Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Better for you and the earth

We’ve blabbered more than Scatman Crothers about how to manually brew better coffee, but if you still can’t wean yourself from the convenience of the K-cup, foodie and tech writer Matt Buchanan points out that the Keurig My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter ($19) offers some reasonable middle ground. This exclusive filter for the K-Cup system [...]

Gunmetal Great

Le Creuset’s wares have always been a staple of upscale kitchens, but we’ve never particularly liked their boisturious color options. This exclusive gunmetal gray version ($300) of their classic 7.25-quart round french oven done in collaboration with one of our favorite Southern publications, Garden & Gun, however, provides a tasteful upgrade to the deep black [...]

Chills beer in just five minutes

Technology is constantly striving to indulge our inner sloth. Manually setting reminders on your phone was deemed too arduous, so now you can speak them. Pulling out keys, inserting them into the ignition, and twisting was just pointlessly strenuous, so now we just push a button. Going to rent a movie at Blockbuster defined drudgery, [...]

Stuff in a box

A practical way to store not just knives but also spices, keys, power-outlets, iPods or even a small TV, the S-Box (costs vary) can be installed into any surface with cabinet space beneath. Think: end of a kitchen island, breakfast bar or near the primary workspace you like to do your best Mario Batali. With [...]

Double Kitchen Agent

Spoons, forks and knives, have admirably served western eaters well for centuries — but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for innovation. Following in the prestigious footsteps of the spork, the product think tank at Quirky has devised a new eating utensil that combines the shoveling benefits of a spoon with the spreading skills of [...]

Whole latte love

Yes, it’s adorned with enough chromed steel to outshine a Kansas City bound Freightliner. Yes, it’s breathtakingly expensive. But for the truly dedicated, the Rocket Espresso Giotto Evoluzione ($2,100) is the closest thing to espresso nirvana we’ve ever had the chance to pull a shot from. Less white-gloved show pony and more workhorse, the Evoluzione [...]

Im-press-ive

Compared to standard drip methods, the French Press (or cafetiére as it’s known in the rest of the world) does an excellent job of brewing a great tasting cup of coffee. But it isn’t perfect. In fact, many java-elitest feel the process results in overextraction and dislike that used grounds often wind up thwarting the [...]

Never over cook again

Sous-vide (pronounced soo-veed) is a rather nerdy, but effective cooking submovement in the world of haute cuisine. The term literally translates to “under vacuum” in french, and involves sealing food in airtight plastic bags which are then placed in a precisely maintained hot water bath for extended periods of time. Typically the water temperatures are [...]

Chuck the plastic, toast the steel

If you weren’t one of our eagle eye readers that spotted them in yesterday’s Tasting Notes feature (there’s a hint after the jump), this should make things a bit more obvious. A collaboration between Nau and the BPA-free boffins at Kleen Kanteen, these stainless steel ($39) chalices are made from food-grade stainless steel and feature [...]

Blended Blender

DeLonghi’s new 12-cup food processor with blender ($300) is designed to combat the kitchen gadget sprawl that plagues many yuppie households. Thanks to a dual-drive motor system, the die cast metal base unit supports speed variations found on most blenders and food processors. With that power issue out of the way, users just have to [...]

Chef by a thousand cuts

No Average Joe

Auto-drip coffee is entrenched in American culture for three reasons. It’s cheap, easy to make, and has a relatively consistent taste wherever you order it, apart from the random Chicory-spiked landmines you can stumble on down south. Those benefits have been compounded now that the process of measuring grounds, water, and finding a filter has [...]

Scoop de Ville

Sure, your tablespoon does a fine job toting grinds from the bag to your jo-ppliance, but that’s not quite enough now is it? The Kapu Coffee Scoop ($26) takes what might be an otherwise ordinary piece of birch plywood and applies a fine dose of Finnish design, but this scoop isn’t just a one-hit wonder. [...]

Party Foul Proof

Most people will take beer in any container they can get it in. Purists, however, tend to place the traditional pint glass above all us. The Silipint ($10) is an indestructible incarnation of the popular cup (sadly it’s the American 16 oz, not a 20oz British Imperial). Made from flexible, food grade silicone, it can [...]

Easing the Daily Grind

The intelligent new Breville BDC600XL YouBrew ($280) is a grinder and brewer designed to dish out the perfect amount of coffee your jittery caffeinated-heart desires (as long as it doesn’t exceed 12 cups at a time). Yes, you can do this today by adjusting the amount of coffee and water in your standard dripper, but [...]