Ever since Julia Child taught Americans how to master the art of French cooking, we have been trying to master a higher level of cuisine at home. But with the rise of popular chefs like Emeril Lagasse, Rachel Ray, Bobby Flay and hot cooking shows like Top Chef, America’s Test Kitchen, The Chew, Hell’s Kitchen, and Chopped taking over, the last twenty years has significantly expanded our interest for cooking around the nation.
In 2014, Nielson.com estimated that 115.6 million homes in the U.S. had televisions, and from data on Statista.com, an amazing 46.97 million watched the Food Network – the host of many high-quality cooking shows. With such an interest in watching cooking shows consumers are likely learning new techniques and becoming interested in different foods to prepare. As the cooking enthusiasts at home try to re-create what the top chefs are doing in restaurants and on TV, they’ll be looking to have the right tools in their kitchens to make their cooking easier, better tasting and more fun.
High-quality accessories are essential in every kitchen and Petra is excited to offer excellent kitchen items that will appeal to your customers with a growing appetite for cooking. With a few accessories, they can become the Chef De Cuisine of their own home!
Basics and Prep
In your customers’ kitchen they don’t have a team helping them, so not only are they the chef, but also the sous chef, and all of the prepping is done all by themselves, making accuracy and efficiency extra important. Scales are the most accurate way to measure food for a recipe and this measuring cup from Taylor doubles as a 4-cup Capacity digital measuring cup.
Following a recipe on an iPad can get tricky when it keeps getting in the way, but with a Bamboo Cutting Board with iPad stand from CTA that problem takes care of itself and the cook gets a durable cutting board for meal prep. When a cutting board and knife aren’t doing the work, a mandolin can cut down on all that slicing and grating that can take so long and the Easy Mandoline from Starfrit even stores all the blades.
Because heat is not only important for the overall safety of foodborne illness but also essential for the perfect sear, tenderness or glaze, chefs around the world value proper heat distribution and your food fanatic fans know this. For those looking for rim-to-rim heat distribution, the beautiful Tri-ply Stainless Steel 10-Piece Cooking Set by Cat Cora is ideal. It features an exclusive riveted stainless steel handle design which provides a secure grip and is oven safe up to 500°F. For a rock-like finish that lasts 3x longer than traditional nonstick cookware, we offer The Rock 10-Piece Cooking Set by Starfrit. It features an extra-thick forged aluminum base and is also guaranteed to never warp.
For those in a bit more of a hurry or looking to expand their knowledge of a different style of cooking, a pressure cooker is a great addition to their repertoire. It creates a seal with the lid and forms pressure inside the pot forcing liquid into the food, cooking it faster and creating moisture. Brentwood has a pressure cooker that work on a stove and Nesco has an options that is digital.
Small Appliances
With cookware and prep taken care of, those eager cooks will need a few more tools in their arsenal to make those meringues fluffy and soups velvety.
A kitchen appliance that you never see missing from any chef’s kitchen, at least not on their TV shows, is an electric mixer. Whether they are a baker or not, a mixer is user to create meringues, mashed potatoes, bread, gnocchi, you name it, they use the mixer. The problem is do they need a hand mixer or a stand mixer. A hand mixer is convenient because it is easier to store and you can use any bowl, but the motors are smaller so it cannot handle as much as the stand mixer. The stand mixer has a bowl that stays in place so it can create less mess and you can walk away from it while it is mixing.
Hand blenders, sometimes referred to as immersion or stick blenders, let users blend food in their existing bowl or pot, making them ideal for things like creamy soups and sauces. The PHPMXGS1 from Panasonic has a four blade cutting system, 600-watt motor and a blending beaker. For beverages or food that is more fibrous, a more traditional upright, countertop blender might be the better choice, this 5-Speed blender from Brentwood has a brushed stainless steel base and 5-speed settings, including an ice crushing feature.
Lacking That Cooking Skill
For your customers that want to make that professional looking food they stare at on their TV screens, but haven’t quite mastered the skills, you can have them covered with a few accessories. Homemade Pizza beats delivery any day and this Pizza maker from Betty Crocker is the foolproof method to making that perfectly cooked, 12” pizza. It can even make giant cookies, quesadillas, frittatas and more.
Two popular food fads right now are cupcakes and donuts, but they are not the easiest things to make. Fortunately with an electric food maker your customers can have homemade, delicious products that look like they could take on the competition of any cooking show!
We’ve highlighted some great cooking products to meet your customers’ needs as they work to become the best chef in the world, or at least at their block party. With these new products your customers are certainly going to thank you for their new culinary creations, plus those added profits, well they’re just the icing on the cake. Check out all of our cooking accessories at Petra.com or give your sales rep a call today.