Kitchen Gadgets

One last thing before the caffeine wears off:

I keep my knives in a drawer rather than in a butcher block in order to save countertop space.

I bought these cheap things to keep them organized:

 

So I bought a grill basket today for my grill:



I made grilled chicken fajitas for dinner, and when I was prepping the chicken & veggies and putting them in the marinade last night, I figured I could skewer the chicken, but messing with sliced peppers & onions was a whole 'nuther thang.

Some percentage of the reviews said "Nothing I've done will get this thing clean!" And my chicken marinade had honey in it. So I had a large jelly roll pan ready (cookie sheet with sides), filled it with soapy water, and immediately put the pan in it to soak. It's a pretty black crusty mess. We shall see...

I like the concept. The flames lap up through the holes to grill the meat and the veggies. It did not come with instructions. Some sites say to put the food on this cold and then set it on the grill, and others say to preheat it for 10 minutes. I preheated it. That honey sure seared to the hot basket. And things cooked way faster than the recipe said, since they hit a hot pan rather than sat above flames.

 

I'm not 100% sold on that charcoal basket.

Where the chicken cooked took extensive cleanup:

I had to:
>Soak
>Scrape with a putty knife
>Scrub with steel wool

I repeated that process 4 times over the course of a few hours last night.
There were still lots of patches of stuck food.

I then added a grease dissolver (Greased Lightening) and let it soak overnight. This morning I scraped off more bits, then put it in the dishwasher. I took it out of the dishwasher and did one final steel wool scrub, which finally removed all the remaining bits that had been loosened by the Greased Lightening + dishwasher.

Note to self: Don't get the thing searing hot and then throw a sugar-based marinade on it.

The side the veggies cooked on was fine. They had been tossed in oil with garlic, salt & pepper. They did not stick one bit, nor did they leave any residue.

This is gonna take some practice if I'm going to do beef, poultry & seafood on it.

 

I had a chicken breast cut into strips for fajitas. That's why the marinade with honey in it, coating all those pieces. There was gobs of it. The basket was so screaming hot I could have given the strips 60 seconds on each side and eaten...they got overcooked and charred, as well as stuck. If I hadn't had the veggies to mess with (or just done them on a cast iron griddle), I would have put the chicken on skewers.

The basket worked well for the veggies, but it's so large it covers the entire grill, so there's no place to put the meat at the same time, although they do make smaller baskets. Ain't no big deal. I don't grill as often as I used to (I do lots of batch cooking & freezing these days), but now that I have this, I might start grilling shrimp & scallops. Should be pretty easy to swab a spot with oil before laying down the food.

I like your idea of getting chicken started in the oven and then hitting the grill for flavor.

 

I've heard that about Instant Pots

I've got a 7 quart Crock Pot brand that literally boils water. There were lots of bad reviews for it...lots of "I got scalded" complaints. I keep it because it's handy to heat up dishes real fast for pot lucks and to keep them hot. But you cannot slow cook in it. Amazon still sells it. Maybe they fixed it. I got 2 others that I use (including my Rival from the 70s.) Still have the bread steamer insert. And that Rival is still going strong.

 

When I moved 10 years ago, it was a chance to reorganize. I took all those extra big spoons and ladles and pancake turners and put them in a box so my drawers were "minimalist." I lived with it for a while, pulling some back out of the box when I realized I needed backup. Then the rest went to Goodwill.

Since we're all friends here, I'll show you my junk drawer and my gadget drawer:





I got these a while ago and love them:



Spring-loaded to wedge right in securely.

Those drawers are unretouched, after 10 years of use. I just opened them up and took the pic.

The junk drawers looks junky (it kinda is), but I know right where everything is because the stuff is organized into each "pocket."

I have a 3rd organized drawer next to my stove with the spoons, pancake turners and corded-probe thermometers in it so I can reach in and grab as I cook. These come in pairs, so I took the remaining 4th one and put it in the full-width (but short) deli drawer in my fridge to organize cheeses, lunch meats, batteries, etc.

 

I like them in the drawer. I know where and what each one is, and it saves counter space. I don't need to change from one knife to another on the fly, like a mechanic getting wrenches and screwdrivers. I pull one out and it's what I need for the tasks at hand.