Wednesday, November 16, 2011

AT LAST, MY HAND IS COMPLETE!

I recently bought a new knife.

We've had the same wooden block of kitchen knives since we got married.  The knives were good enough, but *coughcough*twenty years*coughcough* was a long run.

So since my sister-in-law recently started selling Pampered Chef products (hi, Laura!), I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone.  A new knife, to gradually rebuild the set to replace the wobbly-handled, perpetually dull, old knives and also, I help out someone in the family.  I ordered a chef's knife, since that's my go-to Implement Of Kitchen Destruction.

Gotta say, I'm loving it.  Got a knife with one of those self-honing sheaths, so it's always nice and sharp, and it's made a huge difference.  It's easy to forget how much difference quality tools can make in getting work done - I get things cut and chopped faster, and it's a great deal safer, too.  Given my impressive record of self-inflicted kitchen injuries, this is an important thing to take into consideration.

Next up, I need a paring knife, and then I'm thinking of upgrading our single-use gadgets - a vegetable peeler, a new garlic press, an extra set of measuring spoons, and then maybe a new food processor.

My current favorite kitchen tools:

(1) Kitchen-Aid mixer.  These things are awesome - indestructible, sturdy and simple.  I need to get some attachments, like the meat grinder and the pasta roller, to round it out.

(2) The Knife.  Nicely balanced, sharp and I don't let anyone else use it.

(3) Wooden spoons.  I use them for everything from stirring soup to tasting to waving in a threatening fashion at people or animals that get in the way while I cook.

(4) The dishwasher.  It's a standard model, but it's a true labor-saving device.  It's so nice to just load it up and run it without having to stand and wash and rinse everything from dinner.

How about you?  What are your favorite things in the kitchen?  Apart from the food/beer/wine - that's a given.

4 comments:

  1. A couple of years ago I talked Sturdy Helpmeet into letting my buy a little 3-piece set of kitchen knives by Global. They're Japanese and have a kind of sleek, futurist, space-ninja design to them. I <3 my space-ninja knives.

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  2. Oooh, sounds nifty! I have a slightly-less-cruddy-than-the-other-old-knives santoku that I like a lot. Need to get a good one of those, too.

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  3. I love my Kitchen-Aid too! And my ~30 yr old Cuisinart. But my knives are my favoritest, most-used tools. A motley collection, many of them handed down from family, and older than I. Most of them are old style carbon steel that rusts if I don't take care - but oh they take an edge and do the job! Also a Chinese-style cleaver that is my default 'chef's knife'. I could go on and on about my knives... *g*

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  4. Between the wife (a professional chef) and I (former professional cook) we have thirty-one knives, including five Chef's knives ranging from ten inches to sixteen, in styles from German to French to Santoku. Funny enough, despite owning some seriously high-end knives, my go-to implement is almost always a Victorinox 14 inch composite handle French knife. Good balance, light, always sharp (because I sharpen it) and just right for jobs of all sizes.

    Besides that I couldn't live without a really good set of pots and pans, lots of cast iron and copper, but some good stainless as well. Really, it's the simple tools that you go to most often.

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