I like to make things. In particular, I like to cook (in very particular, I like to bake). There are other things I do when the spirit takes me: bead, sew, very occasionally, knit. And write. And for all of these things making is rendered easier, not to say better, with the right tools.
I began to think about this after seeing a clip on the internet where someone was asking “what is your favorite kitchen utensil.” And at least one of the people who was asked the question drew a total blank. “Who has a favorite kitchen utensil? Like, a spoon or something?” I can only assume that this person doesn’t cook, and regards the kitchen as a sinister place where wine glasses and bottled water are kept.
My initial problem with the question was kind of the opposite. Choose my favorite utensil? Outrageous: they’re all my favorites (and I don’t want to hurt my round Dutch oven’s feelings by preferring the oval Dutch oven, clearly). But as I was working in the kitchen this weekend I realized that, for certain purposes, I do have favorites, and they’re not unreasonable.
This weekend I made a cake for Chaz Brenchley’s birthday. Chaz, if you don’t already know, is a wonderful British writer of mysteries and fantasy (also writing as Ben Macallan and Daniel Fox), who married the lovely Karen Williams (now Brenchley) here in California and moved to the States. Usually when I visit Chaz and Karen I bring some baked goods, because it’s an excuse to bake without having the products in my own house. But a birthday requires something special and cake-like. And Chaz (unlike the man I married) does not turn up his nose at chocolate. So a chocolate cake it was, with dark chocolate frosting.
It was as I was making the cake that I realized I do have some very favorite kitchen tools: my instant-read thermometer, my kitchen scale, my decorating turntable, and my cake lifter. The utility of the instant-read thermometer is pretty obvious: no matter if you’re making fudge or rib roast, being able to know what the temperature of the object is can be crucial. When I bake bread I can be misled as to the doneness by the golden color of the loaf, but my instant-read thermometer will tell me the truth about the interior. If I’m making filling for a cake, the instant read thermometer will keep me from turning the it into something stodgy and unlovely. I use my instant read thermometer daily.
Same goes with my kitchen scale. Particularly for baking. When I was a young, enthusiastic baker, I thought the point was to jam as much ingredients into a measuring cup as possible. More is better, right? Except that the variation between jamming all the flour you can into a measure, and sprinkling flour into the measure and wiping off the extra with the edge of a knife (the preferred method for bakers in the know) can make an actual difference in the finished quality of the baked good. This matters particularly when you’re following a recipe: to ensure success, you want the amount of flour or baking powder you’re using to match what the recipe developer is using*. It’s not that long ago (the late 1800s, I believe) when there was no standardization in measurements: “take a good knob of butter and add to it a spoonful of sugar” where no specification of what either measurement means? Waaaaaay too loosey-goosey. Precision is a lovely thing.
As I was making Chaz’s cake I thought about how comforting that precision is: I may screw things up, but it won’t be by putting in the wrong amount of stuff (it might be by omitting a step, but that’s another essay).
Once the cake was baked and ready to be frosted, I got to use two other of my very favorite kitchen tools: my decorating turntable and my cake lifter. Look: did I decorate cakes for years before I even knew these objects existed? You bet. But these are tools that make life easier, and isn’t that a good thing? This weekend I did not, aft first, deploy the turntable: after all, I wasn’t going for a highly finished cake. And the turntable lives in the basement along with a lot of my other cake-making paraphernalia (yes, I have that much. My husband still has his model trains in the basement. Don’t judge me). For a moment I didn’t feel like going downstairs to get the turntable. But as I started applying frosting to the cake I remembered how frustrating it is to have to turn the cake while it’s sitting on the counter, and how messy. I yielded to common sense and brought up the turntable, as well as my cake carrier (yet another indispensable tool for the cake maker). The base of the cake carrier is roughly the same size as the turntable, but if I tried to use it as a cake platter… 1) it would slip right off the turntable, with predictably distressing results, and 2) it would look awful. So I put the cake on the turntable and frosted it. Once all the frosting was in place I could rotate the turntable while scraping the sides, so they look nice and straight and smooth. The right tool for the project, right?
Finally, when I was happy with the cake, I used the cake lifter to lift it off the turntable without damaging the bottom edge of the cake, and deposited it on a platter which could then go in the cake carrier. For years I did the same thing using several standard spatulas, and it just… never worked properly. Fully frosted cakes are heavy, and tend to want to slide off smaller spatulas and… please don’t make me explain further. Things sometimes got ugly
So those are (some) of my favorite kitchen utensils. When I get a new one I frequently have a honeymoon period where every time I use it I am just tickled that I have such a thing. I really am a simple soul. Eventually it just becomes another object in my armamentarium of kitchen tools. But I still appreciate it.
For other things–Oh, I could sing you a paean of praise for my thread burner (for beading) or my Oxford Compact English Dictionary (for writing–also an excellent weight when cheddaring cheese). It is an excellent thing to have a tool that helps you do what you want to do.
So what’s your favorite tool? Or tools?
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*Even now, when recipes on the internet can come from all over the world, the astute baker keeps track of whether a recipe is written in Imperial measurements, grams, etc. It’s all well and good to measure vanilla “with your heart;” baking soda, not so much.
I am in no way as precise a cook (much less baker) as you. A lot of what I do is based on the “that looks (or feels) about right” system. I am pretty sure that my great-grandmother — who cooked three hearty meals a day on a wood-burning stove for her hotel guests and others who did hard physical labor in the early 20th century — likely cooked that way, though I certainly couldn’t have done the kind of cooking she did and continue to be in awe of her. (Everyone was in awe of my great-grandmother, especially my father, and not just for her cooking.)
But I do have favorites: favorite pans, favorite, knives, favorite spoons — there is only one wooden spoon the right size and length and I am despairing of finding another like it — favorite mixing bowls (different ones depending on what I’m doing), and so on.
One rather old-fashioned tool that I truly love is my pastry cutter. You use it to cut cold butter into flour, part of making biscuits. When I first learned to do this sort of thing, the cookbook said you could use two butter knives to get the same effect, but that’s not true at all. It takes forever trying to do it with the knives, but just maybe a minute with the pastry cutter. Basically, once the butter stops sticking to the pastry cutter, it’s in small enough bits. It’s a very specific tool, though it will also work for mashing potatoes in a pinch, but as I make a lot of biscuits, it’s worth having for its main purpose.
For cooking (as opposed to baking) I tend to be more “yeah, this looks like about the right amount” in my measurements. It’s in baking, where you’re depending on chemistry (this much baking soda and this much sour cream will yield THAT much leavening, etc.) where precision really matters. And with flavors and things I tend to eyeball or guestimate, on the theory that it’s hard to have too much vanilla. Or ginger.
I love my pastry cutter too! You’re totally right about the “two knives” trick: it will reduce the size of your butter-chunks, but not quickly or neatly. I never thought of trying it for mashing potatoes, but then, I have my mother’s potato ricer… and a partner who is usually in charge of potato mashing.