My first is this silicon spatula. It’s construction isnt just a silicon tip with wooden handle. Its the red silicon for much more of the handle, which I’ve felt makes it easier to clean and last longer, since gunk isnt getting wedged between the handle and tip. I like it so much I have two.
The second is probably just a spray bottle with water and dish soap. I clean up messes and the stove and countertops with it, and it’s incredibly convenient.
Tongs, obviously.
click, click
spin spin
Next time, take it one step further lol:
I don’t think I have a favourite, but I’m definitely with you - when it comes to food prep I’ll always choose an item that is one solid piece over one that has joins (and other unnecessary grooves and crevices, or that is porous) where crap accumulates and is hard or even impossible to remove.
What’s your favorite kitchen utilities?
Probably electricity.
I dunno, water is pretty great
Water is useless without drainage
Water evaporates
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microplane (much, much more than a “zester”) - relatively under-known, but a true godsend
edited: added ‘uses’ image
What do you do with this other than zesting? I tried searching and I see something about grating hard cheese but that’s it.
Grinding garlic instead of finely chopping it. You don’t even have to peel it first. The peel is tougher and will just come off instead of being grated.
I use mine for grating whole nutmeg.
Hmm there’s an idea. I didn’t even think about hard spices.
How else do you use your nutmeg?
I get it pre-ground. The only spice I really process is black pepper, which I have a dedicated grinder for. It’s one of those shortcuts I decided to take because I don’t use it very often.
Upgrade to a box grater. Slice, grate, shred, zest all in one.
I have a can opener that cuts through the sides of the can instead of the top, so you can just pull off the entire top of the can without cutting yourself with a sharp edge. Makes me feel more sophisticated.
Wouldn’t that leave a sharp edge either way?
It’s not actually cutting anything, it’s un-joining the seam where the lid was added to the can. You pull it off and it sometimes has little glue/sealant strings attached still. It’s all smooth edges.
Woah. I want one!
It doesn’t because you’re essentially holding the lip of the top of the can which is more rounded.
Makes the can much safer to clean for recycling as well!
My partner got one of these! I was skeptical at first but now I don’t feel like I’m trying to pry up a disc of doom when I open a can.
I have one of those. I don’t like it because it makes it harder to drain a can of tuna.
Definitely stainless steel pans! They take a bit to get used to, but they’re so much more convenient because you don’t have to baby them like teflon pans. Cleaning is also much easier, I just scrape them down with a metal spatula and throw them in the dishwasher.
Whetstone for keeping blades sharp. Makes everything so much quicker and safer (dulled blades slip).
Or perhaps a ceramic coated cast iron pot and lid. You can practically cook any meal in the thing, switch it in and out of the oven, put it on the burners, fry in it, deglaze and make a quick sauce with the caramelisation on it. Chefkiss.
Also I think you meant *utensil
Multi-cooker. Mine’s an instant pot but there are many like it. I made sure to get a stainless steel pan because I knew I’d be abusing it.
Batch cook 8 portions at a time. Portion them up into 4 jars (I use wecks) of 2, 3 in the freezer and 1 to eat that day. We just started bulk mashing potatoes to freeze, re-heat then add dairy for 5 minute carbs. My freezer is full of butter chicken, beef stew and squash soup right now. Chilled ingredients come in, are processed and cooked into meals that day, and then set to freeze.
Rice is good enough. It’ll ferment doughs on cold days. Make’s yoghurt, I used to make it directly in the jars. Stocks are effortless, again frozen immediately in an ice cube tray. Steam veggies. Confit meat works incredibly.
Close second is the air fryer, i’d replace either in a heartbeat. But if I were to start again i’d get an IP immediately after kitchen basics.
I love the idea of freezing the potatoes and adding the dairy later! Instant Pot is great for mashed potatoes. It steams them nice and relatively quickly and then I use a ricer to break them down.
Silicone spatula, instant read digital probe thermometer, and a Le Creuset dutch oven/pot.
We have an electric stove and even our good quality pans tend to bow at the bottom a little and reduce even contact with the stove surface. The Creuset lays flat every time, the thicker construction heats more evenly, has high sides to catch spatter from boiling or searing. Instant read thermometers are a game changer for the proper cooking of foods. No overcooking, the correct donness can be checked quickly. It’s a must-have to properly cook food from proteins to bread to custard. The silicone spatula is flexible yet sturdy enough to scrape, fold, or even flip, cleans quickly and easily, and the heat resistance is great.
We’ve been getting insane mileage out of our rice cooker since we bought it back in May. It gets use almost daily, if not for rice but for oatmeal in the morning.
It’s a 3 “cup” Toshiba rice cooker (as in the cup that came with the rice cooker which seems to be 3/4 of a US customary measurement cup) and has all sorts of fancy cooking modes.
1c steel cut oats
2-3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 tsp each of ground ginger, cardamom, and allspice
1/8ish tsp ground clove (that stuff is so freaking pungent)
Some fresh ground nutmeg
1/2c raisins
1/4c ish of brown sugar
A good knob of butter
Steel cut oats go with around a 4:1 ratio of liquid to oats, so I usually do 2c of milk and fill it to the 0.5 line on the porridge scale written on the cooking liner. Takes a full hour and a half, but is worth the wait.
And it makes cake. The mother fucker makes CAKE! Love it so much I gifted one to my parents for Christmas.
For standard utensils, silicone spatulas are great, but I recently discovered this thing that is basically a silicone spatula in the shape of a butter knife. AMAZING!
Thanks for the oatmeal recipe.
No problem. Made some this morning not long after this post. It was amazing… again.
I just made this, and ended up with an explosion of milk all over the counter. How do you keep it from doing that?
Oh shit. I’m sorry about that.
Does your rice maker look like this guy?
Or does it look more like this guy?
That second one is the one I have and that recipe works as described in that rice cooker. If you’re using one that’s more like the first one, it may heat too quickly and boil over if I had to guess.
If that’s the case, I’d probably just halve all the ingredients… a whole cup of steel cut oats is 4 servings based on the Nutrition Facts on the carton, so depending on how many people you’re feeding so your mileage may vary. If you find you’ve got room in the rice cooker with half the ingredients above, then adjust accordingly.
Keep in mind, raisins soak up quite a lot of moisture when they cook… more or less on the raisins will change the texture of the final porridge, so if you go less with the raisins, you might consider cooking it longer to evaporate some more of the moisture off and get a thicker porridge.
Again… sorry I wasn’t more explicit with my description in my first comment. Good luck on the next attempt.
Ah, that explains it. I have the first one. The oatmeal is still good. I mixed in some kefir, chopped pear, coconut, and candied pecans.
That sounds fucking awesome. I’ve also done it with some home made apple pie filling I had leftover from Thanksgiving and also some dried apricots.
Hands down… the vinegar bottle. cheap, white vinegar.
For getting baked-on-cruft off pans and such. 50/50 mix with water, heated up to steaming (or boiling, if you’re a nutter.) Poor in and let sit. Boom. if it’s a pan or pot that can go on the stove; even easier.
for appliances… coffee pot. definitely. i may be an addict.
While I agree that vinegar is excellent for most applications, you have to be careful with it because it’s very acidic. So you can’t use it on things like cast iron, marble or other easily etched stone, or anything non-stick. But it’s damn excellent for everything else!
Can’t use vinegar on cast iron?
sure you can. I do it regularly. if your pan is well seasoned to begin with, all it does is removes a slight amount of the seasoning. Which is restored the next time you cook by simply adding oil to the pan (like you should be doing anyhow.) If you let it sit or use it too strong, the worst case is generally that you’ve stirpped off the seasoning. with the food-grade white vinegar, it’s going to take quite a lot to actually etch the pan (never mind cause pitting.) (like, Full strength full-roil boil. Salt added.)
And assuming your talking about PTFE (“Teflon”) coatings… Yeah. Noo. PTFE is nonreactive with vinegar, you can use it on things that are nonstick. Pretty sure ceramics are safe too. (they work by releasing silicone oils into the food. eyah. that’s going to end well.)
America’s Test Kitchen has a bunch of reviews for different categories. I saw someone post a comment about trying all the top recommendations in every category during the pandemic.
Swiss Classic Tomato and Table Knife That I use as a “sandwich knife” every day for slicing buns or baguettes, butter, anything you’d put on toast or a sandwich gets cut with this knife. I use it over any specialized bread or tomato knife.
My toaster oven. It’s got an air fryer function on it as well. I use mine several times a day for snacks, sides, and sometimes my main entree.
The runners up…
My silicone kitchen utensils are pretty high up there, though. Spoonula, spoon, straight spatula, and fish spatula all work hard in my kitchen. So easy to clean. New silicone tools keep coming out and improving too. Rated for higher temps. I don’t like it when I need to replace something, but at least when I do, it’s a welcome upgrade.
My enameled dutch oven does a lot for me. I have made so many soups and entrees. I deglaze it pretty much every meal so cleaning it isn’t too much of a pain. I don’t like taking care of raw cast iron, but something about the enamel doesn’t register as much of a pain to me.
I like my measuring tools with no seams. I got the Sur La Table ones.
My silicone mats for my oven are great. Since getting them, my biscuits don’t stick. They’re perfect every time.
My Vitamix is another small appliance I use often. It’s really good for when I am having texture issues and I need some fruits and veggies. (I love green smoothies!)
Ok I gotta stop, I just want to write about everything in my kitchen… Except for my knives. I need to get better ones but I keep getting decision fatigue so I keep using the ones I have. I want to learn how to sharpen them better too before I ruin a good one.
Lmao I have you tagged as “cream cheese slut” and I have no recollection why
A modern-day scarlet letter.
But also not wrong.
tagged? Is that a Lemmy thing?
Sync for lemme mobile
Basically I can put name tags on user’s that stay with them. Mainly used for people I want to avoid. Some are weird like the one I mentioned
Man, you and I are kitchen twins. Love my toaster oven (roasting broccoli is probably my main use for it), silicon spoonulae & spatulae. I use the enamel dutch oven for stews (and winter is when I love making stews), soups, and no-knead bread. Use silicone mats for a lot of stuff (though increasingly using parchment paper) and have a heavy duty blender (not a Vitamix but a Cleanblend).
Roasted broccoli is the best!
Squirt bottle for (olive) oil. It is a lot more precise than simply pouring oil out of the bottle the oil comes in.
Electric kettle. No fancy features, just a switch to start water boiling, which shuts off once it’s at a rolling boil
Multishelf airfryer. It’s great for roasting small batches of vegetables (baby carrots, potatoes, cauliflower etc) without the guilt of firing up the big oven. It’s also great in the summer because it doesn’t heat up my apartment
1.5qt sauce pan. It’s great for heating up small batches of soups, bbq beans etc. This is what I used to heat the water for my tea prior to purchasing the electric kettle
I pretty much use all of these on a daily basis
