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.
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AdHoc "Tutto" Pump Oil / Vinegar SprayerWhy It's Cool: Beautiful European design, sprays a beautiful fine mistOccasionally life hands you lemonade when you thought you only had lemons … right? When we started testing oil pump spray bottles, we looked at several and, after testing,...
Tovolo Flexible Cutting Mats (Set of 4) - T33Why It's Cool: Sturdy enough to stand up to a dishwasher without curling, yet flexible enough to deliver your chopped food to a bowl or panWe all have cutting boards of various sizes and materials … and sometimes we have and stick with one favorite … that large professional wood board is a favorite: looks like a...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
