Another kitchen gadget

[sivyaleah]

I nearly purchased this recently, but was on the fence about it.  I've had mandolines and was never happy with any of them.  And, cut myself up a few times too.

Seeing your photos may have convinced me to get one.  

 

[AbbysMom]

Merged. Your pictures are certainly nice than mine. :lol3:


You really do have to be careful when cleaning the blade.

 

[laureen227]

I have to get one of those! Only two problems - I have a tendency towards ingenious ways of maiming myself in the kitchen, and I have a chronic lack of space (so nowhere to store it).

Sooo jealous right now Pam That zucchini looks good

I know, Columbine, and if anybody is going to cut themselves, it would be me. Whenever I bake, I burn myself; whenever I cook, I cut myself. It always happens.

I'm running out of storage space in the kitchen myself. Right now, I keep it in the bottom of one of the lazy Susans. 

But it's a neat little gadget and we'll get use out of it. Stay tuned!

 
I know, Columbine, and if anybody is going to cut themselves, it would be me. Whenever I bake, I burn myself; whenever I cook, I cut myself. It always happens.

I'm running out of storage space in the kitchen myself. Right now, I keep it in the bottom of one of the lazy Susans. 

But it's a neat little gadget and we'll get use out of it. Stay tuned!

I have a mandolin that has an attachment that makes a similar cut. I almost took a fingertip off with it. :rolleyes2

That looks delicious. I would have had it plain too. Maybe a little parmesan and some crushed red pepper though. I love zucchini  

three weeks ago, i made soup. burned myself quite badly with the hot oil (Pasta e Fagioli - starts with olive oil). yesterday, i made soup, but did NOT burn myself (altho i came close). instead, i sliced open my thumb cutting potatoes. :doh3:

 

[stewball]

America's Test Kitchen is offering a 28% discount at Amazon on their top-rated Paderno Tri-Blade Plastic Spiral Vegetable Slicer. The code is ATKSPIRAL.
 I saw it on Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/special-spiralizer-deal_n_7087924.html  and the offer at Amazon is: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0007Y9WHQ/?tag=firesalepartner-20 .



While I was at Amazon, I also pre-ordered a new cookbook Deep South Dish cookbook. I am seriously addicted to cookbooks.


I love kitchen gadgets and I was intrigued by the slicer. I like the idea of spiralizing veggies . Thought somebody might be interested.

I now know what a spiralizer is Pam.

 

[Winchester]

Oh geez, Laureen....glad you're OK!

 

[stewball]

I finally used mine yesterday!

image.jpg

• AbbysMom
• Jul 16, 2015

We had never had zucchini noodles before and we really liked them. We're having them again tonight. I learned overgrown zucchini don't work that well when you get to the middle because the seeds get in the way. I just used a smaller one and it worked great.

Did you use the zucchini instead of pasta and if yes, how filling was it and what sauce did you use?

 

[stewball]

I nearly purchased this recently, but was on the fence about it.  I've had mandolines and was never happy with any of them.  And, cut myself up a few times too.
Seeing your photos may have convinced me to get one.  

What are mandolins?

 

[MoochNNoodles]

What are mandolins?

A mandolin is a slicer basically.  The one I have can grate cheese or do different size slices; depending on how you set it up the blades.  It also has a holder so you just slide the holder with the food inside it against the grater and the food falls out of the bottom.  

My Mother was using a spiralizer on a zucchini on Friday.  She and my step-dad are doing a lot of Vegan eating these days (and losing lots of weight!) so she's trying some new meothods.  The zucchini looked great and the process fascinated my kiddos.  The problem was she couldn't get the blade out.  I think the spiralizer came from Williams-Sonoma.  A co-worker had loaned it to her.  

I like to dice a zucchini and throw it in my tomato sauce when I make it home-made.  I imagine the zucchini in place of noodles would be fantastic.  I'm not sure if my kids would go for it; but it's worth a shot! 

 

[stewball]

A mandolin is a slicer basically.  The one I have can grate cheese or do different size slices; depending on how you set it up the blades.  It also has a holder so you just slide the holder with the food inside it against the grater and the food falls out of the bottom.  


My Mother was using a spiralizer on a zucchini on Friday.  She and my step-dad are doing a lot of Vegan eating these days (and losing lots of weight!) so she's trying some new meothods.  The zucchini looked great and the process fascinated my kiddos.  The problem was she couldn't get the blade out.  I think the spiralizer came from Williams-Sonoma.  A co-worker had loaned it to her.  

I like to dice a zucchini and throw it in my tomato sauce when I make it home-made.  I imagine the zucchini in place of noodles would be fantastic.  I'm not sure if my kids would go for it; but it's worth a shot! 

Could you send me a picture of it please?

 

[sivyaleah]

 

[stewball]

Mandoline-at-Work-428x290.jpg

• sivyaleah
• Jul 20, 2015

Oh wow! What a smart piece of kitchen equipment. I'd love something like that.
Do you use it a lot.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I don't use mine very often.  It takes longer for me to take that out and set it up than it does to slice up what I'm cooking.  It's a better time saver when I have a lot of things to slice.  I may use it when I get ready to make pickles.  That would help them have a nice, uniform size.

 

[Winchester]

That's my problem, too. Unless I have a ton of stuff to chop or slice, I can use my knife and get it done quicker than I can set the thing up to use it. And it's a lot easier to clean one paring knife and a cutting board than it is to clean the mandoline or the spiralizer or the food processor. If I need to shred a whole head of cabbage, I'll even get my Mouli out sometimes instead of the food processor. For some reason, I like using my Mouli.

Here's my Mouli:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Mou...Grater-445-5-Disc-Blades-France-/131554824103 

My aunt gave it to me years and years (and years!) ago for Christmas. And I will say that it's been used hard....it's a welcome gadget in the kitchen. Wonderful for shredding cabbage and carrots.

Mooch, I do use my food processor when slicing cukes for pickles. Makes them all nice and even.

 

[sivyaleah]

Never any more.

First, I have very good knife skills. Second is I've had a few of these over the years and even the ones touted at good, really aren't, at least for me.  I find none are stable enough, and tend to slide on the countertop to some degree.  This, can lead to not having a good grip of the part in your and and potentially slicing yourself, instead of what you're cutting. 

They are quite expensive also.  

I find using a box grater, microplane zester or other gadgets (or again, a good sharp knife!) are far quicker, easier and better cleanup.  

Your mileage may vary as the saying goes.

 

[jtbo]

I know, Columbine, and if anybody is going to cut themselves, it would be me. Whenever I bake, I burn myself; whenever I cook, I cut myself. It always happens.

I'm running out of storage space in the kitchen myself. Right now, I keep it in the bottom of one of the lazy Susans. 

But it's a neat little gadget and we'll get use out of it. Stay tuned!

Space is bit of issue all the time, I have only 3ft of table space and that is narrow, problem is that my current residence is around 7ft by 12ft but there is 4ft by 4ft section that is actually entry and bed has to be in same space, so not much usable space, storing anything is real pain, but I have cold uninsulated storage space quite a bit, just not convenient to keep everything other side of yard and also as space is uninsulated, dust from road gets in quite well.

I have managed to fit in this tiny space: table top mixer, induction cooker, pot, pan, kitchen scale, rolling pin and some measurement cups, there are probably also some I forget, but not lot of space, need some working space and as there is no pantry, flour etc. has to be kept someplace.

I do quite bit of pizza during summer when boiling water on wood stove kind of thing would make this tiny room too hot. Electric oven is in other building so pizza and other things that are baked in oven are what I eat during summer time.

Air tight sealing bags (I think they are called zip lock or something like that?) are wonderful 'gadget', for example yesterday I made pizza dough for 6 pizzas, sliced dough to 6 partitions and put 5 of them each to their own bag and freezer, before dough started to rise.
Now today I just took dough from freezer, put it to oven pan that was covered with baking paper and after few hours dough rises and I can roll it thin.

For that big batch table top mixer is very useful as it does mix quite a lot and does not take much more time, I think that my OBH table top mixer could make dough big enough for 12 oven pan size pizzas, but I don't do that much as dough is good to freeze only for 3 months.

Digital scale is only way I can make big batch without failing, that makes things so easy and with table top mixer it is simple, just put everything in and start machine, after some time dough is ready, but I needed to lower dough hook quite low before that started to work properly.

Also I have started cooking as well as making dinner by weight, so scale is getting best place, I use it constantly, also induction cooker needs to be on table. Table top mixer is usually on top of freezer, but when in use I lift it on table, it is not very light model, so that limits locating it a bit.

I'm kind of thinking taking freezer out and building more table space with some cabinets, but I don't know when that is going to happen, then I could have space to get some new gadgets to fill all that wonderful space

 

[Winchester]

JTbo, you have managed well with your small spaces. Thankfully, we have a basement and Rick has made a lot of shelving there, so that I can have more storage. A few years ago, we didn't want our entertainment center in the living room any longer. So I took that to the basement, too, and use that for storage as well. It really helps as I seem to collect kitchen items.

I use a digital scale quite a bit when baking; I find that it's easier in the long run than measuring cups. Those mixers are very heavy. We gave one to my mom many years ago and she used her mixer heavily. But when she got older, she got to the point where she wasn't able to lug it around and it was too big to stay on her kitchen counter. So she gave it back to me as she couldn't really deal with it anymore.

We eat a lot of grilled pizza during the summer; that way we don't have to heat up the oven at all. I try to have 4-6 dough balls in the freezer at all times. When I start getting low, then I make more.

 

[stewball]

Space is bit of issue all the time, I have only 3ft of table space and that is narrow, problem is that my current residence is around 7ft by 12ft but there is 4ft by 4ft section that is actually entry and bed h
to be in same space, so not much usable space, storing anything is real pain, but I have cold uninsulated storage space quite a bit, just not convenient to keep everything other side of yard and also as space is uninsulated, dust from road gets in quite well.

I have managed to fit in this tiny space: table top mixer, induction cooker, pot, pan, kitchen scale, rolling pin and some measurement cups, there are probably also some I forget, but not lot of s
need some working space and as there is no pantry, flour etc. has to be kept
someplace.

I do quite bit of pizza during summer when boiling water on wood stove kind of thing would make this tiny room too hot. Electric oven is in other building so pizza and other things that are baked ioven are what I eat during summer time.

Air tight sealing bags (I think they are called zip lock or something like that?)

are wonderful 'gadget', for example pyesterday I made pizza dough for 6 pizzas, sliced dough to 6 partitions and put 5 of them each to their own bag and freezer, before dough started to rise.
Now today I just took dough from freezer, put it to oven pan that was covered with baking paper and after few hours dough rises and I can roll it thin.

For that big batch table top mixer is very useful as it does mix quite a lot and does not take much more time, I think that my OBH table top mixer could make dough big enough for 12 oven pan size pizzas, but I don't do that much as dough is locating it a bit.

I'm kind of thinking taking freezer out and building more table space with some cabinets, but I don't know when that is going to happen, then I could have space to get some new gadgets to fill all that wonderful space

I keep my flour in my fridge.