Second Helping Toolbox
Kitchen of Champions
All the great pantry items in the world won’t matter if you lack useful tools to use them to their fullest. We’ll skip obvious kitchen equipment — here are some items you might not have, most cost no more than $20. Cheap and useful. Can’t beat that, can you?
- Cheesecloth | Costing no more than a few dollars, this is probably one of the most indispensable and versatile items in your kitchen. You can bind herb blends with them, line a sieve to strain even more, drain tofu, and dozens of other uses.
- Kitchen String | The chocolate to cheesecloth’s peanut butter. Equally useful, both with cheesecloth and without.
- Chinese Mandoline | Skip the expensive name-brand American-made mandolins. Most Asian markets have a small plastic mandoline for about $20. Occupying little space in your cupboard, these little slicers will do most of your heavy lifting in shredding or slicing many vegetables in very little time. And as an added bonus, using these requires less wear and tear on your knives for vegetables.
- Mortar and Pestle | “Naked Chef” Jamie Oliver popularized these in recent years, and for good reason. You can usually find a suitable set for under $20 in most stores, they’re more efficient than blenders or food processors, which are more difficult to clean. Also, the rustic texture mortars provide to ground foods is a good thing — because it doesn’t grind as uniformly as machines do, the result is a more interesting texture to your crushed, ground or Purchase a larger one for maximum versatility — you can grind spices and crush nuts just as well with a larger variety, as well as make pestos, vinaigrettes, pastes and much more.
- Coffee Grinder | Mortar and Pestles have their uses, but when you absolutely need a powder — ground spices, dried mushrooms or fruit, for example — nothing beats a cheap coffee grinder. Just make sure you label it differently from your usual coffee grinder. You wouldn’t want to mix them up.
- Microplane Grater | Many varieties of microplane graters exist, but in most cases just buying a zester will more than suffice for producing fresh citrus zest, shredding chocolate or hard cheeses.
- Standard Vegetable Peeler | Aside from peeling potatoes, asparagus or apples, sometimes you want long, thin citrus zest. Skip buying a separate microplane and just buy your old-fashioned vegetable peeler for the job.
- Fine-mesh sieve | For soups, broths and catching that last piece of pasta in boiling water, sieves are endlesslessly useful. Both smaller and larger sieves have their advantages, just make sure it says “fine-mesh” so it’ll properly straing your soups. For adding straining muscle, cover the sieve with a few pieces of cheesecloth (see? It’s useful already!)
- Utensils | In general, stick to wood, rubber or silicone if you’re feeling modern. Usually most people don’t purchase over tongs, but they are useful for flip meat or turning greens. When your dish needs more precision — pan frying tofu, for example — a pair of cooking chopsticks (available at Asian markets) provide far more precision than bulky tongs.
- Things worth buying multiples | Whisks, measuring cups (both cups and sccops for measuring flours), and measurements spoons are worth buying multiples of — they’re cheap, and when you’re in the middle of cooking it’s ever so irritating to fish through the sink or dishwasher for a dirty one.
- Ramekins | These are another versatile kitchen tool, both for keeping chopped ingredients organized, using water baths in your oven (we’ll teach you how), or having condiments orderly at the dinner table.
Fine-mesh sieves can be purchased at the restaurant supply inexpensively and in a variety of sizes. Even better, you can get a "double" one that has the fine mesh backed up with a very coarse mesh. It makes it really strong. Also, it pays to have "colander" style sieves around as well as the classic bowl/hand style. Sure, one can often be substituted for the other but sometimes you need the right tool for maximum efficiency in the kitchen.
It's hard to beat the silicone spatula for certain tasks (like omelet making) and the silicone-covered tongs are invaluable when cooking in nonstick cookware.
I haven't used this Chinese mandoline, but I can tell you the Oxo one that Cook's liked best is quite good. The ceramic one from Kyocera is extremely good for thin cutting, too.
I still have to say, though, that the kitchen items that have made the largest difference for me are upgraded cookware (clad stainless for most pieces, thick anodized/nonstick for certain pieces), and a good set of kitchen knives. Starting with the moment I first cut with Global knives I haven't looked back. IKEA magnetic knife racks keep my blades intact, and wood cutting boards make a huge difference once you begin to value your edges. I'm totally lusting after the end-grain bamboo board that Cook's Illustrated rated highest.