This is kind of a companion post to Crushing, Breaking, Tearing, & Pounding as Moves. Here I’m arguing for the joys of using those kitchen implements that kind of have a single job or two and expanding what. you can do with them. Most of us grate cheese, and maybe carrots, with that box grater that takes up so much space. We use kitchen shears to open packages and maybe cut twine. We use the vegetable peeler to peel carrots and maybe the odd parsnip. Here are my favorite odd uses for kitchen implements:
- Use kitchen shears to cut literally everything you can think of. Use them for herbs. Use them for pizza slices. Use them to break down raw chicken. Just throw them in the dishwasher between uses.
- There’s no reason to have pickles and pickle relish in your fridge. Buy whole pickles and grate the pickles into relish.
- Use a spoon to peel things like turmeric or ginger root. In fact, get the kids involved. They can’t cut themselves with a spoon. What else can they peel with a spoon? Potatoes? Carrots?
- Use ice cube trays to make small quantities of often used small ingredients that you want to store. Good candidates are things like chopped ginger, hot pepper sauces, pizza sauce, small portions of stock or Compound Butter.
- Use a handheld mixer (like the one you use for Handmixer Mayo) to stir the oil back into natural peanut butter.
- Use a pastry cutter to chop eggs for egg salad, make tuna salad, or smash cherry tomatoes.
- Use a freezer bag with a hole cut in one corner to pipe frosting, whipped cream, cream, or whipped butter to any number of dishes.
Why It Works
- When you use kitchen sheers, you aren’t also making a cutting board dirty. You can cut directly into the pot you are cooking in or onto the plate you are serving on.
- How often do you really want pickle relish? Most of us want pickles often but in slightly different forms. Buy whole pickles and turn them in to spears, chips, and grated relish when you want it.
- Because of ginger and turmerics tubery twists and turns, the regular vegetable peeler doesn’t get in the nooks and crannies like a spoon can.
- I like to keep small bits of things that only one or two people in the family will eat, like, say spicy chili sauces. I also like to keep bits of things that everyone eats but in small quantities at a time, like pizza sauce. Finally, I like to stash away little bits of things like stocks or compound butter to treat myself to a fancy sauce when the kids want something plain.
- I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve been up at 11 p.m. stirring the peanut butter jar with a knife for far to long to make the next day’s lunches. I wish I would have found this trick a decade sooner.
- You can use the pastry cutter in the same bowl in which you are making–and if you are really gauche, serving–the egg salad or tuna salad.
- My favorite move is to get a Taco-Bell style caulking gun amount of sour cream distributed over a whole crispy taco evenly.
Mods:
I mean, I guess the mods would be grate carrots with the grater, use the ice cube trays for ice, use the pastry cutter for pastry, etc.