Misto Gourmet Brushed Aluminum Olive Oil Sprayer
- To clean, fill with hot water and a drop of mild detergent, and spray.
- 7-5/8-Inch high by 1-7/8-inch in diameter
- Satin-finish aluminum
- Spread olive oil on focaccia or spray muffin pans
- Pumps up to spray any vegetable oil
Misto Gourmet Brushed Aluminum Olive Oil SprayerFor spreading olive oil evenly on bruschetta, focaccia, and grilled or roasted vegetables, and for spraying muffin and cake pans with vegetable oil, this dispenser is a nifty tool. A plastic cap underneath the sprayer’s top twists off so the sprayer can be half-filled (1/3 cup) with oil. Inside the top is a plastic tube that fits over the spray nozzle. Push the top up and down to pump air pressure into the canister. Then spray for 10 seconds and pump up again. It’s simple, ingenious, and practical. With its cap on, the sprayer stands just 7-5/8 inches high, so it tucks away easily on any countertop. Made of satin-finish aluminum with a black-band accent, it’s sleek as well as utilitarian. –Fred Brack
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(out of 242 reviews)
List Price: $ 15.99
Price: $ 6.95
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
- ISBN13: 9780684800011
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as “a minor masterpiece” when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they’re made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious.
Now, for its twentieth anniversary, Harold McGee has prepared a new, fully revised and updated edition of On Food and Cooking. He has rewritten the text almost completely, expanded it by two-thirds, and commissioned more than 100 new illustrations. As compulsively readable and engaging as ever, the new On Food and Cooking provides countless eye-opening insights into food, its preparation, and its enjoyment.
On Food and Cooking pioneered the translation of technical food science into cook-friendly kitchen science and helped give birth to the inventive culinary movement known as “molecular gastronomy.” Though other books have now been written about kitchen science, On Food and Cooking remains unmatched in the accuracy, clarity, and thoroughness of its explanations, and the intriguing way in which it blends science with the historical evolution of foods and cooking techniques.
Among the major themes addressed throughout this new edition are:
Traditional and modern methods of food production and their influences on food quality
The great diversity of methods by which people in different places and times have prepared the same ingredients
Tips for selecting the best ingredients and preparing them successfully
The particular substances that give foods their flavors and that give us pleasure
Our evolving knowledge of the health benefits and risks of foods
On Food and Cooking is an invaluable and monumental compendium of basic information about ingredients, cooking methods, and the pleasures of eating. It will delight and fascinate anyone who has ever cooked, savored, or wondered about food.A classic tome of gastronomic science and lore, On Food and Cooking delivers an erudite discussion of table ingredients and their interactions with our bodies. Following the historical, literary, scientific and practical treatment of foodstuffs from dairy to meat to vegetables, McGee explains the nature of digestion and hunger before tackling basic ingredient components, cooking methods and utensils. He explains what happens when food spoils, why eggs are so nutritious and how alcohol makes us drunk. As fascinating as it is comprehensive, this is as practical, interesting and necessary for the cook as for the scholar.
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(out of 224 reviews)
List Price: $ 40.00
Price: $ 21.25
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Works great, especially with olive oil, but there are a couple of tricks to getting the most out of it. First, fill it only half way. Second, if you twist the top after each use to release the pressure you can avoid clogging problems. My first one lasted only a year or so because I had not learned that ‘releasing the pressure’ trick and the nozzle got irreparably clogged. Even hot soapy water didn’t fix the problem. A chef friend of mine told me how to avoid the trouble. Since then, the replacement has been going strong for over two years now. Nice even spray with no clogging. Great gadget. I use it all the time!
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We grill a lot of vegetables in my household (both on the grill, and in the oven in the wintertime), and this is a great device. Gives a light, uniform coating of oil to the veggies. Other things I use it for include oiling pans, my grill, and for misting the top of an italian pie or calzone with olive oil before baking for a nice golden color. Also, if you coat chicken in a bread crumb mixture, spray it with oil, and then bake it, it comes out crispy on the outside…a healthy alternative if you miss the taste of fried chicken.We have one, and are ordering a second, so that we can have one for olive oil and another for a lighter vegetable oil.About the only complaint I have is that if you pump it up too much, the oil mists too well! You’ll get a light coating of oil on whatever you’re spraying, but there will also be this cloud of tiny oil droplets hanging in the air. What I’ve learned from experience is just not to pump it up too much.
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I had my spayer for several years and enjoyed it immensly until the cap split. In reseaching I found this to be a commom problem for many useers. Further research showed Misto had changed the material in the cap due to this issue. Since mine had been bought at the Lechter close out sale i figured it was one of the older models. Not really expecting anything, I researched and found the Misto service address back east and sent them a letter asking how to get a replacement cap. Expecting to be told it was going to cost $12 or more to get one (S & H) I was pleasantly surprised when many weeks later I received a replacement cap in the mail. No letter, note or anthing. Some Customer Service Dept. person just dropped one in a packing envelope and mailed it to me. So Misto is #1 in service for me and my Misto sprayer is happily spraying away again.
It does spayer best if you don’t release the pressure between uses and just give it one or two pumps when you use it. It helped me to get a better spay when I re-read the directions. I never run out of pan spay with my Misto.
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When I first filled this sprayer and gave it a few pumps, yes..nothing happened and I felt a bit cheated. Then, I gave it a few more pumps and then it became very difficult to press the lid down and that is the secret. You can’t really over pump the sprayer.
Once the pressure builds up inside the plastic container, you will find it works quite well. You also have the option of placing a sticker on each misto sprayer. I bought one for olive oil and one for vegetable oil.
What do I use if for most of the time? Bread baking. Yes, it is perfect to spray oil over bread dough to keep it moist when rising. Then you can use it when frying steaks or vegetables. I have used it a few times when preparing salads. It is also handy for greasing pans. One word of caution: keep the spray over a sink or stove top. You don’t want oil on the kitchen floor.
~The Rebecca Review
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I’ve been using Misto sprayers for five years now and would not use anything else for cooking. It’s true that the spray is not propelled as strongly and evenly as a canned cooking spray, but it seems like a minor tradeoff for chemical-free cooking.
I have not had a problem with clogging as others have mentioned. I only fill the container partially full and when it empties, clean in hot soapy water (it is true that you will want to clean it frequently, the seal is not airtight and over months, oil will become rancid — this is why I fill with small amounts). Also, I have primarily used this with olive oil and sesame oil. Many of the reviews which mention clogging specify they are using vegetable cooking oil, which is much thicker than the oils I’ve used, so your mileage may vary.
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This red `On Food and Cooking, The Science and Lore of the Kitchen’ by Harold McGee is a new edition of what is the most widely quoted culinary work in English. It may be almost as influential on the thinking of culinary professionals as Julia Child’s `Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ was on attitudes of American home cooking. The testimonials from the likes of Thomas Keller, Paula Wolfert, Jacques Pepin, and Rose Levy Beranbaum just begins to tell you how important McGee’s volume has become. I was immensely pleased to see the exchange of acknowledgments between McGee and Keller to see how much the academic can learn from the professional chef.
I can devote my thousand words on how good this book has been to the culinary world, but most of you already know that. What I will do is to list all the reasons one may wish to read this book.
First, the book is simply interesting to amateur foodies and culinary professionals. This is the serendipity principle. If you prospect in a rich land, you will invariably find something of value. The `lore’ in the subtitle is not an afterthought. The book includes history, linguistics and cooking practice in addition to simple science. In over 800 pages of densely packed narrative, one will invariably find something of interest, especially since the book covers such a broad range of topics, including:
Milk and Dairy
Eggs
Meat
Fish and Shellfish
Fruits and Vegetables
Seeds, Cereals, and Doughs
Sauces
Sugars and Chocolate
Alcohol (Wine, Beer, and Distilled Spirits)
Cooking Methods
Cooking Utensil Materials
`The Four Basic Food Molecules’
Basic Chemistry
This is the perfect book in which to jump around to those subjects that interest you. I just wish the author would have put the last two subjects first so that more readers would stumble across them to gain a better understanding of what appears in the chapters on specific foods. A quick example of how this would help in practical terms is that the characteristics of alcohol, which stand halfway between water and oils explains why vodka is such a great flavor enhancing addition to pasta sauces.
Second, professional and amateur bakers should read all of the chapters on grains, doughs, chocolate, alcohol, basic molecules, and the chemistry primer, as this is the one area of culinary practice where knowledge of science can make the biggest difference between good and great results. Both Shirley Corriher and Alton Brown have books which include baking science and Rose Levy Beranbaum’s books all cover practical baking science in depth, but McGee puts all of this is a broader context which, to use Alton Brown’s great metaphor about science and cooking, gives a roadmap covering a much broader area, to a finer scale of detail.
Third, all culinary professionals who have anything whatsoever to do with teaching should read this book from cover to cover, twice. There is absolutely nothing more annoying than having a person in the role of teacher make a patently false statement in their area of expertise. The number of times a Food Network culinary celeb misuses the term `dissolve’ when they really mean `emulsify’ or simply `mix’ would fill volumes. It is still a common mistake to say that searing protein seals in juices. There are many good reasons for searing. Preventing the escape of liquid is not one of them. Even Brown himself has made some gaffs in print and on `Good Eats’ such as when he described a very corrosive compound as a strong acid rather than a strong base. He confused one end of the pH scale with the other.
Fourth, anyone who has ambitions to develop their own recipes should read those chapters which deal with the major foods such as dairy, meats, fish, fruits, and vegetables, with a premium on the material on milk and eggs. Two defining characteristics of science are that it explains things and it predicts things. Most people understand the first but may not appreciate the second. One can predict, for example, that if you use too little fat in a milk or cream based gratin, the dairy will curdle, so, if you are playing around with your favorite mac and cheese recipe, do not be so quick to reach for that skim milk, as you are likely to be very disappointed with the result. Similarly, if you crave some Saturday morning buttermilk biscuits and the nearest carton of buttermilk is a 30 minute drive away, AND, you have no vinegar, AND you have no citrus, there is just a chance that your aging cream of tartar dissolved in milk will save the day, since this is an acidic salt which will stand in for the acidity in the buttermilk. As a former professional chemist, I can assure you that pure inorganic salts like cream of tartar simply do not go bad.
I would have loved to hear the exchanges between author McGee and Thomas Keller, as Keller is probably the contemporary epitome of how the culinary professional uses experimental techniques in cooking. The constant tasting which every cook does is nothing more than a practical application of the chemical technique of titration, where materials are combined slowly until the desired result is achieved. What separates good from great cooks is using this technique to test raw materials. This is the truest marriage of science and cooking, following the maxim of Daniel Boulud who stated that to be really great, the journeyman cook must repeat the same procedure thousands of times to the point where the result is utterly reproducible and the cook can detect the desired endpoint easily by eye, nose, and mouth. Sounds like science to me.
The author’s introduction presents an excellent case for rereading the book in its second edition as he cites the great changes in food culture over the last twenty years. This is also a great case for anyone who is interested in any aspect of food.
A very important book indeed.
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This book is NOT a cookbook, but it’s a damned good reference for figuring out why your sauce was flat. I first received this book from a friend, about 3 years ago. I read it, then re-read it, and was amazed that the technical references and jargon were so easily described. As a chemical engineer by trade and a cook by avocation, I loved this book, both for the technical details and the writing, as well as the explanations of the science behind the “obvious”. If you’re a technically-inclined person, you’ll appreciate the references and notes. If you, like some unnamed previous reviewers, are looking for an easy guide to food, this isn’t it. This book appeals to cooks who know how to make things, but want to know why those things are made. This isn’t a compendium of recipes, nor is it a guide to cooking. It’s an easily understandable review of why foods do what they do.If you enjoy cooking and wonder why “browning” makes a tastier dish, get this book. Nothing here is a surprise to the seasoned cook. There are no de rigueur recipes. Whatever.
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This is a truly unique and wonderful book. It contains a tremendous amount of information about the food we eat. It shows the structure and composition of animals, plants, eggs, liquids, and seeds, explaining why each one has certain characteristics (for example, it turns out that the smell of fish comes from the decomponsition of a chemical in ocean fish cells that maintains the proper pressure balance with salt water). It explains what happpens when ingredients are chopped, mixed, heated, cooled, fermented, or otherwise transformed.
I discovered the first edition about five years ago, and it permanently changed how I think about food and how I cook. Since then, I’ve seen many other chefs mention this book. For example, in Michael Ruhlman’s book “The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute,” CIA students often study this (unrequired) book to better understand what they’re doing.
You should be aware that this book is more an encypclopedia than an a recipe book or a collection of essays. If you’re looking for a fun discussion of food science, then Alton Brown’s “I’m just here for the food” may be a better choice. If you’re looking for recipes that are optimized by principles of food science, I’d recommend Shirley O. Corriher’s “Cookwise.” (Actually, I’d recommend both of those books anyway.) Some readers may find “On Food and Cooking” a little bit too dense and technical to read from cover to cover, but as a reference book, it’s unmatched.
The second edition is a great improvement over the first, and I’d strongly recommend it not only to new readers but to anyone who read the first edition. (Just the new section on fish makes this book worth purchasing.) This is really a totally new book: it’s been completely reorganized, new illustrations have been added, and it’s 66% longer than the old version. I’m guessing that the only reason that this book has the same title is for marketing value: the first book was very well known by cooks.
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In 1984, when the first edition of ON FOOD AND COOKING was published, it sent off a shockwave through the entire culinary industry. Never before had someone published such a massive study on how science affects cooking in all aspects. It quickly became a bible for professional chefs around the world, often simply referred to in conversation as simply “McGee”.
For the 20th anniversary of the original publication, author McGee has rewritten about 90% of his original work, studying the various ways that the ensuing 20 years and the many advances affect the way we grow, harvest, cook, smell, taste, eat, and digest today.
Taking all the culinary and scientific changes that have taken place since the original edition under consideration, McGee has once again created the standard for understanding the relationship between food and science, and why things work the way they do.
He also addresses important topics such as irradiated food, the threats of disease such as Mad Cow disease, and the effects of aquaculture and genetic engineering on today’s harvested food.
The book also looks at the many various techniques of preparing everything from the odd vegetable to the many different fish in the ocean, and nearly everything in-between.
McGee’s historical and anecdotal style are easy to read, and more importantly, to understand. Once you’ve read a section, much of it will stay in your head, if only because the average cook will be saying to themselves, “Wow, I didn’t know that!”
Although McGee is not a household name among home cooks, it should be. Much of the information offered up by the author in his guide through the food jungle would be very useful to home cooks as well as professional chefs. I would definitely recommend the book to EVERYONE who has any kind of interest in how food science affects our everyday lives. A must-have for any library.
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Food lovers can rest easy now that Harold McGee has updated his eminently readable 1984 tome, “On Food and Cooking”. He is the literary counterpart to the Food Network’s Alton Brown in providing an amalgam of history, science, literature, and cooking tips, spreading his knowledge across fifteen chapters, each devoted to a different food category. McGee leaves no food unturned. He starts rather appropriately with milk and dairy products, life-starting foods, and goes through edible plants, cereals, doughs and batters, wine and beer and distilled spirits, even basic food molecules. This is no dry scientific book, as McGee is a wonderfully colorful writer, lucid and endlessly fascinating.
McGee is truly a Renaissance man when it comes to food, and the book is packed with historical facts, literary anecdotes, and food legends passed down through the ages. For instance, when he talks about dairy products in the first chapter, he also brings up the domestication of the goat, the development of Parmesan, the history of ice cream and the best way to clarify butter. But his writing style is never contrived or pedantic and never gets in the way of the intriguing facts he brings to light. There are great illustrations and almost like a textbook, replete with easy-to-follow charts, graphs, and pictures, On the sidebars of each page, McGee shares insights from the likes of Brillat-Savarin, Plutarch and their culinary brethren along with ancient recipes for ash-roasted eggs, stuffed bonito with pennyroyal, and other delicacies. However, his focus is not purely historical, as he examines with great acuity, modern food production, current health risks and an easy-to-understand lesson on atoms, molecules, and the nature of energy. Rest assured that cooking basics are covered thoroughly. Would-be bakers can know what to expect with flour and why it behaves the way it does. Carnivores will discover what makes a tender stew or why it’s such a delicate art to roast the perfect turkey. Even the seemingly trivial jumps off the page, for example, the fact that completely different cultures can produce such similar foods like kimchi and sauerkraut. Or one can realize that it takes 70,000 crocus flowers and 200 hours of labor to produce one pound of saffron. Only with this detail can one appreciate the exorbitant cost when you see it in the supermarket.
It’s as if McGee has taken David Macaulay’s wonderful book, “The Way Things Work”, traded machinery for sustenance and mixed it all in a food processor to come up with an essential reference book one can read with pleasure and for education concurrently. Strongly recommended even for the non-food lover if such a creature exists.