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[QUESTION] What are your favorite spices to use in soups?
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My first is this silicon spatula. It's construction isnt just a silicon tip with wooden handle. Its the red silicon for much more of the handle, which I've felt makes it easier to clean and last longer, since gunk isnt getting wedged between the handle and tip. I like it so much I have two.
The second is probably just a spray bottle with water and dish soap. I clean up messes and the stove and countertops with it, and it's incredibly convenient.
Tongs, obviously.
click, click
spin spin
Next time, take it one step further lol:
I don't think I have a favourite, but I'm definitely with you - when it comes to food prep I'll always choose an item that is one solid piece over one that has joins (and other unnecessary grooves and crevices, or that is porous) where crap accumulates and is hard or even impossible to remove.
What's your favorite kitchen utilities?
Probably electricity.
I dunno, water is pretty great
Water is useless without drainage
Water evaporates
microplane (much, much more than a "zester") - relatively under-known, but a true godsend
edited: added 'uses' image
What do you do with this other than zesting? I tried searching and I see something about grating hard cheese but that's it.
Grinding garlic instead of finely chopping it. You don't even have to peel it first. The peel is tougher and will just come off instead of being grated.
Definitely stainless steel pans! They take a bit to get used to, but they're so much more convenient because you don't have to baby them like teflon pans. Cleaning is also much easier, I just scrape them down with a metal spatula and throw them in the dishwasher.
I have a can opener that cuts through the sides of the can instead of the top, so you can just pull off the entire top of the can without cutting yourself with a sharp edge. Makes me feel more sophisticated.
Wouldn't that leave a sharp edge either way?
It’s not actually cutting anything, it’s un-joining the seam where the lid was added to the can. You pull it off and it sometimes has little glue/sealant strings attached still. It’s all smooth edges.
Makes the can much safer to clean for recycling as well!
My partner got one of these! I was skeptical at first but now I don't feel like I'm trying to pry up a disc of doom when I open a can.
Whetstone for keeping blades sharp. Makes everything so much quicker and safer (dulled blades slip).
Or perhaps a ceramic coated cast iron pot and lid. You can practically cook any meal in the thing, switch it in and out of the oven, put it on the burners, fry in it, deglaze and make a quick sauce with the caramelisation on it. Chefkiss.
Also I think you meant *utensil
We’ve been getting insane mileage out of our rice cooker since we bought it back in May. It gets use almost daily, if not for rice but for oatmeal in the morning.
It’s a 3 “cup” Toshiba rice cooker (as in the cup that came with the rice cooker which seems to be 3/4 of a US customary measurement cup) and has all sorts of fancy cooking modes.
1c steel cut oats
2-3 cinnamon sticks
1/4 tsp each of ground ginger, cardamom, and allspice
1/8ish tsp ground clove (that stuff is so freaking pungent)
Some fresh ground nutmeg
1/2c raisins
1/4c ish of brown sugar
A good knob of butter
Steel cut oats go with around a 4:1 ratio of liquid to oats, so I usually do 2c of milk and fill it to the 0.5 line on the porridge scale written on the cooking liner. Takes a full hour and a half, but is worth the wait.
And it makes cake. The mother fucker makes CAKE! Love it so much I gifted one to my parents for Christmas.
For standard utensils, silicone spatulas are great, but I recently discovered this thing that is basically a silicone spatula in the shape of a butter knife. AMAZING!
Hands down.... the vinegar bottle. cheap, white vinegar.
For getting baked-on-cruft off pans and such. 50/50 mix with water, heated up to steaming (or boiling, if you're a nutter.) Poor in and let sit. Boom. if it's a pan or pot that can go on the stove; even easier.
for appliances.... coffee pot. definitely. i may be an addict.
While I agree that vinegar is excellent for most applications, you have to be careful with it because it's very acidic. So you can't use it on things like cast iron, marble or other easily etched stone, or anything non-stick. But it's damn excellent for everything else!
Squirt bottle for (olive) oil. It is a lot more precise than simply pouring oil out of the bottle the oil comes in.
Electric kettle. No fancy features, just a switch to start water boiling, which shuts off once it's at a rolling boil
Multishelf airfryer. It's great for roasting small batches of vegetables (baby carrots, potatoes, cauliflower etc) without the guilt of firing up the big oven. It's also great in the summer because it doesn't heat up my apartment
1.5qt sauce pan. It's great for heating up small batches of soups, bbq beans etc. This is what I used to heat the water for my tea prior to purchasing the electric kettle
I pretty much use all of these on a daily basis
Probably my mixers. I've got a spiral dough mixer and a KitchenAid mixer. That spiral mixer is a beast!
My toaster oven. It's got an air fryer function on it as well. I use mine several times a day for snacks, sides, and sometimes my main entree.
The runners up...
My silicone kitchen utensils are pretty high up there, though. Spoonula, spoon, straight spatula, and fish spatula all work hard in my kitchen. So easy to clean. New silicone tools keep coming out and improving too. Rated for higher temps. I don't like it when I need to replace something, but at least when I do, it's a welcome upgrade.
My enameled dutch oven does a lot for me. I have made so many soups and entrees. I deglaze it pretty much every meal so cleaning it isn't too much of a pain. I don't like taking care of raw cast iron, but something about the enamel doesn't register as much of a pain to me.
I like my measuring tools with no seams. I got the Sur La Table ones.
My silicone mats for my oven are great. Since getting them, my biscuits don't stick. They're perfect every time.
My Vitamix is another small appliance I use often. It's really good for when I am having texture issues and I need some fruits and veggies. (I love green smoothies!)
Ok I gotta stop, I just want to write about everything in my kitchen... Except for my knives. I need to get better ones but I keep getting decision fatigue so I keep using the ones I have. I want to learn how to sharpen them better too before I ruin a good one.
Lmao I have you tagged as "cream cheese slut" and I have no recollection why
As far as an inexpensive item I use every day, kitchen scale.
It has a lot of functions and can make you a better cook and a healthier person if you choose to use it for such reasons. My main uses for it are weighing coffee and water to brew a really dialed in and consistent coffee brew for me, and one for my girlfriend. No using volumetric scoops that give you different amount of different coffee brands or grind sizes, no eyeballing the amount of water you're using to brew and extract. Find a recipe that works, and you can repeat it every time and get the same great result.
Same for any other recipe. I make a seasoning mix to make killer taco sauce. Add the spice to an empty cup, add x grams ketchup, x grams water, and x grams vinegar...perfect sauce every time. Bread recipe calibrated for my special bread pan. x grams flour, water, salt, and yeast. No guessing, no multiple dirty measuring scoops and cups and spoons, just toss it in one bowl on the scale. Need x amount of honey, but lose half getting it stuck to the spoon or cup? Look at the serving label to get the grams per tsp and just squeeze that amount right into what you're making. You can also do the reverse. Bowl too big to read the scale? Set the bowl aside, tare the scale with the flour container, and scoop out the amount you need.
Want even portions? I make a ball of dough, tare the bowl and toss the dough in. Divide by the number of portions I want. If I want 50g rolls, pull off a ball, adjust so scale reads -50g, tare and repeat. Want to measure out servings to stay healthy? How much is a cup of something lumpy like Brussell sprouts? Look up the serving weight and dish out that much.
If you want something more upscale, I also use my Barratza Encore coffee grinder and Breville Smart Oven every day. Both give very consistent results and have brought real quality of life improvements. The grinder lets me try new single origin fresh coffees every month, and the Smart Oven heats very quickly and cooks more evenly than my standalone oven while using much less electric and not heating the whole house up, plus it rises dough nicely and the air fryer function reheats leftovers wonderfully and toasts bagels more on one side than the other and a bunch of other stuff.
If you're looking for a cheap good one, get those super cheap ones from AliExpress/etc. Imho these are soo much better than anything else you can get in the consumer space, and even some commercial ones because they are super responsive. The only downsides are that they're relatively small so reading the display with a large bowl on top is a bit difficult and they're probably not super accurate, especially with low loading. But that's not really an issue for cooking. They take regular AAA batteries that last for ages and the thing costs like under 5€. I've had mine for like 8 yrs now and aside from a bit of liquid that got into the display it still works completely fine.
Here's the type I'm talking about:
spoiler
Hands down my wooden chopsticks, wooden spoon or wooden spatula. I use at least one of these guys for everything I cook. I also don't want anything plastic in my kitchen - the packaging is bad enough as is.
I will second the good quality spatula as a top tier kitchen utensil. I also have a favorite flat spatula, a favorite whisk, and a set of wood utensils all of which I use on a nearly daily basis. I'm still looking for the perfect knife, but I do have some decent ones at the moment so I can't complain.
When you gotta chop up that ground beef real good:
Do you meant utensil?
My Sunbeam egg cooker. Not sure it qualifies as a utensil?
I just stick two eggs in, plus the amount of water indicated for two eggs, and soon two soft boiled eggs are ready. No fuss, no guesswork.
My knife, it's not only a work of art itself, but so so good to use
Wooden kitchen utensils.
I just got a nice set of knives over the holiday and I can't express how life changing it is using decent knives compared to my old ones. I also like my blade sharpener and olive oil spritzer
I have this silicone lid I got from Aldi. It's just a giant flat circle of silicone with an indented lid in the middle. I bought it for my giant soup pot as I didn't have a lid for it, but it's so much more than a lid. It's amazing as a splash guard, it seals via vacuum to pots so you can lift from two points instead of just the handle, it's good for covering food and keeping it warm... I love it more than I ever thought I would. And it's super easy to clean!
A set of wooden spoons and cooking chopsticks. I guess I'm old fashion, but they get the job done and aren't hard to clean. With proper acids or alcohols, my cooking rarely sticks unless I want it to stick.
We call them spatulas moneysavers in the business.
Multi-cooker. Mine's an instant pot but there are many like it. I made sure to get a stainless steel pan because I knew I'd be abusing it.
Batch cook 8 portions at a time. Portion them up into 4 jars (I use wecks) of 2, 3 in the freezer and 1 to eat that day. We just started bulk mashing potatoes to freeze, re-heat then add dairy for 5 minute carbs. My freezer is full of butter chicken, beef stew and squash soup right now. Chilled ingredients come in, are processed and cooked into meals that day, and then set to freeze.
Rice is good enough. It'll ferment doughs on cold days. Make's yoghurt, I used to make it directly in the jars. Stocks are effortless, again frozen immediately in an ice cube tray. Steam veggies. Confit meat works incredibly.
Close second is the air fryer, i'd replace either in a heartbeat. But if I were to start again i'd get an IP immediately after kitchen basics.
My electric kettle. It's so convenient for tea.
Bamboo pot scraper
An old wooden spoon of my moms. It has a circular handle, which makes it infinitely better than the other wooden spoons for just about everything.
Over the holidays there was a sale on the Gir 10 piece silicon utensils set, and it's great. I'm really happy with it:
https://gir.co/collections/shop-all/products/10piece-best-sellers-set?variant=41811847315652
