Our Favorite Kitchen Tools

We've been wanting to mix things up on the blog for awhile and thought it would be fun to talk about some of our favorite kitchen tools. A few weeks ago we realized that none of us had anything ready to go for this week's post (Internet high fives all around) so it is the perfect time to give this a go.

So without further ado, here are a few of our "can't live without" kitchen tools. 


Claire
When I was 17 years old I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I don't remember much of the experience besides drinking Slurpees, eating mashed potatoes, and watching Alton Brown's show "Good Eats." My parents had just gotten DVR and my oldest sister Micah and I watched an awful lot of this show. I'm still a bit embarrassed for my 17 year old self, so I won't confess how much Alton Brown I actually watched. Anyway, the only thing I really gained from binge watching that show was how much more accurate weighing ingredients is measuring when baking. 

 

Fast forward a few years to me as a young newlywed. One thing I discovered about my new husband at the time was he was a champion-never-complain-dish-doer, but he would do everything in his power to limit the number of dishes he had to do. This included never measuring anything, because why wash an extra measuring cup? Enter the food scale. I had always had one laying around, but never really used it that much. Then something clicked and it's now one of my most used and loved kitchen gadgets. 

Simply stick your bowl on the scale, zero it out, and weigh your food! One trick I learned was to stick a printable of weights on your fridge or in your cook books. There are a few cute ones online, like here and here. 

There are quite a few on the market. I have an Escali scale that I picked up a few years ago on sale and have loved it! It's a little on the pricier end, so if you want something more budget friendly, I have heard good things about this one. Costco also usually has them for a pretty decent price!

Other uses for a food scale:

Weighing out meats (because who actually compares a portion size to their fist?). I have jumped on the salad jar band wagon and always make 3-4 at the beginning of the week to have on hand. The food scale makes life incredibly simple when trying to figure out a 3 ounce portion of meat. 

Portion sizes listed on the packaging. It's always listed in ounces! Who does that? This is really nice if you are counting calories (and in my case trying to lose extra baby weight) or if you are cooking for bigger groups of people and aren't quite sure how much to make. 

Baking Again, I have found that measuring really is more accurate than measuring.  Thank You, Alton Brown.

Happy weighing.

Collette

My kitchen essential, and, incidentally  one of the very few things that made the long haul as we moved from Boston, is a fine mesh sieve. I love them. They are so useful and very underrated.

 

Straining homemade ricotta? Done. Overlooked your sauce and it started to curdle? Run it through a sieve. Rinse beans, strain homemade almond milk, wash berries, remove seeds from raspberry puree, make homemade cheese, or strain anything fine in texture with excess water (think home-canned pumpkin purée).

I was not kidding when I said I love fine mesh sieve. 

Happy sieving.

Micah

I've been having a love affair with my Microplane grater for the past couple of years and I use it several times a week. I generally try to avoid kitchen unitaskers (looking at you, strawberry hullers!) so initially I was a little hesitant about this purchase, but boy am I glad I went for it! 

 

I use it to zest citrus fruit and grate hard cheese, whole nutmeg, and even chocolate. In my (very) humble opinion it is particularly excellent for grating garlic, which is perfect for this lazy cook who doesn't want to spend forever finely mincing garlic. Grated garlic is also great (ahem) if you are going for more of a garlic paste rather than little garlic pieces (like when making your own salad dressing). I find the shape and size of the Microplane greater to be really easy to use and store, unlike the bulky box graters. Plus, the blade is still really sharp, even after several years of use. It must be saying something that I still fawn over this kitchen tool because it would be a lie if I said I've never grated a fingernail or knicked my knuckle on the blade. That's love, I tell ya. 

Happy grating.

Natalie 

I am a major minimalist when it comes to “kitchen gadgets” - I want the essentials and that is it. I don’t want to find storage for anything that I don’t have multiple uses for or that I don’t use more than a few times a week.

   

We received this food chopper as a wedding present and I immediately quarantined it in the return pile. I had a knife and a food processor; I didn’t need any more tiny food choppers cluttering my kitchen! My husband rescued it from the reject pile and I am so glad he did! This little champ is so perfect for everyday cooking.  The food processor is great for large quantities but I don’t need large quantities of chopped things in my basic day-to-day cooking. I pull this little guy out every time I need to chop an onion, garlic, peppers, or when I need to give something a quick rough chop. I honestly use this for 75% of the meals I cook and it is a huge time saver! I can whip up a batch of pico de gallo in less than 5 minutes with this chopping all the onions, cilantro, and jalapenos. Don’t confuse this with the terrible hand onion choppers. This is fast, efficient, and so so easy. Happy chopping.