Best Kitchen — Curated from The Hiro Report

We make a ton of rice in our household, whether it’s for side dishes or impromptu onigiri nights. This machine makes it dead simple to get perfect, consistent rice every time.

If you haven’t had Taiyaki fish waffles, you’re missing out—they’re tasty, usually filled with red bean paste, Nutella, or something else delicious, and they’re shaped like fish! $

Over the holiday weekend, a good friend asked me about my grill/smoker of choice, and the unequivocal answer is the Traeger. I should caveat that I am not a “grill guy”—I love cooking, but I am by no means a master of smoking meats or anything like that. With that said, the Traeger suits my needs perfectly, using small wooden pellets to grill and/or smoke everything from salmon to homemade BBQ, and imbuing a rich smoky flavor that varies with the type of pellet we use. Traeger has added a bunch of great tech to their line-up in recent years, including Wi-Fi control/monitopring and compatibility with wireless meat thermometer probes.

- I’ve been a happy user of the Meater Plus* cooking thermometer for a few years—it’s seriously leveled up my cooking of meats and fish and has become one of my favorite pieces of kitchen tech. The newer SE model is more affordable by swapping out the bamboo materials on the base station for plastic, but it still offers the same excellent remote temperature monitoring and alerts on your iPhone via Bluetooth and WiFi. *Amazon Affiliate link to support my tech addiction.

My brother introduced me to this amazing non-alcoholic, sleepy-time cocktail, and I’m hooked. It tastes like a spice-filled Christmas cocktail with all kinds of natural ingredients to help with sleep, anxiety, and circulation. It’s strong—very spice and ginger-forward—but perfect for winding down at the end of the evening and getting ready for a great night's sleep.

I surprised myself this weekend with a small gift I made for myself a few months ago. While digging through a cabinet, I found a bottle of barrel aged Old Fashioned's that I'd batch made last Fall and completely forgotten about. It was a delicious mistake. You can make a gift for your future self too! The trick is to throw one of these little charred spirals of oak into your favorite bottle of mixing bourbon, along with an appropriate amount of simple syrup and bitters, and then let it sit for a few weeks (or months)-- You'll be time traveling in no time.

If you're fan of Ube, the Filipino purple yam, I highly highly recommend grabbing this pancake mix on your next Trader Joe's outing. The pancakes come out fluffy, purple, and filled with amazing nutty-sweet flavor. It's also gluten-free! We buy a couple of boxes every time we go.

I'd seen this mini blender in the background of some cooking videos lately, and when my lovely wife recently commented in passing that she'd someday like a smaller blender that took up less counter space than our Vitamix, I leapt at the opportunity to grab one to try out. Don't get me wrong, we still have and love our Vitamix, but there are just a lot of tasks for which it is overkill, and it's too big to leave out on our counter all the time. Enter the Beast (Mini). It's the perfect size for making a single serving smoothie, or for whipping up 2-3 servings of frozen margaritas. The clever design lets you blend a beverage and then twist on a cap and straw to take your beverage on the go. Cleaning is a snap as well, thanks to the bladed section being easily removed and rinsed. We've had it for a week but are already using it a ton.

This breakfast hack has been amazing for my wife and I, especially when balancing getting getting the kids out the door for school, trying to get lunches prepped, and get ready for work. The idea of overnight oats is far from new, but Oats Overnight brings a great twist by making a really healthy, tasty, high-protein variant with a ton of different flavors to choose from. All one has to do is dump a packet into a shaker bottle with milk or a milk variant, give it a good shake, and then toss it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, you've got a butt kicking fast breakfast ready to go.

Having consistently sharp knives is such a great little power up for your cooking and camping / EDC gear. I’ve been really pleased with this remarkably easy powered knife sharpener. I’m sure sending my knives off to professional sharpeners would get marginally better results, but in less than five minutes I can go from dull to razor sharp with just a few passes through the three stages of this sharpener. I love that it can handle my "chef's knives" and my pocket knives just as easily.

Speaking of knives, I’ve really enjoyed this “do everything” kitchen knife from Milk Street, the storefront from Christopher Kimball of America’s Test Kitchen fame. Apart from just being a beautiful blade, it handles really nicely for all manner of slicing, chopping and dicing, and is shaped in a way that is much safer to handle while also providing a broad flat blade surface for scooping up all the veggies that you’ve been cutting up.

As I get older, I'm noticing that even one alcoholic drink in the evening really wrecks my sleep quality for the night. As a result, I've been experimenting with different non-alcoholic drinks that replicate the experience of having a relaxing sip in the evening, without making me toss and turn through the night. Most of the NA spirits I've tried are either super full of sugar or taste like a disappointing simulacra of the original drink. I was really pleased to find Austin-local brand, Kin, who makes tasty non-alcoholic drinks that also feature various natural adaptogens that add to the relaxing vibes-- L-Theanine, Tryptophan, Vitamin B, etc... All totally legal and won't mess up anyone's drug tests. We got a sampler pack of all of their products on Amazon, and I liked every drink in the box.

We make a lot of rice in our household, and always have leftover rice. The pros tell me that leftover rice is the perfect rice to make Fried Rice, so I've been experimenting with different recipes this year. So far, our favorite is this Classic Chicken Fried Rice recipe from The Woks Of Life. We make it with Tofu instead of Chicken, but it's always a hit. Most of the ingredients are pretty easy to get a hold of, but you may need to go to H-Mart or your Asian Grocery of choice to score some Dark Soy Sauce (which is not/not the same as the soy sauce you find in most western grocery stores.)

I posted a snap over on Mastodon a few weeks back of my attempt at this amazingly tasty (and simple) syrup from Johnny Kyunghwo. After letting it sit for a good long while we recently strained out the berries and we've been enjoying it in everything from Blueberry Old Fashioned to Blueberry Matcha Green Tea. Highly recommended. Johnny's got lots of great inspiration for other Cheongs to try-- Next up, we're doing Strawberry.