If the person you’re shopping for is a fan of learning new and better ways of cooking (and has an inner mad scientist), they’ll get a big kick out of experimenting with one of our new Modernist Pantry spherification kits. Our online spherification course is free and our videos offer easy step-by-step demonstrations, plus there is plenty of expert support from our friendly culinary community if things go awry. We also have a list of Kitchen Tools and Equipment Under $99 at our store along with other great gift ideas like our House Rub 01.

When Grant Crilly isn’t wearing a chef’s apron, he’s rocking some freediving gear and pursuing a fresh seafood dinner. There are no complaints from any of us at ChefSteps, as we’ve been the recipients of amazing fish and chips, fish tacos, and fresh fish for own grills at home. Here is Grant’s list of freediving/spearfishing gear from the guys at Sporasub America: dive suit, fins, mask, dive watch, and speargun.

Following the dive buddy rule, somebody has to keep an eye on Grant, and who better to do that than Ryan Matthew Smith with his GoPro HERO3. Check out this underwater shot captured during one of Grant and Ryan’s recent spearfishing adventures.

If you’ve got a grilling/bbq fanatic in your midst, we suggest you consider the item on Chris Young’s wish list, a fire proximity suit. In this photo, he’s wearing a suit borrowed from friend, Rusty Oliver of HazardFactory, but since Chris is a “go big or go home” believer when it comes to fire, we’re all interested in him having his own suit. If your favorite chef needs protection from similar grilling flare-ups, you might want to wrap one of these up for them.

Our audio director, Hans Twite, performs a dual role with his mad skills as composer of soundtracks for ChefSteps videos and resident bartender. He could really use a tool belt to hold the Zoom H4n 4-Channel Handy Recorder (perfect for capturing family stories) and the Bernzomatic TS8000BT High Intensity Torch Head for charring cinnamon sticks for a Churchill’s Breakfast cocktail.

On a quieter front, our CTO and kimchi provider, Michael Natkin, stays busy producing thousands of lines of code on our behalf. We happily provide him with endless cups of rocket fuel when he’s here at ChefSteps, but since there’s very little time for sleep when aiming for lofty startup goals, we’re hoping that the aroma of coffee brewing at home comes from a Technivorm Moccamaster and the pungent odor of his latest batch of kimchi stays put in a Harsch Gartopf Fermenting Crock Pot.

Ed Starbird, our director of business operations, is a fan of the UP by Jawbone. UP is a system, wristband + mobile app, that tracks sleep, physical activity and food intake so you can make smarter choices and feel your best. We’re all witnesses of Ed’s tireless activity on behalf of ChefSteps and if the UP takes a few things off his tracking list and helps him out, we’re all for it!

Cheers!
Chris, Grant, Ryan, and the rest of the ChefSteps team

Hey, look at my profile! Lots of new features on this page:

• A new bio picture for you to upload your photo and make the site a little more community-oriented.
• Badges – We have two so far with plenty more coming. It’s a fun thing to do for us, and we have lots of ideas of new ones to come. I modeled the knife for the Stay Sharp badge after one of Grant’s knives. It’s pretty badass.
• Course progress – Any course you enroll in from now on should show up here and if you leave the course in the middle of it, just go back to your profile to pick up where you left off. Should be handy for the longer courses (looking at you, sous vide).
• Uploads – If you’ve finished the spherification course already (or you look at the course landing page where we highlight student creations), you’ll notice that we’re now offering the ability for you good folks to show off the delicious nosh you’ve been making. You can also like everyone’s photos there and comment! I noticed Brendan has even pushed a recipe into the uploads… Nice one.
• Timeline – Just to show all the activity you’ve done on the site and when you joined! Obviously, as we add more features, those events will be captured here and we hope to be able to give you a good place to see all the things you (and your buddies on ChefSteps) have been up to.

Oh yeah, you’ve probably also noticed those billboards. We’ve got the new one for the spheres on the front page with spheres dropping. I think it’s pretty sweet and kind of mesmerizing; I’ll be staring at it all weekend.

Phew. A lot of stuff. It’s been a great week, guys. Hope you thought so too. More excitement next week. Have a good one!

Flaming citrus oil looks way cooler slowed down 50x

We’re working on some big things coming up in the next couple of weeks—stay tuned! In the meantime, we’ve had a lot of good recipes come through, more than I can recall and more than I actually got to taste, but I can’t reiterate enough how damn good the fish and chips were. The fries alone are amazing and I kept eating them even though they were over-salted for the camera. Do yourself a favor and make some.

The view from my desk

Since I came on as a designer here, I’ve been trying to familiarize myself with the store, make it easier to navigate and add some fun stuff that we find useful. If there’s anything that we’re using that you’re curious about, please ask us. We’re working on sourcing some other things that are hard to find, so keep an eye out for that as well.

Another thing I’ve been working on: Did you know you can scale recipes on our recipe pages? Click on any recipe and you can click into any quantity and change it and everything will scale automatically with it. It’s a little-known feature right now, and we’ve been working hard at making it more obvious and at the same time unobtrusive and useable.

Hey folks, have a good weekend and enjoy the holiday (for those in the States). See you next week!

Grilling season has arrived and we want to help you get ready with a 15% discount at our online store. Father’s Day is just around the corner and if you’ve got a cook in your life (include yourself) who has a serious hankering for a SousVide Supreme water oven, PolyScience immersion circulator or a smoking gun, now is a great time to fill up your cart and save some dough. You’ll want to serve some frosty blended drinks alongside that barbecue and we offer an amazing Waring blender that can cut an iceberg down to size. Are you finally ready for your own Minipack vacuum chamber sealer?

Enter coupon code MEMDAY15% at checkout. This offer is not valid on Amazon and Thermoworks products–deal ends on Monday, May 27, 2013 at 11:59 PM PDT. Put the money you save towards some nice food to grill and get ready for a wonderful summer.

Happy Memorial Day to all of you,
Chris, Grant, Ryan, and the rest of the ChefSteps team

We’ve been doing a lot of experiments on the website, and we’ll be doing more to test and see what you guys find most helpful (Also, please tell us!). If you have any questions, comments, or general feedback about the website, we’d love to hear it. In the meantime, enjoy the minimalist quiet of our new blog design!

We like to go around and whisper chefsteps! every once in a while; it’s really fun to say and I think it’s a great way to inception ourselves into the public. Try it! Go ahead, I’ll wait.

See?

One last thing: We have a t-shirt! We’re selling it at teespring.com/chefsteps and are so close to our goal! It ends tomorrow, so please spread the word! Thanks!

Grant, Chris and Ryan each picked their favorite dishes to feature on our Pinterest board.

Grant Crilly: My favorite entry this week was Johan Edstrom’s Asparagus Soup. I loved the agar filtration technique and the subtle marketing message that he included in the photo. Nice!

Chris Young: I chose new forum member Maria’s Har Gao/Xiao Long Baos. I am passionate about XLB and hope that Maria will continue experimenting with additional versions of the dish. I also want to give an honorable mention to Tim Sutherland for his great backstory on the Curdled Chunky Warm Fish Head Milkshake.

Ryan Matthew Smith: I picked Brian Douglas’ Scotch Eggs as my favorite this week. The vibrant color of the Sriracha really pops against the egg yolk.

We are retooling the Culinary Challenge within the next few days and will make an announcement with the new format and schedule on the forum as soon as possible.

As always, we’re thrilled to have new members joining the forum and participating in the challenges. Please share with your interested friends, as we extend our culinary community.

Cheers,
Grant, Chris, Ryan, and the rest of the ChefSteps team