I Can Do What with That?
My New Year’s Resolution has been to clean out my cluttered kitchen junk drawers. You know you have one. Well, I have three. So in my attempt to clean house (or just the kitchen), I realized I could not bear to toss some of my beloved kitchen gadgets. And there were a few that made me scratch my head and ask, “What is this thing?”
My most loved gadgets in the kitchen are always the ones that can do more than one job. So here is a list of my hall of fame double (and sometimes triple duty) gadget tools.
One. Egg Slicer: I know many of you are shaking your head. But please hear me out! Not only do I reach for it when I make the best Egg Salad, but I also reach for it when I make the coveted Banana Pudding to slice all six bananas perfectly. It’s much better than slicing all those bananas with a knife! I also use it when I make this delicious Avocado Shrimp Salad to slice my avocados into equal slices. I make sure to push the banana or the avocado through with my hand instead of pushing them down onto the bed of the egg slicer. Just make sure whatever you’re slicing is super soft.
Two. Garlic Press: Some prefer other garlic gadgets, but I prefer the old fashioned garlic press. Where’s the double in this apparatus? I found when I was making this Key Lime Pie, that I could actually use the garlic press to press the juice from those tiny key limes! I was jumping up and down at the joy of this discovery. Seriously, up and down.
Three. Cast Iron Pan, Enamel Cast Iron Dutch Oven, anything Cast Iron: Other than being able to brown and slow cook things, a cast iron pan (or dutch oven) can defrost that frozen chicken that you need to cook in 10 minutes (without any heat!). Try it if you don’t believe me. I line the pan with plastic wrap so it’ll be easy clean up and I toss the frozen meat on it (again, no heat). It will defrost much faster than just leaving it out on the counter. If you like half frozen and half cooked meat, then you can always use the defrost button on your microwave… but we don’t recommend it.
Four. Microplane: Need I say more? This one little tool got rid of my nutmeg grinder and my citrus zester. I love this thing! I not only grate cheese and nutmeg, but I also use it to mince my ginger. One tip about ginger: peel the ginger and keep it in the freezer. It’ll zest even faster on the microplane when it’s frozen.
Five. Immersion Blender: Because of this gadget, I have no need of an ungainly, counterspace-hogging blender. Instead I use this to puree baby food, make protein smoothies for my husband (who is currently obsessed with Power 90X, a totally different post), and make a single serving of pesto. With an immersion blender, you don’t need those informercial bullet-shaped appliances with a hundred parts. And when you are done with it, it’s easy to clean and it fits in a kitchen drawer, neatly tucked away. I promise, they don’t pay me to sell these things…
Six. Salad Spinner: We always need more than one colander, especially when we are throwing a dinner party. One time I reached for the inner part of my salad spinner to use as my second colander, and I keep going back to it. I also use the outside part as a plain salad bowl. Why not? It’s a bowl, it’s big, and it’s not too bad to look at.
These are some kitchen tools with which I can’t part. What are some of yours?
(It took me a week or so to pare down my kitchen gadgets, and I’m happy to report that I’m now down to only two kitchen junk drawers.)
Photos by Melissa Devereaux and Paul Jin
I use an egg slicer to make perfectly sliced button mushrooms or sliced (pitted) olives. Can also be used for strawberries.
I’m like 5 of 6 on that list! Yay! :D
Ooo! Even better than an issue of “Real Simple”. Did not know that about the cast iron pan. I have a “meat defrosting” slab that I inherited from my sister that I just realized is nothing more than a slice of cast iron. Go fig.
No Way. You can really defrost a frozen chicken in 10 minutes that way? Are you defrosting chicken pieces or a whole chicken? Very good to know. Thanks! And maybe this means I need a better looking salad spinner to serve those other purposes….
10 minutes depending on the piece of meat and of course, thickness. i can usually do 10 minutes for chicken cutlets or fish. and i noticed my cast iron pan does slightly better job than my le creuset. :)
better than Real Simple?! OMG, so flattered! thanks janice!
which one 1 of 6 was new to you? glad that we share the same gadgets and know-how!! please share some more if you’d like.
now i’m tempted to get an egg slicer!
my gadget that gets a surprising amount of use is my kitchen scale. i use it the most for baking, of course, but it was also really handy to measure batches of formula (those little plastic scoops are so annoying).
I don’t have a cast iron pan, but I have one of those cast iron flat griddles and I can vouch for the superfast meat defrosting. I think the griddle defrosts faster because it has more surface area.
I love this blog post because I love gadgets.
Regarding why the cast iron works so well in defrosting, it has to do with:
1.Thermal mass: the cast iron thing has much larger-warmer-thermal mass, so it wins when compared to the smaller-frozen-chicken-mass.
2. Good heat conduction: metal transfers heat very efficiently, so the warmth of the cast iron readily goes into the frozen chicken piece. This is also why the Le Cruset doesn’t work as well as cast iron because the Le Cruset has an enamel paint over the metal, which acts as a barrier to transferring the heat.
In plain language, you can warm up your toddler’s cold hand faster than your spouse’s (thermal mass) and coffee feels hotter to your hand in a metal mug than an enameled metal mug (conduction).
I’m an Alton Brown wannabe.
Thanks for the info on the cast iron. Love Alton Brown!!! So, rather than decluttering after reading this post, I might have to go get a nonCreuset piece of cast iron and a pretty salad spinner!
Any large metal thing will work. For example, you get a similar effect by defrosting diectly in your (clean and clear) metal sink or any metal pan. But it has to have good surface contact too, so a metal cooling rack won’t work (also not enough thermal mass).
We have all but one – the egg slicer. Susi garlic press is our choice – it’s practically unbreakable. And we have the immersion blender with a removable motor – it has chopper ans whisk attachments in addition to the blender. But we don’t really use the salad spinner now that we found out the salad mix we get is triple washed in near-freezing water. Add to this a coffee grinder that you can use for spices and a 2-burner (cast iron + non stick) griddle that you can use for everything from eggs to pancakes to bindetuk to mushroom caps to whatever else that takes up a lot of room…