- 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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Charles Viancin All Silicone Cutting Boards - CV11Why It's Cool: Flexible to deliver cut food to pan or bowl, doesn't move on counter as you cut, dishwasher safeWhen we reviewed the original Charles Viancin Lilypad Cutting Board, we talked about the many choices of cutting boards, including the fact that we all probably have several, in...
Charles Viancin Silicone Measuring Cups - CV10Why It's Cool: Space-saving, flexible and eye-catching measuring cups that are easy to use.Measuring ingredients is just a necessary fact of life in the kitchen and there are a lot of different measuring vessels that you can use. What you want in a good measuring vessel...
OXO Poultry Shears - O36Why It's Cool: Micro-serrated blades cut equally well through skin and bones, and the blades come apart for easy cleaning.Poultry shears have two basic functions: be strong enough to cut through joints and bones, and be sharp enough to cut through slippery chicken skin. It is surprising how few...
OXO Silicone Roasting Rack - Set of 2 - O35Why It's Cool: Flexible and convenient solution to elevate your food.A roasting rack is an essential component to good cooking of so many delicious dishes … usually these racks ‘come with’ your roasting pan, but often those that ‘come...
Colbrook Kitchen QuickMix Mixing Jar (Egg, corn starch, ... everything mixer!) - C22Why It's Cool: Great for beating one or two eggs or mixing cornstarch and water--it truly is a quick mix!So how can an inexpensive piece of plastic be a Cool Tool? I have to tell you...I love this thing. It’s called a QuickMix, and that’s exactly what is does. I use it at...
Vineyard Table Serving PiecesWhy It's Cool: Beautiful Hand forged hors d'oeuvres-sized serving pieces at a great price to elevate your entertaining.One of the things that transforms a serving of food into a work of art is the presentation, and that’s often as simple as adding an interesting utensil or plate. It’s pretty...
Sirius Chef Muffin Splitter - S10Why It's Cool: Maintains all the wonderful nooks and crannies in your English muffins, biscuits and sconesEverybody loves a breakfast centered around a freshly-toasted English Muffin (OK: if you don’t, then skip to the next article!). And one of the endearing (and delicious)...
Cuisipro Silicone Wok Turner - C58Why It's Cool: An old world tool reimagined in modern materials with great functionality!We love using a wok turner: the broad-blade with slightly raised sides allows you to handle more ingredients faster, which is important in the high-heat environment in which...
fusionbrands Mushroom (and other vegetables) ClothWhy It's Cool: Bacteria resistant Silicone cleans tender mushrooms and tougher vegetables and citrus like a champ!So we’ve always been cautioned about not putting mushrooms under running water...they soak it up like crazy and then don’t really brown nicely because they’re water logged....
fusionbrands ButterEasyWhy It's Cool: Easiest, cleanest way to spread butter on almost anything.There are so many dishes that call for melting butter in a pan, or rubbing butter in a baking dish or simply buttering some warm bread, waffles, pancakes, corn or... And our...