Books about Appliance from Amazon.com

Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann's The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook offers 250 timesaving, convenient, and healthy recipes for making everything from simple white rice to full-course meals. This cookbook proves the rice cooker--which tends to have a bad rap as a never-opened or oft-neglected wedding gift--can be surprisingly versatile: not only does it prepare your rice, it can be used for every dinner course--salad, soup, vegetable, entree, and even dessert.

There is a complete buying and cooking guide for the many rice varieties, as well as other whole grains such as barley, millet, wheat berry, and quinoa. Many of the recipes provide convenient alternative cooking methods for traditional dishes like Italian risottos (the Italian Sausage Risotto is wonderful). Hensperger and Kaufmann show the rice cooker can also work miracles for hot breakfast cereals and porridges with such recipes as Hot Fruited Oatmeal. Delightful main courses include Steamed Ginger Salmon and Asparagus in Black Bean Sauce, and the meal is done almost exclusively within the rice cooker for simple preparation and cleanup. The dessert section has many ideas beyond the expected Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding--the Poached Pears with Grand Marnier Custard Sauce is one elegant and sophisticated example. Both authors of this cookbook are seasoned food writers and this combined effort gives tasty, easy, and healthy recipes that will motivate you to use what has been, until now, an underutilized appliance. --Teresa Simanton.
Price: $10.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Beautiful to display and practical to use, Slow Cooker is truly a godsend for time-challenged cooks who want to prepare healthy, tasty, and satisfying meals but dont have hours to spend hovering over their stoves. Replete with all the high standards that have made Cooking Light a trusted favorite, this new edition provides over 58 beautifully photographed recipes with useful, easy-to-follow instruction..
Price: $6.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Under pressure to get a tasty, nutritious dinner on the table in a flash? Like the idea of preparing fork-tender beef stew in thirty minutes and pot roast in under an hour? All this and more is made possible by the pressure cooker, a magical appliance that produces soul-satisfying, homemade food in one-third (or less) the standard cooking time.

In Pressure Perfect, Lorna Sass, the country's leading authority on pressure cooking, distills her two decades of experience into one comprehensive volume. First learn everything you need to know about buying and using today's 100% safe cookers. Then enjoy more than 200 recipes for preparing soups, meats, poultry, grains, beans, vegetables, and desserts in record time. How about whipping up a savory risotto in 4 minutes, chicken cacciatore in 12 minutes, or a delectable chocolate cheesecake in 25 minutes?

Because the pressure cooker tenderizes tough cuts of meat quickly, you can prepare fall-off-the-bone beef short ribs or lamb shanks on weekday nights instead of waiting for a special occasion. The pressure cooker also allows you to make delectable one-pot meals in minutes. Among the many innovative recipes and techniques, you'll learn to cook meatloaf and potatoes simultaneously in 10 minutes, and meatballs, pasta, and sauce at the same time in only 5 minutes. Many recipes also suggest Cook-Along ideas for preparing vegetables and grains along with the entrée.

To further help those cooking under pressure (and who isn't nowadays?), each chapter contains timing charts for quick reference. Tips and Pressure Points in every recipe ensure optimum results.

This ultimate guide to pressure cooking is a must for all busy cooks, boaters, brides, college students, and anyone looking for a great way to make irresistible, healthy, home-made food fast.

.
Price: $13.96 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Originally published in 1909, "Handy Farm Devices" is more than an engaging trip down memory lane. For any small farmer or homesteader, the techniques and devices described in detail are just as useful, durable, and fully functional today as they were 75 years ago. You will learn to build a portable chicken coop, a stone boat (for moving stone), a lightweight orchard ladder, gates that don't sag, and a handy wood splitter, as well as rudimentary farm structures, well houses, bee hives, a baby's cradle, a cheese press and much more. The charming, turn-of-the-century language and useful and inspirational quotes from Shakespeare, the Bible, Bacon, Longfellow and many others make this book a delight to read. --Mark A. Hetts.
Price: $9.16 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Today, 58 percent of American households consist of only one or two people, yet most cookbooks still contain recipes designed to serve 6-8. In this follow-up to the bestselling Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook, Beth Hensperger offers 125 new recipes specifically designed for the increasingly popular 1 1/2 to 3 1/2-quart slow cooker. This is the perfect book for busy singles and small families who want the convenience of a small slow-cooker-made meal without sacrificing wholesomeness and flavor..
Price: $4.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Gourmet Slow Cooker Simple and Sophisticated Meals from around the WorldBy Lynn Alley"Although the slow cooker has experienced a renaissance over the past several years, the discriminating cook is still hard-pressed to find slow cooker recipes worthy.
Price: $10.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Old-fashioned bread the new-fashioned way, Betty calls it. Easy, convenient, modern. There's no knead for loafing Not with that fabulous combination in the kitchen: Betty Crocker and the bread machine

The construction of this book, first of all, is wonderful. The cover is hard and the binding is heavy, enameled spiral. Each page lays flat on the counter, or you can hold the book open on one arm while doing something with the other hand. This suggests that Betty Crocker wrote her bread-baking cookbook with serious use in mind. She certainly tested her recipes. A variety of bread machines were used, which means that each recipe was tested a number of different times. Betty tells you exactly what kind of flour she used, as well as salt, size of eggs, kind of yeast, etc. She leaves nothing to chance.

Bread machine baking has its own peculiarities, and Betty addresses all these right up front, the hows and how-tos (as well as the whys and wherefores) of getting the perfect loaf every time. There's a troubleshooting section, as well as a frequently asked question section. Then it's right into the recipes, all 130 of them.

There are Good and Savory Loaves (Cheese Onion Bread) and Wholesome Grain Loaves (Toasted Almond Whole Wheat Bread), Fruit and Vegetable Harvest Loaves (Dried Apricot Bread), Smaller Can Be Just Right Loaves (these are one-and-a-half-pound loaves), and then several chapters on breads you start in the bread machine, but finish in the oven. These include braided sweet breads, pizza dough, rustic-style breads, and coffeecakes.

Any bread machine owner is going to love to loaf with Betty Crocker. --Schuyler Ingle.
Price: $11.17 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Far from being a fad, food dyhydrating is one of the most ancient, effective, and nutritous ways of preserving food. Now, at last, there is a book that teaches absolutely everything there is to know about using an electric food dyhydrator to dry foods at home -- and gives more than 100 foolproof recipes for scrumptious snacks and meals made from dried foods.

With this extraordinary book, you can learn how to cross junk food and expensive store-bought snacks off your family's shopping list -- and add to your cupboard homemade, preservative-free fruit leathers, candied apricots, beef (and fish) jerkies, "sun" dried tomotoes, corn chips, banana chips, and so much more!

Mary Bell gives specific techniques and instructions for preparing every kind of fruit (from apples to watermelon) and vegetable (from asparagus to zucchini). She also provides important shopping tips for buying an electric food dehydrator. The recipes for cooked meals (including mushroom soup, sloppy joes, pesto, and moist banana bread) will make this book a kitchen classic. And recipes for lightweight, filling trail snacks mean that the book will travel, too.

Additional chapters explain to how make herb seasonings, granolas, celery powder, cosmetics, dried fruit sugars, potpourri -- and even pet treats!

Food drying is an excellent way for gardeners to preserve their produce. It is a great way to make healthful snacks for the kids. It's perfect for the new wave of thrifty consumers who can't bear to spend dollars at health food stores for treats they cold make for pennies themselves. And food drying doesn't use chemicals or preservatives—so it's great for you and for the planet, too!

.
Price: $11.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]