Tips & Tools

Dina's time-saving cooking tips and list of nifty kitchen gadgets.

5 Common Mistakes Home Cooks Make

Being able to create delicious, healthy and beautifully presented dishes at home may seem like a daunting task to many but it’s certainly not the most difficult goal in the world. After having many of my own friends who are home cooks ask me questions that seemed to resound
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Asian Butcher Knives

No cliché could be truer than that which states a dull knife is far more dangerous than a sharp one. I have experienced this myself, cutting my fingers in nasty accidents due to dull and low quality knives. I’m one of those people that carry
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Basic Asian Kitchen Tools

A good, sharp knife, preferably butcher style if you’re comfortable handling it. Home cooks really need to understand that a dull blade is far more dangerous than a sharp one. While dull blades may not be cutting or chopping your ingredients the way they should,
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Best Food Processor- KitchenAid Food Processor

Is it conceivable that one kitchen appliance could actually change your life? Indeed it can, if it’s the KitchenAid Food Processor. Whether you’re someone who cooks daily or once in a while, this state of the art food processor is designed to have multiple functions
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Blendtec- Best Blender In The World

Blendtec- Best Blender In The World It is no exaggeration to state that life changes after you have a Blendtec- the world’s best blender extraordinaire. Forget those wimpy blenders whose motors sound like a 30 year old car wheezing its way up a San Francisco
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Cooking without a Mortar & Pestle

What to do if you don’t have a mortar & pestle but want to create authentic Asian dishes? This is a question I get asked often by friends who love trying out new Asian dishes but for whatever reason haven’t gotten a mortar & pestle
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Cuisinart Combo Steam & Convection Oven

Cuisinart Combo Steam & Convection Oven If you’re short on kitchen space or don’t have an awesome oven, the Cuisinart Combo Steam & Convection Oven is one of the most nifty, multi-purpose and powerful kitchen appliances that you can get your food loving hands on. With a sleek design
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Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker

Cuisinart Yogurt & Ice Cream Maker- Healthy Desserts

Cuisinart Yogurt & Ice Cream Maker- Healthy Desserts All my life I’ve stood by the fact that I don’t have a sweet tooth the way many people I know do. That doesn’t mean however, that I don’t love desserts. What it does mean is that
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DIY Home Scenter

Remember those moments from your favorite travels when you breathed in deeply and smelled that quintessential scent of luxurious tranquility? Researchers have shown that scents do in fact play a large role in our daily lives, affecting our moods dramatically. We all know moods can
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Easy Homemade Iced Tea

Easy Homemade Iced Tea Remember the old days where you had to boil water for hot tea then wait for it to cool down before you could put it in the fridge or add ice cubes for iced tea? No need for all that wait
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Gas Stoves Versus Electric Stoves

Most professional chefs and passionate home cooks prefer gas stoves to electric with good reason. There’s nothing like cooking on real flames for the perfect flavor, texture and color. This is especially true for Asian cooking with stir-frying being such a big part of the
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How To Cook Sticky Rice

There are two simple methods I use to cook traditional white sticky rice, also known as glutinous rice or sweet rice. The first method is employed throughout Thailand, Laos, Burma and Cambodia, requiring two special pieces of kitchen tools, a woven bamboo basket and aluminum
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How to Make Perfect Asian Rice

Using a Rice Cooker If you’re making any type of Asian rice in a rice cooker, it’s pretty fool proof. The general rule is a 2 to 1 measurement- 2 cups of water to 1 cup of uncooked rice. This varies slightly depending on exactly
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How To Roast Almonds

How to Roast Almonds

How To Roast Almonds Almonds are a huge source of nutrients and are incredibly versatile. They can be used in smoothies, as a snack on their own or crushed into smooth particles that are great for crusting fish or poultry. Sometimes, all you can find
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Joseph Joseph Chop2Pot

Joseph Joseph Chop2Pot Anybody who cooks at home knows this scenario well…you’ve studiously chopped a bunch of ingredients and have them all over your cutting board. Now it’s time to put those perfectly chopped ingredients into your pot or wok and you’re going to have
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Le Creuset- best cookware for avid home cooks that will last through generations.

Le Creuset

Le Creuset Since childhood days, I watched my mother cook and I watched top chefs such as Julia and Jacque on television- all of them passionately concocting some delectable dish in easily recognizable cookware. It would be years later before I realized why the greatest
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Making the Perfect Cup of Vietnamese Coffee.

Arguably the most popular and famous of coffee drinks from Asia, Vietnamese coffee is a decadent beverage that can easily be prepared at home. With just a few key ingredients and one tool, brewing the perfect cup of Vietnamese coffee is simple. Here’s the breakdown
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Rice Cookers

One of the easiest tools to use in an Asian kitchen is a good quality rice cooker. I can’t imagine any modern day kitchen without one as this saves on time, cleanup and effort for cooking perfect, fluffy rice. You should follow the general instructions
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Thai Kitchen Tools

Many countries have their own unique version of a mortar & pestle; Thailand is no exception. Being the home of many spectacular dishes that require the distinctive mashed texture that comes from working with the earthen mortar & pestle, Thailand has long been the world’s
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What To Do With Stale Bread

What To Do With Stale Bread Like me, you’ve most likely experienced this on numerous occasions- having too much of a loaf of bread, forgetting about it or not knowing what to do with the rest of it and days later, it’s too stale to
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How To Brew Green Tea and why Green Tea shouldn't taste bitter.

Why Green Tea Shouldn’t Taste Bitter and How To Brew Green Tea

Why Green Tea Shouldn’t Taste Bitter and How To Brew Green Tea Article By: @MayKingTea When I speak to people about tea, they often proceed to tell me that they either hate or love green ea. For those that hate green tea, I will ask
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Why Sharp Knives Are Safer Than Dull Ones

Many of my friends who are home cooks are afraid of wielding very sharp knives, backing off in terror when they visit my kitchen, which is decked with two sharp Asian butcher knives and two European style chef’s knives. Believing that a sharp knife is
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Woks

One of the most invaluable tools in any Asian kitchen is of course, the wok. The type of wok you need depends on whether you have an electric or gas range. Home cooks with gas stoves are most lucky as nothing beats the quality or
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Working with Turmeric

Part of the Ginger family, Turmeric is a root with a light to medium colored brown skin and a rich yellow-orange inside. This is one of the most widely used ingredients in Southeast Asian cooking as part of curries, soups and rice dishes. Used both
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Zojirushi

The basis of most Asian meals is the bowl of perfectly cooked white rice. While every Asian nation has its preferred type of rice and even the proportions of rice to water when cooking, most people today don’t have the time to break it down
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Zojirushi Lunch Boxes

Most people who work full time jobs are well acquainted with the daily dilemma of how to eat a healthy lunch while being economical both financially and time-wise. Unless you work at a company that provides free and healthy lunches, you are probably struggling with how not to go
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