ReportWire

Tag: cooking and recipes

  • The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services for Every Kind of Cook

    The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services for Every Kind of Cook

    [ad_1]

    PRICE: Despite any marketing claims to the contrary meal kits cost more than buying groceries. However, they usually cost less than take-out and are healthier. If you want to gauge whether the trade-off is worth it the good news is that much like mattress-in-a-box companies, meal kit companies usually have some running promotions. Most meal kit pricing models offer bulk discounts: The more meals you purchase per week, the lower each serving’s price will be. We go into detail on dietary restrictions and subscription costs below. If you ever want to skip a week or cancel, you can find that information in the account section on your chosen service’s website.

    WIRED: Meal kits are convenient; I didn’t have to worry about planning dinner or panic-eating junk food after forgetting to eat a proper meal during the day. Learning to cook with one of these services can instill confidence and impart basic knowledge. If you’re busy, or can’t be bothered, meal kits may be just what you need to get cookin’, and cooking at home is never a bad thing. Meal kits may be right for you if you’re cooking for a small household, if you work nontraditional hours, if you hate figuring out what to make for dinner, if you want to stop ordering out all the time, or if you are trying to develop your cooking skills.

    TIRED: Nothing beats learning how to cook the old-fashioned way, so be sure to try that, too. It’s cheaper and you learn more if you pick out fruit yourself or break down a whole chicken for $5. You simply don’t get that experience if everything arrives at your door and the chicken parts come prepackaged. Planning and shopping is an integral part of the art of cooking. Meal kits are also generally more wasteful than traditional home cooking, and often more expensive. Meal kits may be the wrong choice for you if you are on a tight budget, if you’re cooking for a large household, or if you want tighter control over the specific ingredients you’ll be using.

    [ad_2]

    Louryn Strampe

    Source link

  • Give In to Temperature-Controlling Tech and Unlock a New Kitchen Zen

    Give In to Temperature-Controlling Tech and Unlock a New Kitchen Zen

    [ad_1]

    Recent advances in countertop induction burners give home cooks more control over their meals, freeing up their minds to get creative in other ways.

    [ad_2]

    Joe Ray

    Source link

  • The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services for Every Kind of Cook

    The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services for Every Kind of Cook

    [ad_1]

    Trying to choose the best meal kit delivery service? It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by all the options. Whether you’re going vegan, cooking for a family of six, or are a complete newbie in the kitchen, there’s probably a service that caters to your needs. Some meal kits provide ingredients paired with recipes, while others send groceries or premade meals. All of them are meant to make the process of planning and cooking meals more convenient.

    I’ve spent a couple of years testing more than two dozen meal kits. Few are outright bad, so go with whatever seems like the best fit for your way of life. I’m an experienced home cook, and I don’t have dietary restrictions, but I looked for plant-based meals along with more omnivorous options. I also had help taste-testing from lifelong vegans, finicky children, and my cat (by accident). Taking into account the recipes, ingredients, ease of use, amount of packaging waste, and the fact that every home chef has different needs, I recommend the services below.

    Updated March 2024: We adjusted pricing and added more tips to help you decide whether meal kits are right for you. We’ve also added links to weekly menus.

    Special offer for Gear readers: Get WIRED for just $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com, full Gear coverage, and subscriber-only newsletters. Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.

    [ad_2]

    Louryn Strampe

    Source link

  • 7 Myths and Misconceptions About Coffee

    7 Myths and Misconceptions About Coffee

    [ad_1]

    Coffee is one of the most widely consumed psychoactive beverages on the planet. Nearly every country, region, and culture has its own unique way of preparing and consuming coffee. There’s nothing simple about coffee. Those beans in your kitchen are the sum total of a complex series of interactions between international corporations, roasters, shippers, marketers, wholesalers, and even the growers who put the seeds in the ground. It’s complicated.

    Below we bust some of the most common coffee myths and misconceptions, to help you become a more informed consumer of this deliciously bitter elixir.

    We’re seriously wired here at WIRED. Be sure to check out our guide on How to Make Better Coffee at Home, or take a look at our coffee-related buying guides to the Best Espresso Machines, the Best Coffee Subscriptions, and the Best Coffee Grinders.

    Updated March 2024: Added a couple new myths, updated links and copy throughout.

    1. Coffee Is Not a Bean

    Coffee isn’t a bean, or a legume like many other foods we call beans. It’s a seed! Technically, it’s the endosperm (pit) of a berry. Initially, it’s wrapped in a thin red fruit that’s peeled off during the cleaning process. Then it’s a light silvery green color until it’s roasted.

    That doesn’t mean you can plant your beans and grow your own coffee trees. The beans we grind up and brew are not plantable anymore, due to the roasting. Even if they were, it can take years before a coffee plant is mature enough to produce the berries that contain the coffee bean. Not to mention, Coffea arabica (the most popular cultivar) grows and thrives only in a few places in the world. It’s a demanding little plant with very particular climate needs—which brings us to our next point.

    2. European Coffee Isn’t From Europe

    Coffee beans don’t grow in Europe. They grow in Central and South America, East and West Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Asia, and the Pacific. So if you’re buying expensive imported coffee from Italy, France, or anywhere outside of these regions, you’re likely getting pretty bad coffee (unless you live in Italy or France, that is). That’s because the best-tasting coffee is always roasted shortly before it’s consumed.

    If your coffee beans say they’re from Ethiopia, that’s where they were grown. But if the bag says they’re from somewhere in Europe, it likely means the coffee was roasted there, and that’s bad. Roasting brings out the flavors in coffee, but those flavor compounds start to break down shortly after they’re roasted. Coffee roasted outside your locale has likely sat in a shipping container or cargo plane for a long time. So when it arrives, all those flavors that make the coffee so tasty in a Parisian café have greatly degraded.

    That’s why my advice is to always buy locally roasted coffee beans and grind them at home (with a burr grinder).

    3. Dark Roasts Don’t Have More Caffeine

    We often hear that darker coffee is “stronger,” meaning it contains more caffeine, and that’s not exactly true. When green coffee goes into a roaster, it’s literally just roasted to different levels of doneness—just like your morning toast.

    Blonde roasts are among the lightest-roasted beans, and because they don’t spend as much time cooking, they actually contain more intact caffeine compounds than medium- or dark-roasted beans. Heat accelerates chemical interactions, which means it also breaks down caffeine compounds. So it stands to reason that the longer a coffee bean is roasted, the less caffeine it’s going to contain when it’s ground up and brewed.

    [ad_2]

    Jaina Grey

    Source link