Holiday Kitchen Wishlist – 5 Pieces of Lab Equipment useful in the Kitchen

Since it is almost the holiday season, and I am hopefully moving to my own place soon (still looking, but I do need to restock my kitchen as I sold/gave away a lot of my things when I moved from Los Angeles!), I thought to make a kitchen wishlist post.

And to make it even more fun, I made a list of lab equipment that would be totally adaptable to the kitchen (and would be totally useful!). As I was meal prepping the other day, I opened a large 3 L container of olive oil my parents bought. I tried to pour a few tbsps of olive oil into my frying pan so I could cook my meat, and instead I made a huge mess – not only did I put a lot more oil than I needed, but it got all over the stove and was dripping down the sides of the container. 1. Made a mess. 2. Wasted perfectly precious olive oil.

I tweeted, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a serological pipette to just pipet out the perfect amount of oil? I would avoid the whole mess! I recently bought an electric pipette gun for my new lab, and I was astounded at how expensive it was, but it really is worth the price. So here are some of my picks, that you can find on Amazon, and use in your kitchen! This post is not sponsored by Amazon, but rather contains some affiliate links, and I feel like it would be cheaper to buy things on amazon rather than going to some lab supply companies like VWR, Sigma, or Thermo – they tend to up the prices of things, and only if your institution has a deal/contract with them, are things reasonably priced (i.e. – chemicals can cost 5 times more expensive than when you are logged in with your institution credentials – insane!)

1. Aliquotting that perfect amount of liquid:  

I was actually rather surprised at the variety of pipettes you can find on Amazon! There are a lot more things, but here are some things I would buy!

 

2. Perfect Stirring – Never burn your rice again!

Ok – I’m going to admit. During my apartment searching, every time I saw a studio that had a “kitchenette,” that meant there was not a full kitchen, and instead of a stove it had a hotplate. I got annoyed every single time I saw that.  But then thinking about it – it might actually be rather useful, as an addition rather than replacement for a stove in your kitchen! The magnetic stirbars would be awesome to just throw in your pot, and place it on the stir/hot plate – so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to stir the rice and burning it, while you are busy tending/cooking other parts of your meal!

 

3. Weigh scale – never waste food again!

In the lab, we weigh chemicals as when we make our buffers, we need the exact right amount of each component to make a buffer at the right concentration. We can’t just throw a random amount into the buffer, as it can affect our assays/enzymes/proteins! As I have been meal prepping, I found that portion sizes makes a big difference in weight loss. I was using these Portion Fix Containers which made measuring things out a lot more simple and didn’t have to worry about weighing things out, and they came with the various workout program challenge packs I bought and did – when paired with the workout programs, I saw great results! You can check those options out HERE. Otherwise, you can buy a digital food scale for rather cheap, or you can go for one of the more complex scales from the lab 😀

 

4. Thermometer – Perfect cooking every time.

It’s a general rule that when you cook chicken, you want to make sure it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. I never have a thermometer handy, so I’m always cutting and guessing when my chicken looks done. But, no more, as I have found some really inexpensive kitchen thermometers! We use thermometers all the time in lab, to make sure our incubators are at the right temperature. Too high of a temperature can kill our bacteria, yeast, cells, etc. We usually use alcohol thermometers, as mercury thermometers can be dangerous if they break! Thankfully the kitchen ones are a lot harder to break.

 

5. Microscope to check if your food went bad!

In the lab, we check our plates with our cells/bacteria under a microscope, to make sure things are growing correctly and they aren’t contaminated. Ever leave any food out and find it smells horrible? That means things are growing! I found some inexpensive microscopes that you can have your kids or you to play with – the ones that are in the lab are usually very expensive and high quality – but for general looking at your food, a smaller one can do 🙂 and these make cool gifts for the budding scientist in your life!

 

This was such a fun post to write! I’m really excited for the amount of science related lab equipment you can find on amazon, a site I frequent a lot! Makes it really accessible for people to explore and use things in their every day life! Would you buy or use any of these pieces?

Let me know if there are any other pieces of lab equipment you would use in the kitchen that I missed!

xo

Andrea

 

P.S. This post is not sponsored by Amazon, but contains affiliate links, at no extra cost to you.