- Category
-
- 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.
-
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...
Evo Oil or Vinegar Sprayer - E30Why It's Cool: Sprays a fine fan-shaped mist of oil or vinegar without propellants or pumpingHow do you get just the right amount of olive oil on...everything? Olive oil is one of those tough things to spray because it can clog ordinary sprayers. And cookware...
Lékué PopCorn Microwave Popcorn Maker - L10Why It's Cool: Makes great popcorn that's both convenient and healthy; distributes toppings throughout! Collapses for easy storage.Remember when making popcorn was as easy as throwing a bag (including who knew what additives) into your microwave, waiting a few minutes and then taking out a bag of popped...
Progressive Collapsible Berry Mini-Colander - P18Why It's Cool: Small but mighty colander has a bottom lid to catch drips and collapses to a little more than a third its height for storage.We all have several colanders and strainers in our kitchen: we’ve bought them at different times, sometimes for different reasons or specific purposes. And Colbrook Kitchen is a...
Helen Chen's Asian Kitchen Universal Kitchen Scissors - H10Why It's Cool: Compact, sharp scissors, with comfortable flexible handles, that cut just about everythingThere is a special category of kitchen tools: the “Go-To” Tools that you always reach for first … without thinking about it, you know what we’re talking about: that tool...
Cooks Innovations SimmerMat (Flame Tamer) - C82Why It's Cool: Light weight and effective for taming heat or making your induction burner even more useful with all your cooking potsToday’s modern ranges are great at cooking on high heat, but they’re a little challenged when it comes to to keeping it low and slow: no matter how low you set the heat, it...
Cookina Baking Mats-Set of 3 Sheets ~ Colbrook Kitchen ExclusiveWhy It's Cool: Non-stick baking pan liners that are dishwasher safe and wash up clean and fresh every time.One of the best things to happen to cooking are the reusable non-stick baking sheets that you can use to line pans. Of course the number one benefit of non-stick anything, is that...