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Food and Drink Post: The Right Tool For the Job
When it comes to cooking and my kitchen, I’m not really a fan of single-purpose tools. So I almost never feel impelled to investigate the “strawberry huller ” (just use a pointy knife); or the “condiment gun” (doesn’t most ketchup and mustard come in plastic squirt bottles already?); or the “carrot sharpener” (Wait. What?); or the “cookie dipr” (shown at right); or any other silly “let’s solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist” sort of appliance. (I’ve found it’s possible to avoid consideration, and even knowledge, of most of these items just by ignoring as many of those “As Seen on TV!” advertisements and aisles in the kitchen stores, as I can).
Nevertheless, I do on occasion discover a useful little implement that does one particular job better than anything else possibly could. Such a tool is my ceramic ginger grater. I have no idea why it only has 2.5 stars in the Amazon reviews. It’s a lovely thing. Stipulate that I love fresh ginger and that I have, over the years, grated my fingers down to stumps, and the ginger to a stringy mess that could not be used in the recipe, because all the tough, hairy fibers, not to mention the … umm … blood, overwhelmed the small amount of it that I’d actually managed to grate successfully. Followed by the cleanup issues, involving scrubbing, picking, and more bloody fingers, as I tried to rid the murderously sharp metal grater of the residual ginger bits.
This tool grates the ginger, and not my fingers, to a nice moist pulp. And the “stringy hairys” are left behind in a handful whose juice can be squeezed out into the mixture and then discarded. What’s not to like? Nothing, IMHO.
Do you have a particular kitchen tool that you’d not give up, no matter what? Inquiring minds want to know. (Or, if you’d like to nominate a particular item for consideration as the daftest, or most useless kitchen implement ever, we’d love to hear about that too!)
Have at it, please.
Published in General
More than twenty-five years ago I was at a bagel shop while getting some treats for work. I also bought cream cheese. The shop happened to have a special deal that involved bagel (bread) knives and cheese spreaders, and given that we didn’t have either or any other utensils at work, I went ahead and got two of each. That night when the bagels were gone, I took the knives and spreaders home to wash and to use, since I had bought them.
I have found that I prefer those serrated bread knives to any other knife I have. The only thing they are useless for is cutting a squash in half, such as a spaghetti squash. I get out a heftier knife for that chore. But vegetables, sausages, and anything else I need to cut, I use those bread knives.
I don’t spread much cheese or butter on anything these days since I realized I couldn’t eat most grains without consequences. However, I have found that the cheese spreaders are good for cutting up and eating halvah.
So, those are my favorite tools in the kitchen.
Silicone hamburger chopper. Makes quick work chopping up hamburger for tacos or sloppy joes, etc. No lumps. Wish I had found this about 25 years ago.
Japanese waterstones.
Yes, I can see how that would work. Not a masher, but a chopper. Excellent.
Serrated knives are great, and I use them a lot, too. I do have a “special” knife for really fresh bread, or bread with a crispy crust, and tender insides. It’s this one:
I bought it in Seattle, from the guy who made them, in Pike Place Market 20-odd years ago. The blade is a piece of band saw blade (talk about serrated) It’s the only thing, including my otherwise very nice normal bread-knife, that will saw through the freshest of bread, with the crustiest outside and the softest insides without deforming it at all, that I’ve ever found. (The image isn’t reversed, this is the left-handed model, which is another reason I bought it).
I love my microplane. I got it for zesting lemons, limes, oranges, etc. because the zest adds so much flavor to sauces, salads, and desserts. (It takes off only the zest, no pith.) I have also found that it works pretty well for ginger.
Useless and almost useless: 1. cherry tomato slicer – used once, should throw it away and 2. herb stripper – use it very occasionally, fingers work as well.
A Church Key? At least that’s what Old Man Skinner used to call it.
I really like my egg poacher. I use it all the time. Spam and poached eggs. A marriage made in heaven.
And, just because I can:
Actually, it steams the eggs. You put that thing in a skillet with a half inch of water. Then cover the skillet with a lid and your steamed eggs come out perfectly in four minutes.
We had an ancient aluminum “egg poacher” when I was a kid that worked the same way. Very much like this one on eBay. I’m not terribly good at poaching eggs the way you’re supposed to, in a pot of swirling boiling water, so your way is fine with me!
I get a lot of use out of my Sushi Bazooka. I’m not kidding.
I like my microwave egg poacher by Nordicware.
You could probably get the same effect with a hacksaw blade.
That’s the search term I used when looking for a picture.
I use kitchen shears for rosemary. My sister bought me one of those rosemary and thyme strippers as a gift, and I used it once and decided I didn’t have the patience to use it again. Scissors are much faster. Not even the fancy herb scissors–just plain old-fashioned kitchen shears. :-)
I get a kick out cooks and their paring knives. We have a draw full of them, but there’s only one in there! It’s the only one I use. :-)
I got my husband one of these hods last year to thank him for all the beautiful vegetables he grows. We love it so much now we don’t know how we ever lived without it! It was invented by a vegetable gardener who went clam digging with his friend. The friend used this basket to rinse the clams, and the friend said, “Wow. Lettuce!” And a great basket was born. :-)
I got this from Lee Valley Tools. It’s actually a woodworking microplane with a catcher. I’ve had it for years. Just perfect.
I also love my Chef’n lemon squeezer. It works for lemons, limes and with a little finagling, oranges. Great for cocktail time.
I’ve heard it called a Church Key, although I think older versions of it looked more like this, which perhaps makes the name more understandable:
I can totally see this. If I had a nickel for every pound of PEI clams I’ve dug, I’d be a millionaire. We had a very ugly basket for rinsing (to get the sand out of the clams). This one is beautiful.
Possibly, I’m not sure. I think one of the reasons the band saw blade is so effective is the distance between the teeth. It allows the large crust flakes to stay whole, rather than trying to break them up, which I think is what happens with the serrations which are closer together. I suppose I could try this, which is a tool I also have:
On the subject of useless tools, a bit of a funny story:
Dad had a boss at the African Institute (mid-1960s) who was a gadget freak, and who couldn’t stop talking about all his nifty gear. When he purchased an electric carving knife, that was it! Dinner at his house was pretty much an intensive in-service on how the thing worked, and how marvelous it was.
My mother, who didn’t suffer fools gladly, thought this was very foolish, and a prime exemplar of a solution to something that wasn’t a problem at all. So, for Christmas that year, she found (at the local Spencer Gifts, no less), an “electric carving fork.” It did absolutely nothing, except that it had a thing like a power cord, that could plug into an electric socket. And, subsequently, it did nothing.
The “boss” was not amused. We, however, found the whole thing hilarious, as is evident by the relish with which I remember the story 40+ years later . . .
(Humor me here, I’m testing these brackets [between brackets] to see what they look like when published)
My mandoline slicer makes shorter and neater work of slicing potatoes, apples, turnips, etc. BUT USE THE HAND GUARD or it will remove your finger. I’ll get out the food processor for jobs where I need to slice a lot more, but for normal work the mandoline is great.
If I’m doing a lot of apples, though rotary spiral slicer / peeler is just the trick.
But my number one tool is my 8″ Henckel chef knife. Cost me about $80.00, and I keep it sharp and at the ready. Great for everything from mincing garlic to hacking up large squashes. Terrific on onions without the fumes because I keep it sharp.
Totally agree. The expense of “good” knives it totally worth it, as is the purchase of a “block” to keep them in. Henckels is also my preferred brand, although there are others.
Several years ago, my stepson Sam gifted us with a Furi sharpener for Christmas. It does a great job. For my Dad’s sake, I still use the sharpening blades and sharpening stones, but have to admit that the Furi is faster when I need a quick fix.
OK, not sure that a special strawberry huller is much help. Condiment gun is more for fun, but kids will have ketchup fight if get those. Never felt the need to sharpen a carrot. If you wash your hands, you don’t need a cookie dipper but that picture has me wanting Oreos now.
A kitchen implement I think is fairly useless is the typical egg-beater. Most of them tend to jam or lock up after a short time, and beating the eggs with a fork does just as good a job with about the same amount of physical energy expended.
I got this Wusthof sharpener probably 15-20 years ago. It works well, but I have never used the scissor sharpener part.
Infrared thermometer. They’re cheap and very useful for a variety of tasks. I don’t understand why there are still people who use tests like “when oil just begins to smoke” or “when a drop of water skittles around the pan” to determine the right cooking temperature.
I immediately thought of how an infrared thermometer would apply to Hank’s thread.