Laptops in the Kitchen: What Do You Think?

This came up during our discussion on the pros and cons of electronic delivery for food magazines, and we thought it would be interesting to put the question out there. Do you display recipes on a laptop while cooking, or is that just begging for trouble?

Personally, we've started bringing our laptop into the kitchen more frequently in the past few months. We're finding the majority of our recipes online these days and displaying the recipe our laptop often beats jotting it down or using up paper to print it off.

We set the laptop on a table across the room from where we're actually cooking, so there's (hopefully!) no danger of accidentally spilling ingredients onto the keyboard. Having sticky fingers is sometimes an issue, but we can usually reduce the page size of the recipe so that it fits on one screen, thus reducing the need to scroll.

We also think we'll take a suggestion from Kitchn reader Tiamat_the_Red and start covering the keyboard with plastic wrap. If we had a Kindle or an iPhone, we would probably do the same thing but put the device in a sealed plastic bag.

The only downside to this high-tech move is not having an good system for taking notes or marking changes. We try to keep a spiral notebook for these things, but this can still be confusing when want to make the recipe again and need to figure out how our notes correspond with the online recipe.

Do you ever bring your laptop into the kitchen?

(Image: Flickr member striatic licensed under Creative Commons)

posted originally from: TheKitchn

Comments (8)

I use my laptop several times a week in the kitchen. I use to print out recipes, but then I started feeling guilty about wasting paper.

I wish I had a computer built into the refrigerator, then I'd never had to worry about getting liquids in hard drive.

I put my laptop on the counter while I do dishes so I can catch up on Hulu or Instant Netflix. No close calls so far...

(I know doing dishes by hand wastes a lot of water, and I'd love to have a dishwasher but I'm in the attic of a 150-year-old house. I don't think it's possible to get something that bulky up the tiny, tiny stairs.)

We used to, but for xmas I got my girlfriend and iPod touch and now we mainly use it for recipes (and controlling our mac mini's itunes). So far it is working out pretty well, but a larger screen would be helpful and maybe a better recipe program... we are currently using Evernote.

I copy and paste all of the recipes I like into one note. it is much easier to organize them there than in a word doc. You can have tabs for categories like pasta or beans and then a page for each recipe. it is also easy to add whatever notes you want once they are in there. One note is good at converting thing from the internet into a format that looks good, unlike word. And you can put pictures in too.

I put my laptop on a worksurface that I am not using for cooking so I can see it but not get anything spilled on it. I will save recipes as pdf's and organize them in folder by type. I don't have the motivation to put them into one note or anything that advanced.

I put my laptop on a shelf in my kitchen, a little higher up at eye level, so that I do not get ingredients on it.

Yep. I do. In my last apartment, I put my laptop on a chair in the corner of the room or on the kitchen table. I didn't use the table to prep as I had plenty of counter space.

I have yet to use my laptop in the kitchen of this apartment. I've only lived in it for three months or so.

we have a bookshelf in our kitchen across from our stove (our kitchen is narrow) so it's easy to set the laptop inside one of the shelves and turn around, check out the recipe, and continue cooking without worrying about spilling on our laptops