Celebrity Chefs

3 Tricks to Use When Cleaning Your Grill

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With summer winding down, it’s time to clean all your summertime toys and get everything ready for the cooler months where you won’t use them as much or at all. This includes your charcoal, propane or natural gas grill. Hopefully you got a lot of use from it this summer. And if you have, it likely needs a good cleaning before you start using it more sporadically. To help make this a simple and easy job, here are three helpful tricks to use when cleaning your outdoor grill.

Using the Heat

After months of repeated use, your grill probably looks a long way from the sparkling chrome you brought home from the store. And while you may have scrubbed it briefly after it had cooled from each use, there is probably still quite a build up left over at the end of the summer. One way to make this cleaning easier, according to Lauren DeCarlo, a contributor to RealSimple.com, is to use the heat to your advantage. By turning on the grill on high for a few minutes and letting the heat seep into the dirt and stains, it will make the job of cleaning them away a lot easier. The heat will help to burn off residue left over and help to loosen up previously hard to remove spots. Just make sure it’s cool enough for you to touch before you dive in with your rags and scrub brush.

Tin Foil

With all the rubbing and scrubbing you’re doing to get your grill clean, there’s going to be a lot of flying debris going all over your cooking space. While it’s easy enough to use your hose to spray off your deck or patio, you can’t very well do that to your grill. To protect your heating elements and other fragile grill parts from falling and flying debris, Hadyn Lazarow, a contributor to DIYNetwork.com, recommends placing a large sheet of tin foil over the heating elements to help catch any ash, debris or grease from falling where you don’t want it to be. This also makes it easy to keep your cleaning from getting too messy in the process.

Buckets, Buckets and Buckets

Grill components can get very dirty with repeated use. While you can take the removable parts into the kitchen to clean, you run the risk of getting other areas of your home dirty in the process. So to help keep your grease contained, Jeremy Anderberg, a contributor to the Art of Manliness, suggests using three buckets to get this cleaning done quick and easy. One bucket will be for soapy water, one bucket will be of clean water to rinse off the soap, and one bucket will be to catch any debris you need to get rid of. Then once the cleaning is done, just rinse out all your buckets and set them aside for your next deep grill cleaning.

The food you can make using your outdoor grill is the epitome of delicious home cooking. Use the tips mentioned above to make sure your grill stays clean and in good working condition for years to come.

Fave Kitchen Tools of Chefs

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Kitchen-Knives

Chefs do their work using their knowledge and creative skills. But apart from that, they also have their favorite tools that help make their work faster and easier. The choice, however, varies from one chef to another. Some may prefer the traditional super handy tools while the others opt for the bulky, more advanced and complicated ones.

The type of tools chefs love to use normally reflects their attitude toward cooking and who among them keep abreast with technology. [Read more…]

Tips From The Grillmasters: Make The Most Of Outdoor Cooking This Summer

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The weather is warming up every day, and any chef worth his knives can tell you what that means: grilling season. But unlike stovetop or oven cooking, learning to grill like a masterchef can come with unexpected challenges, from sudden weather changes to inconsistent flame heat. Luckily, some of the world’s best grillmasters are here to share their secrets. With a little help, everyone will be flocking to your back deck this summer.

outdoor grilling [Read more…]

5 Kitchen Gadgets You Probably Don’t Have But Should

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Kitchen survival

To budding chefs, cooking shows like Chopped, Iron Chef, The Barefoot Contessa and Everyday Italian are a source of inspiration and excitement. Who wouldn’t want to have the culinary acumen to turn sea urchins, rhubarb and cough drops into a delicious, restaurant-quality dessert?

But as much as they would like to transfer what they learn from those TV shows into their own kitchens, these hopeful cooks can be stymied by the dizzying array of kitchen gadgets and doo-dads those TV chefs always seem to have at hand.

I mean, seriously, a soft serve ice cream maker? Not exactly something you’ll find in every home. But before you start shopping for a liquid nitrogen vendor, consider these more moderate kitchen gadgets that can make your dishes easier, tastier and more fun to create:  [Read more…]

Mobile Technology and Its Many Uses Among Cooks

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cook using laptop

People have a lot to be thankful for particularly with regards to the advancement of mobile technology. The cooks, whether the newbies or the veterans, are among those benefiting from many of today’s smart mobile devices.

The most important role that smartphones and tablets play is providing information on recipes to people who love to cook for their loved ones and friends. With so many websites and apps that feature recipes and tips, it’s fairly easy to prepare and cook dishes with the help of a mobile gadget.

A 2013 survey on the global food trends done by Allrecipes.com showed that a growing number of people are using a mobile device to search for recipes and food inspiration. The survey covered more than 7,000 cooks with many of them cooking for their families as the top users of mobile gadgets.

So what are the top uses of smartphones and tablets for these cooks?

The study found that searching for recipes is the most popular activity with 63 percent of them doing this with their gadgets. Very understandable because with just a few swipes, they can easily find recipes without exerting much effort. [Read more…]