Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/265867
Product Review PRODUCT REVIEW 1 4 BY SAM RUDDICK Ekobrew, llc. has a new line of reusable filters for use with Keurig's single cup brewers. That means you can now use your own coffee in a Keurig machine, instead of buying box after box of K-Cups. Everyone loves Keurig's Single Cup Brewers, commonly known as K-Cup brewers: these easy to use machines have become standards in waiting rooms and the workplace since they hit the market in 1998 and, while originally intended for office use, they're also becoming more and more common in the home. One reason is the convenience: why brew a whole pot of coffee when you only want a cup, and you can have it in seconds? But flavor is also an essential ingredient of Keurig's call: quality control is much easier when you're brewing one cup at a time, and anyone who has ever used a K-Cup brewer can tell you that the quality is premium. But some people have concerns about the K-Cups themselves. They're meant to be disposable, and as such good for only one use, but they're made of plastic and foil, and as Randy Anderson, Creative Director of Eko Brands, llc., points out, "We know that over six billion K-Cups are sold each year and then discarded... enough to circle the Earth five times." Coffee drinkers who are committed to a green lifestyle might be deterred from investing in a Keurig for that reason, even if they might otherwise be interested in owning a single cup brewer. The Ekobrew Elite offers a solution. Reusable and made of stainless steel, these filters not only allow you to use your own coffee, they prevent waste. Just fill your Ekobrew Elite with your favorite coffee, pop it in the machine, and in seconds you The Ekobrew Elite Reusable Filter Saves Money... and the Environment have a premium brew. There's no plastic or foil, so you don't have to throw anything away. To test the flavor, we emptied a disposable K-Cup into the Elite filter and compared the result to a cup we'd brewed using a regular K-Cup. The taste was still great. The coffee grounds are also easy to remove, so they can be repurposed for the garden. "People who garden indoors and outdoors have known for years the great benefits of coffee grounds as an eco-friendly, organic soil amendment," Anderson says. Many people think that it has something to do with the acidic quality of coffee, but it's actually the nitrogen in coffee grounds that makes the garden grow. Plants need nitrogen for healthy growth, and the nitrogen content of coffee grinds by volume is close to 2 percent. That's the same nitrogen content as grass clippings. But nitrogen itself is neither acidic nor alkaline, and the acid in coffee beans is water soluble, which means that it's largely neutralized by the brewing process. This is actually good news for the garden, as coffee grounds can provide the benefits of the nitrogen without putting acid-sensitive plants at risk. The Ekobrew Elite retails at $17.95. Ekobrew also makes a reusable plastic filter with a one year warranty retailing for $8.79. BY LORRIE BAUMANN There are days when making a risotto, a pot of soup or a slowly simmered pasta sauce can be a meditative joy. You stand in front of your range with a stirring spoon in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Music drifts through the house from the stereo and the birds in the backyard tree are chirping along. Good smells fill the house. Probably it is springtime. And then there are days when it might be springtime, but you're exhausted from work, you have half an hour to get dinner on the table before there's either an insurrection or an emotional melt-down, and you've got a kid who needs help with homework and needs it now. Standing with a stirring spoon in front of a simmering pot sounds like an exercise in frustration rather than an opportunity to be present in the moment. This is the time when the Bellini Kitchen Master by Cedarlane Culinary can rescue you from having to make that quick call to the pizza delivery place. The Bellini Kitchen Master is a combination of food processor and electric cooking hob that will stir the simmering supper for you. It came into my house in a box that included the cooking unit; a steamer basket, chopping blade, mixing blade and other accessories, a digital scale, and two books of instructions; one with recipes and one with the basic information needed to set it up and operate it. Taking the time to read the instructions first is essential because this machine incorporates both whirling blades and a heating element, and while it's also equipped with a lot of safety interlocks designed to prevent it from becoming a deadly weapon, you want to know what you've done wrong when it gives you an error message and refuses to function. I can tell you for a fact that if you try to tell it to turn the heat up past the boiling point of water and at the same time to whirl the contents of its cooking pot around like Charybdis, it's going to refuse to do that. If you try that, and it only takes you three tries to figure out that you're doing it wrong, you've beaten my score. My plan for testing the Bellini Kitchen Master was that I'd start with a meat sauce for a pan of lasagna al forno and then make a risotto while the lasagna was baking. I consulted the basic meat sauce recipe in the book included with the device, which referred delightfully to the protein ingredient as "mince," but I used my own ingredients: a can of crushed tomatoes, dried basil picked from my garden before last fall's first freeze, several sprigs of hardy oregano that survived through the winter in its bed on the south side of my house, an onion and a package of ground turkey. I followed the directions in the recipe book, which called for chopping and sauteing the onion in the devices cooking pot with a quick whiz of the chopping blade, then changing out the chopping blade for the stirring blade, which was easier than I had thought it would be (Another reason to read the instruction book first!) and then let the machine cook it for 10 minutes. I spent that time lounging on my bed with an Ian McEwan novel, and then I came back into the kitchen and tasted the sauce. To tell you the truth, I wasn't expecting much from that sauce after just 10 minutes Simmering the Supper with the Bellini Kitchen Master of cooking. There are pasta sauces you can make in 10 minutes, but 10 minutes of simmering is not going to give my meat sauce recipe enough depth of flavor to turn it into anything that I'd pour over pasta and serve. And this sauce fully lived down to those low expectations. That's when I decided to add in a box of sliced crimini mushrooms and accidentally pushed the Pulse button and chopped them up a little bit, which did no harm other than startling me. And then I turned the machine back on to cook for another 10 minutes and went back to see what my novel's characters were going to get up to in that time. After a total of 20 minutes of cooking, it was still not something I'd have been happy serving over pasta, but since the plan was to use it in a lasagna, the sauce was close enough to ready at the end of that second 10 minutes. I layered my lasagna in the pan, slid it into the oven and washed up the Bellini to make the risotto. It was suggested to me before I embarked on this test that the Bellini would just wash itself it I put some warm water and dish soap in it and ran it for a few minutes. This might be another case in which my expectations are not in synch with somebody else's because I tried this, and it's not the way to go. A quick scrub with the scrubbie sponge and then a rinse, though, and the cooking pot and blades were ready to go back to work. To make a risotto in this machine, you put a little olive oil and the rice into the cooking pot and run the stirring blade for a minute or two to coat the rice grains with oil. Then you pour in the stock, pop on the lid, and let it run for 20 minutes while you go back to your novel. In my case, I decided to honor the tradition of the risotto in absentia by taking my glass of wine with me when I left the kitchen. The risotto turned out creamy and soft without being mushy – a lot like the plot line at that point in my novel, now that I think of it. And after 45 minutes in the oven to finish it, the lasagna was pronounced "orgasmic" by my resident food critic. To make a long story short, although why do that, really, the Bellini Kitchen Master will not do what only time can do, but if stirring while you simmer is not your thing, this machine will take that chore off your hands. It's reasonably quiet, easy to use once you have the knack of locking the lid onto the cooking pot and easy to clean. The one thing that I wish its makers would rethink is the dial that sets its timer: this device is so easy to use that after a while it begins to feel like an unexpected effort to have to turn the dial several times just to set the timer for 20 minutes. But I am probably an ungrateful wretch, and no points will be deducted for this. KITCHENWARE NEWS & HOUSEWARES REVIEW n MARCH 2014 n www.kitchenwarenews.com