Kitchen tools I wish I had sooner
I cook a lot and have been cooking for most of my life. Sometimes you just wish you had found out about things earlier, and here's a list of kitchen tools that I was surprised to find are quite useful:
- a bench scraper - just a dull rectangle of metal? move prepped ingredients around, divide dough, and literally scrape stuck bits off your countertop. also a splash guard sometimes.
- a spider - "I can pick up things I'm deep frying with tongs", said the arrogant fool.
- diamond crystal salt - yeah it is actually better. the thing I didn't quite understand until getting it was that the individual grains are much smaller, so the amount of applied salt can be quite low and better controlled.
- a milled smooth cast iron pan - I happened to pick up Greater Goods milled smooth cast iron pan on sale and immediately understood. it feels like a real pan, not something buried in a dusty cabin cupboard.
- a restaurant turner - another dull rectangle of metal?? I already have a fish turner! sure sometimes you need to smash things down, but the real advantage is the stiffness. you can prep a stainless steel pan to fry an egg as best you can, a restaurant turner will get that egg off the pan.
- a coffee scale - if you're really wanting to get locked in on making coffee, a scale to measure beans and liquid output is really necessary. also useful for measuring other very small amounts, like yeast for bread.
- a thermapen thermometer - like the scale, something that is four times the price of a comparable big box store item, but you do get what you pay for. it's a damn good and fast thermometer!
- a set of 10x10 bar towels - the most recent item on this list and has truly changed my life in the kitchen. grab hot pans (with much better speed grip than silicone mitts), a quick rag to wipe things down with, a trivet to place hot pans on the counter with, a mostly non-slip pad to work on, a surface to soften the sound of a mortar and pestle, and probably more! a set of 6 was like $10 bucks, there's no silicone to break down and once they get dirty chuck them in the wash and grab another pair.