- Category
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- Prep 107
- Cooking 71
- Serving 50
- Entertaining 16
- Storage 25
- Miscellaneous 16
The Essential Kitchen
We thought it might be helpful to group our Cool Tools in categories that reflect their role in the meal creation process. So here is our attempt to be helpful:
- Prep: These are the tools that are your workhorses, and the ones that most take the place of a sous-chef. These Cool Tools help you prepare your ingredients to be cooked. In finding Cool Tools for food prep, functionality, time saving and ease of use are the most important things we look for. Each and every one of these does its job particularly well and takes your food prep from drudgery to fun (well, almost!) When we finally carry knives, they will fit in this section.
- Cooking: These are the Cool Tools that you actually use during the cooking process; that means they have to be easy to use, handy to pick up, and work well without thinking about it, because your focus should be on the food--these Cool Tools take a supporting role.
- Serving: These are the Cool Tools that take your meal from the kitchen to the table, and make it easy and beautiful to serve your food.
- Entertaining: These are all the Cool Tools that are part of your entertaining repertoire and make the event easy for you and memorable for your guests.
- Storage: When the meal is over, what do you do with all those leftover bits? These Cool Tools will help.
- Miscellaneous: These are some more Cool Tools that we love, but they didn't fit neatly into one of the other categories.
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Tovolo Pancake Pen V2.0 - T39Why It's Cool: Delivers batter exactly where you want it--whether in a mold or on your griddle.When I first read about the Pancake Pen in Cooks Illustrated, I thought...really? We don’t have kids and so we don’t spend much time making pancake shapes. But Cooks...
Fox Run French Fry PanWhy It's Cool: Non-stick surface and air holes make this your go to pan for crispy bakingWe all love French Fries … even in the bad ole days of “Freedom Fries”, nobody in the world didn’t want some Frites with some meal … right? Fish & Chips, Steak...
Progressive Zip Slicer - P14Why It's Cool: Zips through a lot of small round things (grapes, cherry tomatoes, etc) in one quick movement... saves time with great results!So we recently learned something we didn’t know: small round things are not good to let toddlers put in their mouths. Duh! But small round things, in this case, include healthy...
Chef'n Hullster Tomato Huller (Corer) - C33Why It's Cool: Cleanly and easily removes the hull (core) from the tomato, so it's ready to use!It almost tomato season, it’s almost tomato season, it’s almost tomato season!! I keep telling myself that, as I wait for the tomatoes to ripen in our garden. We actually had...
Joie Citrus Squeeze and Spray - J30Why It's Cool: Juices, sprays and stores your citrus to make it easy to brighten your dishes with a dash of citrus.We’re big fans of the way that a little bit of citrus juice can brighten the flavors in almost any dish. But sometimes getting a little bit evenly distributed throughout the...
Nuance Hot Guard - N33Why It's Cool: Sleek stainless steel design with a dual function: heat your food and protect your table.We all need trivets for handling or serving any hot dish: to protect your countertops or your dining table. If you have ever forgotten to use one, then you’ve never forgotten...
Trudeau Graviti +Plus Salt or Pepper MillWhy It's Cool: Easy to use with great throughputIf you’re a fan of this site, you know that I love anything that makes cooking easier and better. And when it comes to salt and pepper mills, I look for a few things. First, is...
Lékué Rice&Grain Cooker - L14Why It's Cool: Cooks rice and grain quickly, easily and with less mess and easier clean-upAs many varieties of rice, as well as a wide variety of grains, have come back into fashion from both culinary and health perspectives, the question now is what’s the easiest...
Progressive Microwave Grill - P15Why It's Cool: Makes crisp bacon in less time with much less fat and messWe all love bacon, right? So I’m a Southerner by birth - a true Son of the South - and I grew up with that container of bacon fat next to the stove. Bacon was a staple in our...