Stuff Geeks Want

The standard, upright toaster. Oh hum. Not for Bodum who’s announced the Bistro Flatbed Toaster.

It lets you to defrost or toast any size of bread directly on a flat stainless steel heating surface, so you can do more than a bagel or slice of white bread. It’s great for pizza, tortillas, hamburger buns or any other oversized food item previously deemed un-toast able.

Its sleek design makes it a perfect complement to any countertop or buffet station. There’s a simple dial allowing you to specify the level of browning, and when not in use it can be stored on its side, freeing up counter space.

Buy for $80 from Amazon

The bad thing about frying the Thanksgiving turkey is that you have to stand outdoors in the cold to do it and the flammable oil displaced by a 15-pound turkey can easily overflow onto a propane-fueled flame. Not a pretty holiday sight.

But Masterbuilt has created the first indoor turkey fryer you plug into the wall. The Butterball Indoor Electric Turkey Fryer was designed to meet Underwriters Labs standards for safety. Its features include a thermostat temperature control sensor that prevents overheating and a digital timer that helps cook the turkey just right.

That leaves plenty of time to nap and watch football Thanksgiving day.

Buy for $140 from Amazon

In the market for a toaster? Want to impress your friends? (If so, get over yourself—it’s just a toaster.)

You could drop about $300 on Dualit’s sexy beast, $200 on the always-classy Breville Smart Toaster, or $150 DeLonghi’s elegant elements.

Or you could go the smart route with Back to Basics TEM500 Egg-and-Muffin 2-Slice Toaster and Egg Poacher.

Not only does this highly rated toaster turn two perfectly good slices of bread into their hot and crusty alter-egos, it will also poach or steam eggs! In 5 minutes or so you can have a great egg sandwich read with hardly any cleanup.

Buy for around $30 from Amazon

Or, if you want something with double the capacity (or insist on spending a lot on anything in your kitchen), you can spend drop $145 on Chefscape’s 4-Slice Egg and Muffin Toaster.

How many cups in a pint? How many ounces in a pound? Oh, forget it! Check out the Taylor Kitchenware Digital Measuring Cup and Scale.

It’s the first digital measuring cup and scale combination. The unit measures in weight and volume as the recipe dictates. It digitally weighs dry ingredients as well as liquid ingredients and is pre-programmed to convert weight to volume for water, milk, oil, sugar, and flour.

The weight capacity is 4.4 pounds and the volume capacity is one liter. The unit weighs in increments of mililiters, cups, fluid ounces, grams, and pounds. The plastic measuring cup runs on one long life Lithium battery that’s included and the easy-to-read LCD readout is molded into the handle.

It’s a handy tool for anyone who loves to cook and a great solution for those who don’t.

Buy standard DVD for $35 from Amazon

If you’re in the kitchen a lot you know the tedious part of food making is the prep. Cutting. Slicing. Grating. You almost wish you had children just to give them the boring task of grating cheese or cutting tomatoes.

The answer to easy greating is the Pyrex Box Grater.

It’s slightly wider at the base so it’s much more stable than its competitors. But its real differences are these: see-through measuring marks on the side so you grate exactly the amount you need, an easy-release sliding door on the bottom to dump out your contents, and a convenient little slicer on one side to grate smaller vegetables and such.

Buy for $18 from World Kitchen

It may feel a little strange to use rocks from the Japanese mountains of Kanazawa to filter your tap water, but the Iouseki stones and binchotan charcoal is the result of the classy designed (and aptly named) Water Pitcher that produces clean, mineral-rich water.

Don’t try and compare this type of filter to the ones like Brita and Pur. This filter will outlast those small charcoal pebbles by four months and is much sexier to boot. Replacement stones will run you $25, but remember they’ll last up to six months, depending on use.

And when you’re through with the rocks, you can even toss them in your back yard. How simple is that?

Buy for $85 from Design Within Reach

Kitchen connoisseurs are often skeptical of new fangled contraptions. But when it comes to grilling stuffed chile peppers those in the know will tell you it’s not easy to get ‘em to come out perfect every time.

In comes the Chile Grill. It’s a 12-inch by six-inch, stainless steel grill that holds 12 jalapeno peppers.

Core ‘em, stuff ‘em and them bake ‘em based on your recipe and they come out evenly baked and not burned on one side. The grill holds the peppers nicely and conveniently. There is no slipping, no mess, no attempting to balance the peppers on the stick. The grill is durable and washes easily.

And if Martha Stewart-like presentation is important to you, you can’t go wrong pulling this grill out of the oven and taking it right to the table.

Buy for $25 from Amazon

So you’re throwing this party and you’d rather not have a slow cooker on the table full of spinach dip (certainly not).

The answer is a heated dip and chip tray. Easily thought of, but hard to find. But eureka, we found one! It’s the Kitchen Selectives ECD-88 Electric Heated Chip and Dip Tray made buy Select Brands, Inc.

It’s got four sides to throw in chips and such with a heated center section that’s removable to clean and will automatically shut off when it’s removed. It’s AC powered so it’ll keep warm till dawn.

Buy for $40 from Amazon

Induction cooking is becoming more popular in the U.S. What is it? In simple terms it’s a burner that’s really an electromagnet. Charge the electromagnet, it builds a field, it excites molecules of food and that generates heat. So the primary difference is that in induction, it’s the pot that gets hot, not the burner, and things get hotter faster, like boiling water in under five minutes.

With the science lesson out of the way, we now present you with the result: The Fagor Portable Induction Cookstop. The Fagor single burner is portable, lightweight and powerful. It weighs seven pounds and has a temperature range of 160 to 430 degrees.

This portable hot plate – perfect for the student away at school (like my niece) – has a lot of the features you’d expect to find in a much more expensive, built-in model. Features like a built in countdown timer, six power levels, a digital touch control panel, an auto pan detector, a child lock, and an auto shut down feature.

Fagor has thought of everything in this little wonder and we were impressed by it’s quality and durability.

Buy for $200 from Amazon

When you’re stocking your home bar, don’t forget proper glassware. Lowball glasses, also called rocks glasses, will be one of the cornerstones of your collection, so don’t skimp by serving drinks in cups suitable for water or juice.

At the high end, we like the Orrefors On The Rocks Double Old Fashioned glasess. Designed by Swedish artist Martti Rytkonen, these handmade glasses have a nice heavy feel in the hand and a beautiful mountain-like finish in the bottom. But at $75 a pair it will cost you some Benjamins to stock enough for all your guests.

Our mid-range pick is the Spiegelau Festival On The Rocks Glass. This German made glass has modern lines and a stunning finish. $42 for a set of 6.

If that’s still out of your price range, turn to the Luigi Bormioli Strauss Double Old Fashion Glass. Beautiful proportions and a classic design make these glasses impossible to strike out with. $22 for 4.