I love looking for new kitchen gadgets and tools!  This month, I had a lot of fun shopping for neat gift ideas for my Holiday Edition Kitchen Favorites video.  

This month's favorites features 10 products, some small enough for stocking suffers and some already boxed for gifting.  If you haven't watched the video yet, check it out here.  

Giveaway Closed:  
Congratulations to Nicole Nguyen!
​
I'll be giving away the super cute Silpat Macaron Kit.  It comes with everything you need to make your own macarons at home:

• piping tips
• piping bag
• Silpat macaron baking mat
• food coloring gels
• recipes
• candy thermometer 
• and more!

Ever since I was young and watched Food Network, I loved seeing elite chefs using sous vide cooking appliances to make meat and fish perfectly tender.  Nomiku, a San Francisco based company let me try out their Sous Vide Classic Nomiku.  It's an immersion circulator that controls water temperature and circulates water in your own pots. Such a clever idea to allow using sous-vide in your own stock pots instead of having to have a traditional sous vide appliance that could take up huge amounts of kitchen counter space.  

So you've slaved away and made yourself a delicious soup stock and now you have a whole stockpot leftover.  What to do?  
Well, if you have a big family to feed and they love soup, they might be able to drink a bowl or two, but in real life, you'll likely have tons of leftovers.  

If you know you'll be using the soup stock within a few days, it's perfectly fine to put it in the refrigerator.  If not, I like to freeze mine in ice cube trays.  : )

Why Ice Cube Trays?  3 Good Reasons . . .

Reason #1:  Longer Storage Time.  Freezing the broth gives me more time to use it in future recipes, either for cooking with rice, making a tasty soup, or even using a bit of it for stir frys instead of water.

Reason # 2:  Handy Portions.  Let's say I want to make an Asian vegetable stir fry, or another recipe that calls for a bit of chicken broth . . . the cubes are small enough where I could just defrost 1-3 pieces for quick use.

Reason # 3:  Save Your Freezer Space.  After the cubes are frozen, I like to transfer them into a plastic ziplock bag.  This way it fits better in my freezer and I can refreeze another batch of soup stock.  

Looking to buy new hot pot equipment?  If you love cooking Asian hot pot at home, you'll need a portable tabletop burner.  Either a butane gas burner or an electric skillet.  I've used both and my preference is the electric skillet. The ones I use at home are the Zojirushi brand.  I've got an older model of this one and the newer model Gourmet d'Expert Electric Skillet (EP-PBC10).  Yes, I have two! Comes in handy when you have a big group of mouths to feed.  ; )

The reason why I prefer the electric skillet over the gas burner is because of the butane cans.  Each butane can usually lasts me around an hour or so (depending on how high you've used the flame) and that's not enough time to eat a whole meal (hey, I eat slow).  This means I need to change cans mid-eating.  Even though it only takes a few minutes, I'd prefer not to.