Buy A Bag of Uncle Woody's Popcorn Right Now

An excellent stocking stuffer or gift.

There is no time to mess around: If you like popcorn, or if you just like food that tastes good, you need to get on this Uncle Woody’s popcorn.

We’ve had this stuff in stock for a couple of months now, but I just got around to trying it. I polished off a bag of the truffle-salted variety, and I feel like I’ve tasted the future. 

For too long I’ve been a drone of microwave popcorn, mindlessly munching the exploded kernels drenched in whatever ridiculous mixture of vegetable oil and salt they pass off as "butter." And microwave popcorn tastes OK, but Uncle Woody's is - like I said - the future; it has awakened my taste buds.

I don’t have the brainpower to describe how wonderful the truffle salt variety tastes. It has the pleasant, salty sting of cheddar cheese with the deep, deep, rich taste of truffles. In fact, the popcorn has the texture of a mushroom – moist and dense, but still filled with air, and all its microscopic chambers filled to the top with flavor. 

Best of all? Uncle Woody’s is made by the Seattle Popcorn Co., and is just a couple of doors down from the Chef Tools HQ. That means I have access to this stuff all the time – and by the miracle of interstate shipping, so do you. 

I have an exciting task ahead of me: trying the 6 other Uncle Woody’s flavors. There’s chipotle, butterscotch, caramel (2 types, original and butterscotch-caramel), white cheddar, and – the unspeakable – butterscotch-caramel-cinnamon. I can’t wait.

I urge you to forget microwave popcorn, eschew the giant Christmas tin of mass-produced “popcorn” floating around your office, and get a bag of Uncle Woody’s! Get one (or 2) for yourself. Put them in your kids’ stockings, or give as gifts to your mailman or officemates – you will delight them and enlighten their taste buds in one action. Taste the future of snacking now!

The Best Black Friday Deals @ ChefTools.com

Come On, Pilgrim! Head to Chef Tools For Black Friday Deals! 

It’s time to answer an important question: do you really want to get up at 3 a.m. (or stay up until midnight) after Thanksgiving, your belly full of starch, cheesecake and tryptophan, just to save a couple of bucks? 

Of course not! You want to spend Friday in your pajamas, in front of the fireplace, with a nice big leftover sandwich. 

But you still want Black Friday deals, you say? Then just grab your laptop, open up your web browser, and head to Chef Tools. 

I don’t want to tell you about all of our deals just yet – it’s a surprise. But, of course, the deals are going to be good. I can tell you that there will be some steep (steep) discounts on housewares like glass bowls, plates and drinkware. There are also going to be some cool discounts on famous brand cookware, practical cooking gadgets, and – my favorite – Christmas decorations. 

So come join us on Friday. Your reward will be excellent deals, and a quick, easy shopping experience. For now, head over to our BlackFriday preview sale where you’ll find a ton of fine Revol white porcelain sets that we’ve put together especially for Black Friday. 

And our Cyber Monday deal? That’s an even bigger secret – we promise, it’ll be worth taking off a couple minutes from work to do some shopping.

Happy Thanksgiving! 

Thanksgiving Chef Tools Suggestions

Thanksgiving is quite possibly the best holiday: Food, football, napping, beer, snacks, parades, tryptophan, etc. Even if the turkey’s dry, the potatoes don’t mash right, and someone decides to make “real” cranberry sauce (I digress: real cranberry sauce is great, but it’s a food entirely separate from the canned, jellied cranberry sauce we’re used to, and it cannot be replicated in a home kitchen – it’s like someone saying they’re going to make “real” Doritos, or “real” Sprite. At any rate, I frown when someone makes it instead of just sticking with The Can.), the Lions lose and the Charlie Brown float goes down over Central Park, you still get to spend time with friends and family and bask in the glow of The Holidays.

But we here at Chef Tools want you have a perfect Thanksgiving. And since we’re in the business of providing people with cooking tools (or, chef tools, as we of course refer to them), here’s a list of necessary Thanksgiving cooking tools, plus a few cooking pointers. If you order any of these items today, you’ll get them before Thanksgiving. Visit our Thanksgiving Essentials Department for even more useful gadgets. Happy turkey day! 

Norpro Poultry Timer

The Norpro Reusable Turkey and Poultry Timer: Because you can cook a turkey any day of the year. This little guy is both cute and functional – its timer is set to go off when the interior hits between 160 – 165 degrees. That’s the perfect temperature for a moist bird; it’s also the recommended cooking temperature from the USDA. ($11.95)

Chicago Metallic Commercial II Nonstick Roast N Broil Pan (withrack): A reasonably priced turkey roaster pan that will hold up for generations. Made of aluminum, this roaster pan distributes heat evenly; the removable rack sits just above the bottom of the pan, allowing juices to accumulate (and later turn into delicious gravy). But the best part? It’s entirely dishwasher safe, minimizing cleanup. ($44.95)

Trudeau Gravy Fat Separator & Strainer (4-cup capacity): This tool is self-explanatory; use this fat separator so you’re healthier and thus live longer to experience more Thanksgivings! ($12.95)

RSVP Potato Ricer

RSVP Potato Ricer: Can you say “perfect mashed potatoes?” P-E-R-F-E-C-T M-A-S-H-E-D P-O-T-A-T-O-E-S. If you mix potatoes in a food processor they get gummy, and no one wants to eat potatoes with the consistency of roofing tar. If you mash potatoes with a hand masher, they come out lumpy (some people like this, and that’s fine, by we think your guests will enjoy creamy potatoes better). The ricer squeezes potatoes into fluffy little jewel that you can mix with butter, salt, pepper, sour cream (dear lord I’m starting to salivate), milk, garlic … whatever your recipe. Perfection. ($13.95)

Fat Daddio's 12” Pie Pan: My family was big into pies. My mother, aunts, great aunts and grandmother(s) would each bake a pie at Thanksgiving. And though everyone in the family was within a 45-minute drive, no one liked to leave their precious pans at Aunt Pat’s or Cousin Jim’s. You won’t have that problem with the Fat Daddio’s Pie Pan. Why? The low price means you can get 3 or 4 – enough pie pans for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and July 4 (red, white and blue cheesecake). These pans are made of anodized aluminum, so they distribute heat evenly and won’t scratch. On second thought, keep an eye out that Aunt Pat doesn’t abscond with Fat Daddio’s pie plate. ($7.95)

The versatily LamsonSharp slicing knife

LamsonSharp Pro 10" Slicing Knife: Ultra sharp, reasonably priced, and made in America. Use this LamsonSharp knife to carve turkey, duck, roast beef, tofu turkey or anything else you want to serve up in slices. This knife features a hygienic polypropylene handle– it does not absorb bacteria, oil, and flavors like a wood handle. ($22.95)

Not getting the ChefTool du Jour? Sign up now!

Not signed up for Chef Tools’ daily deals? Click here, sign up and start saving on excellent kitchen gadgets and housewares!

As Groupon’s imitators continue to pop up and its stock continues to trend downward, we here at Chef Tools decided to go DIY and run our own deals. We call it ChefTool du Jour (get it? Chef Tool of the day?), and we’re very happy to report that our customers have been quite pleased. Our daily deals have quickly become one of the most popular parts of ChefTools.com.

Here’s how it works: Each Wednesday we send out a newsletter that contains updates, new products and the Chef Tool du Jour. All you have to do to get the deal is sign up for the newsletter and click the link when it arrives in your inbox. Oh, and we know how annoying it can be to get constant, daily emails from a website, and we’re not going to do that to you (and, of course, we don’t share your email address with anyone). This is a weekly email.

If you head over to ChefTools.com right now, you’ll see we have two deals going this week, both centered on designer Jill Butler’s Parisian-themed Rendev-Vous collection. With one deal, you buy 4 high quality placemats for only $29.99, and you get 6 machine-blown glass tumblers for free. With the other deal, you buy an awesome serving tray for $19.99, and you get a set of 4 appetizer plates for free. 

I don’t want to spill the beans on future deals, but they’re going to be good. When we put these deals together, we’re thinking of you, but we also have the holidays in mind. Many of these sets would make great gifts for friends and family. 

Don’t miss out: Sign up for our newsletter and get in the loop on the Chef Tools deal of the day!

Choose Meri Meri V&A collection for your next holiday party

V&A Reindeer Place Card

It’s never too early to start thinking about decorating for holiday parties and dinners. November and December are the best months of winter because we get to spend so much time with friends and family – best of all, most of that time is spent in our homes, around a dinner table packed with scrumptious food.

For sure, food is a main attraction. But what about the rest of the table, the rest of the house? Are there elegant ornaments hanging from the ceiling? Are your cocktail napkins in the spirit of the season? Are your cupcakes shrouded in beautiful silver and gold wrappers?

New this year from Meri Meri, one of the world’s leading party decoration makers, is the Victoria and Albert collection. These pieces were inspired by textiles from the famous Victoria and Albert Museum of design in London, and are appropriate for any holiday party between now and New Year’s.

V&A Cocktail Napkins

Meri Meri’s V&A collection has all the items you’d expect: from cocktail napkins to ornaments, place cards, luminaries, plates and centerpieces. Each piece features an intricate silver and gold pattern; like what you’d imagine the Queen of England’s wallpaper must be like.

Browse the V&A collection and buy a few pieces to make your next holiday party more wonderful and more beautiful. String the snowflake garland around the living room, place the cocktail napkins next to the appetizers, put the place cards around the table, and enjoy the warmth of a holiday party with loved ones.

Mad Bakeware: Fat Daddio's Mad Dadder Cake Pans

Image from Colette's Cakes

What!? That cake looks crazy! It’s so tilted and delicious looking that I’m getting dizzy! 

It’s called a Mad Hatter cake, a style popularized by baker Colette Peters of Colette’s Cakes. It totally broke the cake mold (pun!) and I don’t see how anyone could go back to baking regularly-shaped cakes after seeing this. 

And now, thanks to Fat Daddio’s Bakeware, you can make a Mad Hatter cake at home. Fat Daddio’s has constructed a pan that bakes tilted cakes that can be stacked to create the Mad Hatter cake effect. The closest object I can compare it to - and this is not meant to be appetizing – is a pool: one end is shallow, one end is deep, which creates a kind of right triangle with its top cut off.

The innovation with Fat Daddio’s Mad Dadder pans is that it comes with a stand to hold up the shallow end so that cakes bake up level. These pans come in square and round shapes and in 4 different sizes (6, 8, 10 and 12 inches). 

The Mad Dadder. Notice the stand on the left that keeps the pan level.

Buy one pan and you can use frosting to illustrate different tilted layers (good for creating a Cat In The Hat hat cake). But even better, buy several different sizes and you can stack the cakes up like a pyramid, creating that wonderful whirling effect. 

Square, round and rectangle cakes have had their day. They are bland (not in taste, just the way they look), staid, old news.  Buy a Mad Dadder pan (or pans) and start having fun with your cake and eat it, too.

Hot Chocolate With Whipped Cream

iSi 1 pint

I was half watching the evening news on Monday when I witnessed the weatherman make a grim prediction: “lows in the mid-30s.” He was talking about a town tens of miles from where I live, but it’s inevitable that chilly temperatures are coming. (And will stick around for, oh, I don’t know, 5 months?)

The best defense? Hot chocolate with whipped cream. 

Maybe apple cider with whipped cream is appropriate right now or at least until Nov. 1. Then it’s time for hot chocolate with whipped cream. Deeper into winter I’ll go for an Irish coffee with whipped cream.  The point is: whipped cream can get you through most grim situations. 

iSi 1/2 pint

Those fluffy, sweet clouds of aerated heavy cream complement almost anything (toast, strawberries, and even hot dogs). So would it not be prudent to have a device handy that can produce whipped cream in seconds?

Chef Tools recently added several fine whippers by iSi. These attractive, durable little stainless steel devices (“little” is an understatement, they have up to a 1 pint capacity) use nitrous oxide to produce whipped cream. You can also store your cream inside them in the refrigerator.

More, they can whip almost any liquid in a frothy cream. Turn butternut squash soup into delicious topping for vegetables (or butternut squash soup!). Cut down on calories and whip soy or coconut milk for a delicious non-dairy topping. You could even whip hot chocolate and use it as a topping for hot chocolate. These are just examples. Prepare for winter the right way and get an iSi whipper to keep your mind, body and soul from freezing in snowstorms and frigid temperatures.