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 Image via angrychicken Alton Brown says that everything in the kitchen should be a multitasker--every gadget that takes up counter space or drawer space should pay for its real estate and then some, in many useful ways. I say forget that; if it's a gadget that you use all the time, and it makes your kitchen time easier, faster, better, more fun, then that sucker should take up just as much room as it needs to take up. It becomes not clutter, but indispensable. Amy, from Angry Chicken, is a woman after my own heart. She provides a roundup of her very favorite little stuff, the gadgets she can't live without, that soothe her soul, improve her life, and would be impossible to live without--everything from the amazing apple corer/peeler I didn't know existed to the salad spinner, which wins an award for item that sounds most useless but turns out to be surprisingly awesome. The list is inspiring--maybe it really is time to get a mandolin, because oh, how I hate cutting onions. And the apple pies that I can make, now that I know I don't have to bloody up my hands and spend three hours coring and peeling three pounds of fruit. What are your favorite non-multitasking kitchen gadgets that have proved surprisingly, wonderfully essential? Inspire us all! 4 CommentsLeave a comment |
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My salad spinner is my latest love. And I don't consider it a uni-tasker, since I've already used the bowl for serving chips at a party, and the basket as a colander (it was in the drainer, and handy).
I confess I don't much use any of the various choppers, mandolines, and food processors cluttering my kitchen--I love knifework, and hate washing dishes, so I cut pretty much everything by hand.
One thing I don't cut with a knife, though, is apples. My Oxo corer/slicer is indispensible for that, and even when I'm doing pies or galettes, I use them for coring and sectioning, and only do the finish slicing by hand.
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My response to Mr. Brown's theory is "I presume you own a toaster?"
I have an Alligator for my onions -- it does nothing but dice, and I use it for nothing but onions, but I love it soooo much. Onion fumes sting my eyes something awful, and it makes all the difference in the world to get the work done in ten seconds.
The apple peeler/corer/slicer gets a lot of use from us in the autumn. A LOT. The citrus juicer (heavy glass, with little ridges to catch the seeds) gets a lot of use all year.
And I finally got a cherry stoner (hee hee, stoner) last summer and it was a revelation. I've spent years cutting pits out of cherries with a paring knife, and after two minutes with a pitter I was feeling so dumb for having done it the old-fashioned way for so long.
I'll give AB points for being right on one thing, though:
If you have a kitchen, you need a fire extinguisher. It saved my arse back in 1984, when I set the kitchen on fire making steak fries. I've never had a kitchen without one.
No way should things be multipurpose. Sometimes what you need is the tool for the job, and nothing else works!
My favorite thing evah is the handcranked, clamp-on-the-counter-edge apple peeler. I can peel four or five apples in a minute! If I want, it also has a blade that cores and thinly spiral-cuts the apple at the same time, which is good for apple sauce, but too thin for pie. I use it for potatoes, too, as long as they're fairly round and uniform-shaped without huge bumps that would get the peeler stuck. I found it by googling "apple peeler", I think--they're not hard to find, just make sure you look for ones with a clamp attachment, not a suction cup.
Other favorite simple, uni-purpose hand tools: Cherry pitter (the one-handed kind that holds a single cherry at a time and pushes the pit out with a little x-shaped plunger); apple corer-slicer (for wedge-shaped slices for pies); strawberry huller (a wide, sharp pair of angled tweezers, basically--way faster than a paring knife!); and the simples gadget of all, the little 1" flexible silicone tube you use to roll a garlic clove back and forth on the cutting board to crack and remove the peel.
I just recently got a food processor, and it's great for a lot of things, but holy hell is it heavy and space-consuming compared to my little specialized hand tools!