9 Tools Every Chef Has In Their Kitchen
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We pinpointed 9 tools every chef has in their home kitchens - and we're getting on board!
In a restaurant kitchen, you learn a lot about efficiency - and how to make the space work best for you. We asked our kitchen crew what tools and items they couldn't live without in their kitchens after spending years working in restaurants, and we're loving the reasons behind them. Here are 7 tools we're learning every chef has in their kitchen, and why we think everyone should be doing it too!
Pasta SpiderThis multitasking tool is going to change your cooking game. It's the easiest way to grab pasta from a pot of boiling water while reserving all that magical pasta water - also a great way to rescue simmering potatoes or veggies. When it comes to frying anything at home, from zeppole to dough balls for struffoli, there's no easier way to get anything out of hot oil from a safe distance.
Knife WhetstoneDid you know that a sharp knife is actually less dangerous than a dull one? Sounds counter-intuitive, but when a knife is sharpened well, it's much easier to slice through certain foods (just imagine trying to cut open a butternut squash with a really sharp knife versus a dull one - that's how injuries happen!) A honing stick is a great start for keeping your knife sharp, but a whetstone is the best way to maintain sharpness - and a very worthy investment if you paid a lot for good knives! Just make sure you thoroughly read the instructions on how to use it properly, or you could potentially mess up the blade on your knife.
Salt Cellar
Every cook has a few things on their restaurant kitchen stations, and one of them is always a deli cup full of salt. It's so much easier to know how much salt to add by getting used to a certain amount you're pinching out of a cellar as opposed to pouring it into your hand from a container - or even pouring straight from the container into the dish (don't do that!!). Have a salt cellar near you at all times - and some for whatever your repeat dried spices are as well.
Voice-Activated Music Player
Walk into any restaurant kitchen at 4pm before dinner service, and you'll likely hear the cooks jamming out to some loud music! It's an ultimate stress-reliever, and makes cooking that much more fun. We love a Google Home or Amazon Echo for hands-off music changing - we don't want to be messing with our phones to change the tunes when our hands are covered in flour!
Y Peeler
Peel potatoes and carrots faster than ever with this intuitively-shaped peeler that you'll find scattered all over restaurant kitchens. Once you're used to it, its much easier to use than the typical swivel peelers - in our opinion, anyway!
Food Scale
Some technical baking recipes are only written by weight - and if you don't have a scale on hand, you'd be out of luck! It's also a great way to find out exact weights for pasta, cheese, or products in other recipes that can be hard to get amounts with by cup. (It's also the best way to get the right weights for making great coffee in the morning!)
Hand Towels Galore
In a restaurant kitchen, hand towels are a serious asset - and you have to keep track of yours! Have lots of these on hand to sling over your shoulder or tuck into an apron when you're going to start a full day of cooking - you'll waste fewer paper towels this way!
Plating Spoon
This particular spoon has a great weight and depth that makes it perfect for basting, spooning sauces, and plating pretty much anything. It's a workhorse of a spoon that you'll find in many chef's knife roll-ups because they can't live without it!
Microplane
We've talked about our love of the microplane before, but this nifty tool goes way beyond creating fluffy and light strands of cheese. Use it to grate nutmeg, chocolate, garlic - it's such a dependable workhorse of a kitchen tool that you need (and it doesn't take up much space, either!)
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