Ultimate Appliance Shopping Guide for 2020- Part Two

Welcome back, ladies and gents! If you were with us last week, we went shopping for a full suite of new appliances. Our blogger went shopping, looking at things the way people usually did and came up with all sorts of interesting appliances. 

Several of our repairmen, as well as the owner of the company, commented after reading last week’s post that they wanted to purchase some of them as well! 

 This week we sat down with our professionals to see what their thoughts were. We’re going to see what our professional repairmen came up with as their picks for the best appliances that money can buy. 

Refrigerator

Approaching the refrigerator first, like we did last week, this is actually the only one that our professionals couldn’t agree on. “There isn’t just one model or even brand, we’d feel comfortable recommending. There are so many variables that go into selecting a refrigerator; we could spend weeks debating all of them. The most important thing is to find one that has really focused on the necessary features more than the gadgets. It’s not that you can’t get ones with gadgets, let’s face it that’s inevitable these days. However, what should matter is the care that has gone into making the different important points of your refrigerator; the compressor, the seals, how well the ice maker and water lines work. Does it hold temperatures well? Is the water filter easy to access and replace etc? 

Washer

Model: Speed Queen 3.2 Cu. Ft. Inch Top Load in White 

Brand: Alliance Laundry Systems 

All of the bells and whistles have been stripped away for this one leaving you with a dependable washing machine. Simple to set up, simple to use, and reliable seems to be the consensus among buyers. It’s got a deep drum, minimum controls, and is top loading. 

Dryer

Model: Speed Queen 7 Cu Ft Electric in white

Brand: Alliance Laundry Systems 

This dryer matches the washer, and much like it is built for quality and endurance over gadgets. As our professionals put it, ‘there aren’t any electronic displays to burn out, cause fires or malfunctions, and you don’t have test it seven different ways to find out if the board has died or if the dryer did. 

Cooktop/ Oven

Model  KitchenAid 6.4 Cu. Ft. Slide-In Electric 

Brand: KitchenAid 

This range is the best of both worlds. Simple and straightforward but also has several bells that will make any at-home chef happy. It comes with True Convection as well as a steam rack, and also is capable of converting your conventional recipes to convection for you. 

At the same time, though, it isn’t loaded down with dials, controls, or superfluous gadgets. It does what it is designed to do and is the best at it. 

Dishwashers

For our dishwashers, we had a tie in terms of who thought which appliance was the best. 

Model: Built-In Dishwasher with Hidden Controls and 3rd Rack in Stainless Steel

Brand: GE

“This one has one of the better rack configurations that we’ve seen. It means that you’re more likely to be able to fit your dishes and less likely that they’re going to be damaged. It also has a bar handle, which is more durable than the hidden latch models. It’s also surprisingly quiet.” This was our professionals’ opinion, but I’d like to point out something else that caught my eye. It has a wash zone feature. This means that you can choose to wash only the upper or the lower racks, thus saving you water if you use it. 

Model: 39 dBA Dishwasher with Fan-Enabled ProDry System

Brand: KitchenAid

Our second dishwasher has many of the same features as the previous one, although it has a few interesting ones as well. Like the GE, this KitchenAid has a third rack, a bar handle, and is remarkably quiet. It also comes from a very reliable brand. Unlike the GE, however, it has foldable tines on the top rack as well as a set of durable plastic pieces that fold out to add extra space for small items such as sauce dishes or ramekins. 

Thanks for coming back this week ladies and gents, we hope you found this series of posts useful. If you’re not ready to replace your appliances and instead want to repair them, give us a call! We want to help you live better.  

If you did, please consider heading over to our Facebook page and posting what other series or posts you’d like us to do. 

Lucky New Year's Black-Eyed Peas

Although we’re a bit late to eat this on New Year’s Day, we wanted to start something new for weekends and share a recipe.

In my family on New Year's Eve, we make this dish in order to have good luck in the coming year. Also, because it’s a family tradition that goes back several generations. It goes by many different names, although to my brothers and me, it was just black-eyed peas. 

It’s not entirely clear how far back the dish itself dates, although one of the more interesting ideas is that it goes back to the Civil War. 

“One of two popular explanations for the South’s association with peas and good luck dates back to the American Civil War. The first is associated with General William T. Sherman’s march of the Union Army to the sea, during which they pillaged the Confederates' food supplies. Stories say peas and salted pork were said to have been left untouched, because of the belief that they were animal food unfit for human consumption. Southerners considered themselves lucky to be left with some supplies to help them survive the winter, and black-eyed peas evolved into a representation of good luck.”

Well, need is the mother of innovation, and from it came this delicious dish. 

Ingredients:  

3 Tablespoons butter

3 stalks of celery, chopped 

1 small green bell pepper, chopped

1 medium yellow onion, chopped 

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 ham hock, rinsed and patted dry 

2 cups ham, cooked and cubed 

2 cups frozen black-eyed peas OR 2 cups canned black-eyed peas, rinsed and drained 

2 cups cooked white rice

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper 

½ teaspoon salt 

Hot sauce to taste

Instructions: 

1. Start by thoroughly rinsing your beans if you’re using canned ones. You don’t need the added salt when you have both the cubed ham and the ham hock. 

2. Bring a large pot to the stove and turn it to medium heat. Melt your butter and then add bell pepper, onion, celery, and garlic. Stir regularly and cook till the vegetables are very tender. Roughly 7-10 minutes. 

3. Add in your ham hock and the cubed ham. Pour enough water to cover the top of the hock and ring to a boil, uncovered. Keeping it uncovered, reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. 

4. Stir in rice, and black-eyed peas, leaving it to simmer for another 15 minutes. 

5. Season it with hot sauce to taste. (We keep our hot sauce on the counter so that everyone can add as much as they like. I know our little one doesn’t add any!) 

Tips: 

• If you can’t get a ham hock at your local store, you can go with just a ham bone and a rasher of bacon.

• You can also make the dish a little more flavorful by cooking the rice in the liquid before adding in your beans. This gives it more time to absorb the flavors of the mix. Don’t add the beans for a longer cook time, though, as they’ll end up too soft. 

• If you use frozen black-eyed peas, don’t worry about defrosting them before-hand. You can toss them into the pot straight out of the freezer. 

• IF however, you opt to use dried peas, please make sure that you soak them overnight and then rinse them once more with cold water before adding them to the cooking pot. 

A well-cared-for kitchen is needed in order to make any recipe. If you’re seeing issues with any of your appliances, consider making an appointment. Or you can check out our post from earlier this week if you’re looking to buy something new. We’d love to help you continue making memories and delicious foods with your family. Call us today for fast and reliable service.  

Tell us below in the comments or over on Facebook, have you tried black-eyed peas before? Love them? Hate them? Have an entirely different recipe for them? Let us know! We’d love to hear from you.

Adapted From: Paula Deen's ­South­ern ­Cook­ing Bible, I think. I’ll admit that when I asked my grandmother where she got this recipe, she just pointed me towards a giant collection of cookbooks. On one hand, I grew up thinking that the recipe had been handed down for generations through our family. On the other hand, she said that she’d modified the recipe after reading it somewhere else.

Looking for this recipe was not easy. This is the closest to the recipe as I grew up making it, but it’s not precise. There’s also the fact that Paula Deen calls the dish Hoppin’ John. So, who knows?

Credit for the background image for this post goes to Jud McCranie. 

Dishwasher Dangers, What Doesn't Belong

What is it with people and putting things in dishwashers that will damage them? All over Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter people talk about weird ways to use your dishwasher. What  they don’t consider is whether you should be putting these things in there. 

Shoes? Ok. That one sort of makes sense, if you squint. But engine parts? Keyboards? Not only are these going to be damaged themselves, but they’re just as likely to do damage to your dishwasher. We put together a listing of things you shouldn’t run through your dishwasher and just how bad it’s going to be if you do. 

Easy Peasy - Grab a dishrag and clean it out.

Anything with Adhesives- This one makes  sense, both people doing it and why you shouldn’t. You want to get those jam jars clean before you store them away, or return them. But many adhesives are going to break down when exposed to the heat in your dishwasher and release from what they’re on. If the adhesive is water soluble, not a big deal. You might need to check your grate, but it’s not going to kill your dishwasher. Some though won’t be, and instead of leaving globs of adhesive on the dish in question it can end up stuck to other dishes, or elsewhere inside the dishwasher. 

Hollow handled knives- This one is a dual threat. If the knives are larger ones, then the blade can be an issue rattling around inside the dishwasher. The adhesives, like we mentioned above, can also be loosened and lead to the handle coming off. 

Computer keyboards - Why? Really, why would anyone do this. But apparently people have. Yes the keys will come out clean, but water and soap will remain in the board and you will have fried your keyboard! 

Fish - Again, this one doesn’t make any sense to us. Some people will ‘cook’ the fish in the dishwasher wrapped in tinfoil (which shows up further down the list). So this is bad for two very different reasons. 

1. You have no guarantee that you’re cooking the fish fully so that all pathogens are killed. No one wants Salmonella. 

2. Dishwashers aren’t tested for their ability to cook. They aren’t intended to cook, let alone cook food evenly.

These two things together you’d likely end up with a mess of fish fat and oils all over you dishes, tinfoil residue throughout your dishwasher and improperly cooked fish. Not a good start to a meal. 

-Oh No- Get someone else with special tools to clean it. 

This is the level when you take a  good look at your dishwasher, the remains of material inside it, and decide ‘Nope. I need someone else to get this taken care of.” 

Plastic tupperware- We all do it. You get plastic tupperware, it’s the end of the day, why not throw it into the dishwasher? It says it’s dishwasher safe right? Or you’re pretty sure it does. Well the truth is that many of them aren’t, despite saying that. Plastics, especially the thinner, flimsier ones, can easily melt in the heat of your  dishwasher. From there, the most common place for it to end up is ‘draped’ over the heating element of your dishwasher. Unless you immediately get the dishwasher open after running and everything emptied out, it’s going to cool and solidify. At that point, it’s a pain in the neck trying to get it out. Can it be done? Yes. Absolutely, we even have a  guide for it. However, it’s a pain in the neck. 

Aluminum- Once praised for being a ‘rare’ metal, now the most useful material in our kitchens. But much like adhesives, the heat of a dishwasher can truly mess up your aluminum. Whether we’re talking about putting a pie tin, a baking container or tray, they don’t fare well. First off, you’ll almost certainly end up with ugly marks on your dishes, silverware and the dishwasher itself. Also if the aluminum is thin enough, your dishwasher can easily destroy it. Which will end up with aluminum flakes spread throughout your dishwasher.  

-Red Dead Dishwasher - It’s toast

Engine Parts- Yes people have actually done this in an attempt to clean off certain parts. Which does make a certain kind of sense. However, your chances of getting that grease out of your dishwasher? Not very high my friends.

Takeout containers- Styrofoam. What happens when you put it into a water filled space? It floats! What about dealing with heat? It melts, twists and catches on fire. So putting it into your dishwasher can end in several bad ways.  If you’re lucky, it’ll deteriorate and you’ll be trying to clean out particles from throughout your lines. If you’re unlucky it will melt and fuse to your dishwasher. 

Kitchen knives-  we’re not talking about utensils. We’re talking about meat cleavers, chefs knives, bread knives etc. These are the larger knives you use for prepping food and people tend to place on the top rack. The problem is that when the knives are rattling around during the wash cycle,  they can nick the coating on your dishwasher or the racks. Once that coating is broken, water and minerals can begin to attack the exposed metal and begin to rust it. When rust begins to take over your dishwasher, you’re counting down the time till it’s dead. 

(The detergents will also dull your blades over time and you’ll need to get them sharpened more often.)

If you need help with your dishwasher, feel free to schedule an appointment. We want to help you and your dishwasher get back on good terms. 

Have you ever had something fall apart in your dishwasher? Let us know in the comments below or over on Facebook 

Additional Reading

Dishwasher Deep Dive