48 hours results in medium rare to medium meat, still pink, but completely tender. Pork belly cooked for that same time, then chilled is ready to be seared crispy when you’re ready to serve it. Chicken thighs and duck legs the same. Not only does sous vide give you precise control of the internal temperature of meat and fish, it gives you the convenience of preparing food in advance, ...

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Holiday Shopping: The Big Ticket Items

Michael Ruhlman — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 16:15:58 +0000

Christmas, 1992, my mom's beau, an avid cook with whom I shared many happy hours in the kitchen, gave me a KitchenAid standing mixer. It quickly became and remains my most relied upon countertop appliance. I use it for mixing all kinds of dough, whipping meringue, making big batches of pate a choux, and, when I joined forces with Brian Polcyn to write a book about sausages and other forms of food economy and preservation, to grind meat (via the grinder attachment) and to mix the meat afterward (more this later). It was one of the best and most useful gifts I've received ever. Christmas is a time when we indulge the people we love with gifts they wouldn't be able to afford or to justify buying on their own. For those of you ...

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