Cookware.com Review

CSN Stores recently sent me a $75 credit to their store in order to review some of their products. As a CSN Preferred Blogger, I’ve worked with them for some time now, and one of my very favorite of their 200+ stores is Cookware.com. I had a few items on my list for the kitchen, so I used the credit to order a slowcooker, a kettle, and a meat thermometer. My grand total came to $80.48 shipped, so I paid only $5.48 after the gift card. Nice! Here’s what I thought of my purchases:

I’ve been wanting to get a slow cooker for some time – I’ve heard so many good things about them, and I’ve been very inspired by blogs like A Year of Slow Cooking. I love cooking, but having such a busy work schedule often leaves me crunched for time. I love the idea of being able to turn on the slow cooker in the morning and have a meal ready by the evening!

I was so excited when my slow cooker arrived. I had planned to make Brussels sprouts with pasta for dinner, so being ever the adventurous cook, I decided to make up a recipe for my first test of the crockpot. First, I followed a recipe I found online (Which I lost the URL for, otherwise I’d link to it :() for cooking vegetables in a slow cooker, and put Brussels sprouts, red onion, and green onion in the crockpot with sea salt, pepper, garlic salt, and olive oil. I cooked it for about two hours, and it smelled wonderful!

Now here’s where I got very adventurous. I wanted to make a mock Alfredo sauce – by using up leftover spinach dip. I added the dip, a dollop of margarine, shredded cheddar cheese, half and half, and milk. Because I wanted to do a one-pot meal without cooking the pasta separately, I broke the fettuccine noodles up so that they would fit in the pot and be covered by the sauce.

Looking at this concoction, I felt I had probably made a horrible mistake. What was I thinking?! Perhaps this would be one of my epic fails in cookery.

However, I let it cook for a little bit, then hesitantly opened the lid. I was surprised to see that the pasta was getting nice and tender, and the sauce didn’t taste bad at all! Encouraged, I left it for another hour.

And voilà! The recipe may have been offbeat, but it was not bad at all. I thought my sauce was just OK, but Jai actually thought it was quite good. The Brussels sprouts weren’t as tender as they could have been – next time I would reduce the cooking time on them by at least an hour. Crockpot cooking is all-new to me, so I realize it will take some learning and tweaking to know what works best.

I tried cooking corn on the cob next, but that didn’t turn out so hot. There seems to be a debate as to whether you can “Really” cook corn in a crockpot, and my attempt didn’t work! For my third effort, I made something much more delicious:

Crockpot taco meat! This turned out soooo good. I posted the recipe for this over at Super Coupon Girl – click here to read it.

My verdict? Crockpots are awesome, and I am very happy with the one I purchased!

As a British expat, one thing that I can’t understand about this country is how anyone can get by without a kettle. Seriously, how do you do it? Every house in England has at least one kettle, but over here you’re hard pressed to find them. I’ve been using the same kettle for YEARS, and it is definitely looking worse for wear. So when I saw that Cookware.com also carried kettles, I was so happy! I decided on this model:

Toastess 1.8 Qt. Cordless Plastic Jug Kettle in White – $29.99

This kettle is so much nicer than my old one. The fact that it is cordless makes it so much easier to pour (Especially when you have company!), and it is lightweight and has a large capacity. In addition, there is a filter on the spout as well as a water lever on the side. I don’t have one bad word to say about this kettle – it’s awesome!!

When I was first living on my own and cooking for myself, I cooked chicken for a stir-fry one night – only to discover that it was raw inside. Ever since that disgusting moment, I’ve been paranoid about under-cooking meat – and, as a result, I often end up cooking it a little too long and making it tougher than it ought to be. I knew it was high time to invest in a meat thermometer, and when I saw this digital thermometer, I thought it looked perfect.

Charcoal Companion Steak Station® Digital Meat Thermometer – on sale for $21.99

This thermometer is quite a contraption – you insert the probes into the middle of each piece of meat, and the digital readout sits on top of your stove or grill. As the meat cooks, the thermometer gives you a readout of how the cooking is progressing. The probes are color-coded, so you can cook meat for different lengths of time depending on each person’s tastes.

I defrosted some steaks to test this out with, and it ended up being a good selection for the test – I had four very thin streaks and one HUGE, thick steak. I cooked the small steaks until they were “Well done”, and left the big one until it was “Medium”. I’d say the big one was closer to rare than medium – here’s how it looked:

I think the size of the steak may have some bearing on the accuracy of the thermometer. But all in all, I’d say this is quite a handy little guide. The probes can be a bit cumbersome to deal with in the oven, especially since they get hot – be careful when you’re flipping your steaks! The upside is that it monitors the temperature without you having to even open the oven.