All posts tagged: kitchen

Matic Robot Vacuum Review: The Best Robot Vacuum

Matic Robot Vacuum Review: The Best Robot Vacuum

Published by skeptic

The vacuum has six RGB infrared cameras on the front, top, and back, which means that it can see in color and in darkness—you don’t have to have all the lights on for it to work, unlike a robot vacuum that uses basic optical sensors. It took a few minutes to map my home. The app is incredible. It’s a weirdly accurate 3D rendering of my home, differentiating not only the floor surfaces but also furniture and items several feet up. The app has several buttons that you can toggle. You can change the rendering style to make the map less visually cluttered; you can use a joystick to control the vacuum manually; you can switch to an “airplane mode” to “fly” through your house at eye level, instead of at floor level; and you can record video if you have errors to send to Matic’s team. The Matic uses what it calls long-term SLAM, or absolute mapping, which is in contrast to most vacuums that navigate via relative mapping, involving a variety of sensors …

Thistle Meal Kit Review: Surprisingly Tasty

Thistle Meal Kit Review: Surprisingly Tasty

Published by skeptic

My favorite meals focused on multiple textures and various ingredients to make a truly dynamic salad-type dish. The Corn and Poblano Chile Salad With Adobo Pinto Beans was a solid, Mexican-inspired meal that was the perfect lunch to eat on the first warm spring day of the year. Roasted poblano peppers, sweet corn, cabbage, brown rice, and pinto beans worked well together with the mild spinach backdrop and a roasted jalapeno vegan ranch dressing that I could’ve drank straight from the ramekin. I still dream of the Lemongrass Shirataki Bowl, a cold noodle salad dish that hit all the right elements of savory-spice and varied texture. The chilled rice noodles came with a lightly spicy marinated mince of sautéed vegetables and pea protein crumbles. The crisp cucumber, spinach, ginger, lemongrass, and peanuts added a crunchy texture, but the yummy salty, slightly tangy housemade vegan “fish” sauce truly brought this all together. This sauce used dynamic ingredients like coconut aminos, date syrup, rice vinegar, lime juice, tahini, mushrooms, and seaweed to get that same great super-umami …

Traeger Woodridge Pro Review: Fearless Smoking

Traeger Woodridge Pro Review: Fearless Smoking

Published by skeptic

I also wanted to call out one oddity I noticed in testing, which is that dogs seem very attracted to the big knob on the Woodridge’s control panel. Three different dogs who came over to my house during smoking sessions pressed it with their noses, probably due to the combination of meat smell and seeing other people touching it. They wouldn’t be able to turn on the grill, but they can mess with you while you’re setting the temperature if they’re mischievous or curious like mine. The Smoke Coming from the world of propane grills, the size of the Woodridge Pro really struck me. You could easily smoke two full-sized pork bellies at the same time, and I hope to very soon. As it was, my usual Costco pork belly loads up half the smoker, which is more than enough to feed some friends and have leftovers for myself. It couldn’t be easier. Set the temperature, keep the hopper filled, and everything else is managed automatically. Instead of worrying about vents or fan speeds or …

Dinnerly Meal Kit Review: Hearty Meals on a Budget

Dinnerly Meal Kit Review: Hearty Meals on a Budget

Published by skeptic

“This is a real Midwestern meal,” my father said, digging into a plate I’d prepared from the Martha Stewart–endorsed Dinnerly meal kit. “Meat. Potatoes. Green beans.” This, for my father, was high praise. It was the type of meal he’d grown up with as a child in Nebraska: hearty, no-nonsense, balanced, always something green, and always a slab of meat. For a week on a visit while my mother spent time with the grandkids, I cooked him dinners with Dinnerly, the lower-cost cousin of the truly excellent, cheffy Marley Spoon meal kit also endorsed by Stewart (and also by me: 8/10, WIRED Recommends). The biggest surprise for him was how much some of these meals intersected with old-school American home scratch cooking. The “Greek Lemon-Oregano Chicken” we were eating did indeed involve a bit of citrus, but this character was less notable than the salty savoriness of deglazed chicken broth deepened by the browned bits from the chicken. Oregano hardly felt exotic, to anyone at the table. Heck, they might even serve this chicken in …

Gozney Tread Pizza Oven Review: Gorgeous and Compact

Gozney Tread Pizza Oven Review: Gorgeous and Compact

Published by skeptic

Billed as the “world’s most portable pizza oven,” the Gozney Tread is an adventure-ready, ruggedized gas-powered beauty. It is the smallest of the hugely impressive Gozney range, and the second most affordable behind the original Roccbox. It joins an ever-evolving selection of home pizza ovens that have transformed our ability to cook proper pizza—we’re talking everything from Neapolitan, Chicago-style, New York and Sicilian—from the comfort of the backyard. With the Tread, Gozney wants us to take our sourdough calzone on tour. Measuring 16.5″ x 19.1″ x 12.6″, it is undeniably compact for a fully featured pizza oven, and the two large handles make it easier (and cleaner) to move than most. The gas-only design can hit 932 degrees Fahrenheit (500 degrees Celsius) and has space for a 12-inch pie. Can it compete with the best pizza ovens available, and at 29.7 pounds, is it really portable enough to take with you? I spent a few weeks both carb- and trunk-loading to find out. Portable? Really? For all the gorgeous marketing images of the Tread in …

Hungryroot Meal Kit Review (2025): AI-Guided Menu

Hungryroot Meal Kit Review (2025): AI-Guided Menu

Published by skeptic

My colleague Molly Higgins, who is vegan, simultaneously tested out her own very different goals and preferences on Hungryroot. These involved no chicken at all. Ostensibly, when you sign up, a Hungryroot dinner will cost you $13 a serving, while lunch costs $12 and breakfast is a mere $4.50. But in practice, the number of meals you choose translates to a weekly supply of “points” whose sum may be different for each dish. And so while one dinner plate is 11 points, another might be 12. Snacks might cost just a couple points apiece. And if you don’t use all your points this week, next week is for ribeye. Easy, Breezy, Chicken-Caesary In any case, when I told Hungryroot’s questionnaire that I wanted my meal kit to help me save time, the algorithm listened. Among five recipes and some prepackaged breakfast items, only one meal took more than 15 minutes to prepare. Most plates were as much assembly as actual cooking. One lunchtime meal’s only prep involved slicing sous vide chicken breast atop a Caesar …

Does Chocolate Go Bad? How to Store It, Freeze it, and Ship It

Does Chocolate Go Bad? How to Store It, Freeze it, and Ship It

Published by skeptic

If you’re keeping your bonbons much more than a week before eating, this is when we start talking about fridges and freezers. Nothing That Isn’t Cold Can Stay “I rarely advise my customers to refrigerate or freeze their bonbons, but it’s not because it can’t be done. It’s more that it requires a few steps to make sure the bonbons are still as beautiful as they were when I shipped them,” Coppel notes. If you know you’re keeping your bonbons for longer than a week, Coppel says, a fridge or wine cooler is your best bet for keeping chocolate flavors fresh and potent. Most sources recommend wrapping bonbons tightly in plastic—or in an airtight container—before storing in a refrigerator, to avoid your chocolates picking up funny flavors from whatever else is in the fridge. “If you have a wine cooler, you’re in luck. That’s the best appliance you can use to store bonbons. Place your bonbons there at 16°C or 60°F (if you want to be even more precise, the cooler should have a relative …

Julia Fox stuns Grammys red carpet with yellow kitchen gloves and sheer outfit

Julia Fox stuns Grammys red carpet with yellow kitchen gloves and sheer outfit

Published by skeptic

Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly guide to the latest trends, fashion, relationships and more Julia Fox turned heads for her unexpected accessory at the 2025 Grammy Awards. The 35-year-old model, who briefly dated Kanye West in 2022, walked the red carpet in a sheer black mini-dress, over a matching thong and bra. She also wore a black leather jacket, with white puffy sleeves, a black sheer hat, and black leather boots. Still, it was her colorful accessory that undeniably stood out: Yellow, latex gloves – often used for cleaning dishes in a kitchen. On X (formerly Twitter), fans have mocked the Uncut Gems star for wearing these gloves to the awards show. “When you had a fierce dishwashing gig at 6:30 but had to attend the Grammys at 7,” one quipped, while another wrote: “She’s got rubber gloves …

6 Best Dash Appliances (2025), Tested and Reviewed

6 Best Dash Appliances (2025), Tested and Reviewed

Published by skeptic

Dash makes compact kitchen appliances that are super easy to use, clean, and store. These span various categories, including waffle makers, toasters, ovens, blenders, air fryers, cookware, and mixers. While anyone can use them, I think they’re especially great for dorms and small apartments, small budgets, and anyone striking it out on their own for the first time. These gadgets are essentially foolproof and come with recipe books if you’re really stuck. Source link

This New Designer Kitchen Tool Is Just a Stick. So Why Are We Obsessed With It?

This New Designer Kitchen Tool Is Just a Stick. So Why Are We Obsessed With It?

Published by skeptic

Alongside making steel, brass, and wooden sculptures, Richardt has created minimalist designs for more than a decade for Danish design studio Frama: A day bed, a lounge chair, candle holders, a shelving system, a “very minimalist” lamp for the restaurant Noma. Sophie Charara Frama passed on Tool One, though, so Richardt kept it at home until he stumbled on kitchenware studio Veark, also in Copenhagen, which makes tools inspired by professional kitchens. For cofounders Daniel Ronge and Christian Lorentzen, it was love at first stick. We jest about the sheer simplicity of this thing, but Richardt’s inspiration came, of course, partly from utensils in Asia. Cooking chopsticks, often made from bamboo, have long been used by professional stir-fry chefs for tasting and sampling in the kitchen. “I had some chopsticks at home that I used to stir my oatmeal in the morning for a couple of years, and it was a little too small for doing that,” he says. “Then I thought I could make it larger into a design that could also flip a …