- I suppose that this is very similar to a
what do they call it,
like when you spackle?
Spackle knife?
Is that a thing?
[lively music]
- Should I talk about my favorite tool?
[lively music]
- I tell you guys all the time,
I really hate favorites
but you know, and then you guys tell me
well what are you really into right now?
And that kinda works because I go through
a lot of different, I
just go through phases
I get into [bleep] for a little bit.
So I've been really digging
the micoplane, you know?
Garlic, ginger, fresh tumeric.
Che-cha-che-cha-che.
Nice, put it in a little
sauce or something
or you know, it just
disappears in the thing.
Dips, yogurts, its nice.
So mircoplanes are nice
because it's a real fine cut,
you make like a moosha!
You know, real mushy almost.
All right, so we're gonna
do a little garlic, okay?
'Cause it's nice.
I mean, pretty self-explanatory,
I keep it sharp.
I use, I have two.
The red handle one is for garlic, okay?
And the black handle one,
and I get more and more,
I gotta jump through 'em, I use for ginger
and like tougher,
horseradish, more rooty things
'cause they beat 'em up, you know?
But I like my ginger one.
Like a razor, just che-che-che, you know?
I'm a three finger
pinch kind of guy, okay?
And then I usually start like
on a little bit of a bias
like that and
che-che-che-che-che-che, okay?
And then I bang it out, look at that!
Yeah, they're great,
microplanes, everybody loves 'em!
[lively music]
- Hi, so I am at home, in
case that wasn't obvious
and sorry, every time I raise my arms now
I think of that like stupid meme with like
me being the Night king, not
sure if it's a compliment
or not I'm just gonna kinda roll with it,
but yeah every time I do this
I'm just like oh God,
you know, easy there.
There is no more important
ingredient, tool, mineral,
anything in cooking than salt.
One thing I've noticed in
a lot of people's kitchens,
I'm not trying to call
you out, mom and dad,
but what happens is people
kind of store their salt
you know, in the box or
whatever that it came in,
up in a cabinet, I think
maybe my wife got this for me,
'cause I would always have salt out like
in a little dish, she got me
this bee house little salt
holder it's got a hinging wood lid,
it's got like these lovely grooves,
not sure what those are for
but you can just roll gnocchi
off of them or whatever,
you need your salt
to live out, free-range, in your kitchen
so that you can always be
reaching over and grabbing a pinch
whenever you want or need to.
[lively music]
- Hey everyone, it's Christina!
This is a donabe, it is a clay pot,
this one was made in Japan,
pretty small and because
I'm often making things
for myself or for me and one other person,
this was like the one that spoke to me.
What's cool about this pot is
that it is just so beautiful
that you can bring it right from the stove
to the table and that's often what I do
even if I'm making dinner for myself.
Okay so this is just a
quart of dashi that I made
yesterday it is a
fundamental Japanese stock
made out of combo
seaweed and bonito flakes
and this is like more or less going to be
the base of the soup,
I'm just gonna pour this
into my donabe and then
I'm gonna bring this
up to a simmer on the stove.
Okay, so you can not really see from there
but trust me, my broth is at a simmer
and I'm just gonna drop
the wontons into the pot.
Great and that's really it,
I mean it couldn't be simpler
and you can sort of see,
it's really just wontons
and greens in broth and I'm
just gonna drizzle a little
bit of sesame oil on top
of this and call it a day!
[lively music]
- Hi guys, this is Gaby again,
I'm here in my kitchen, Gaby's kitchen.
When Dan proposed favorite tools,
I had a funny comment,
I was like define tools.
Believe it or not, something
that I love love love
to have in my kitchen and you
can see it actually right here
I have my big bin with all my tools
and then I have a little
one with all my spoons
because yes, we all use the spoons,
not only Chris Morocco.
I have this one that is
pretty special to me.
It's a slotted spoon, that
means it has all these
little holes you know I
don't have like long arms
and I think it's my perfect size.
This spoon was given to
me by one Chris Morocco
it was part of his collection
and he decided one day that
he wanted to part ways with it
and so he gave it to me, as a present!
With a spoon you can do
almost everything else
you can do with like any other utensil,
you can cut things if they're soft,
you can obviously scoop
things out, you can stir,
you can like eat with a spoon,
I mean what's not to like?
I don't know what else I can use it for!
[lively music]
- Hey, I'm Priya I am
not in the test kitchen,
I am currently isolating at
my parent's house in Dallas
as you can see their kitchen is far nicer
than mine in Brooklyn, maybe like,
like is it as nice as the test kitchen?
It's like hard to say, but
it's definitely a very,
a much nicer kitchen
than what I'm used to.
I'm talking about [laughs]
my favorite kitchen tool,
I'm talking about one that
I feel like a lot of people
love to hate 'cause it
only has a single use
it is the garlic press.
So I love my garlic press,
but I wanna note that not all
garlic presses are created equal.
Most garlic presses are really [bleep].
They don't actually extrude the garlic,
they don't extrude the juice,
they don't have like the right pressure,
but this vintage zylus susie garlic press
that my mom has had, mom how
long have you had this for?
- [Woman] Oh for years, I cannot--
- Like decades.
This is like, this is
like some vintage stuff.
In here, now I really wanna
try pressing other things.
My mom can have a separate sub-segment
called will it garlic press?
[upbeat music]
Okay, so I'm gonna somehow find a way.
Mom!
Okay, got it, I got it [laughs].
But look at that, this is
like the worst shop-it ever
'cause you can't even buy this.
[lively music]
- So we're at my apartment kitchen.
Well actually my favorite
tool is tiny spatula
but someone took that, I don't know who.
Someone took that, I can't do that
but this fish press,
so it's a really heavy
stainless steel press,
it's made by the chef
in Australia, Josh Niland.
He's known for all of the cool stuff
he's doing with fish right now.
So he designed this to help you get
like a perfectly evenly
cooked crispy skinned fish
and what's great about
this is this also retains
heat really well 'cause
it's got a nice, thick body.
I really like it for just like
doing crispy smashed potatoes
it's really remarkably
amazing for all vegetables,
like you wanna get a nice
sear on some asparagus
or something, just pop this on top
and you'll get like nice char.
It makes the best grilled
cheeses because it's heavy
enough to like smoosh it down,
but not so heavy that it just
like squishes everything.
I think it weighs, wait I have a scale!
It weighs four pounds, that's
as much as my cat I think!
How much does a cat weigh?
But right now I'm gonna just show
you how to make a grilled cheese!
All right, here this goes in,
and then we just smoosh her down.
[lively music]
That's it!
Flip it, whoa.
Can we get a cheese pull?
No [laughs]!
No cheese pull, sorry!
[lively music]
- Yo, Alex Delaney
here, coming at you from
my parent's kitchen.
I obviously am not in my kitchen,
I could only bring a few
things down to Jersey
from my place in New York and this knife
was the first thing on my list,
it's from a knife shop in New Orleans
called Coutelier, it is
a Japanese chef's knife.
I'm pretty picky when it
comes to a large chef's knife
whether it's like a seven
or an eight inch knife,
I like a long blade, but
I also hate a heavy blade,
a blade that feels like
a brick in your hand.
It's an all around perfect
chef's knife in my opinion.
To show you how much I
actually love this knife,
I'm gonna make a really quick chopped,
sliced veggie salad using just this knife.
Just gonna easily go through 'em.
Root ends.
Charred broccolini, fennel,
parmeasan, mortadella salad
using my trusty Japanese chef's knife.
Bon appetit!
[lively music]
- Okay I was asked to
talk about my favorite
equipment in the kitchen.
I think a few of us
probably chose our knives
right off the bat which
is an essential tool
My 12 or 14 mortal pestles,
I chose my third favorite tool
which is I think,
hopefully a lot of you guys
have invested in, microplane.
You wanna be changing these I would say,
your microplane every four months,
it really depends on how much you use it,
I use it a lot and we do
go through a lot of them
in the test kitchen so I would say,
they're not too expensive
so buy two or three,
make sure you use the entire blade,
I think some people get
stuck using just the center
area of the blade and that's
the first part to go dull.
And then with citrus I think,
whether it's like a meyer lemon over here,
or a grapefruit, lime, or orange,
you get just the fragrant
rather like floral zest,
but you wanna go all around rather
than just stickin' it to one spot.
I kind of do this and I know
Morocco does the same thing
where I roll the citrus.
So you have this nice, it's
like you'll get these spots.
[lively music]
- This will be news to no one,
but my favorite tool in the kitchen
is the offset spatula.
I have one that I like better.
This one, see how it's kind of tapered,
I don't love this one,
it's my least favorite but I don't know
where the other one is,
so I'm gonna use this one.
So an offset spatula,
there's multiple sizes,
I like this size the best,
this is a small size.
The blade itself is only like maybe
four or five inches long.
And it has this bevel right here,
you can see where it kind of comes down
and then angles, I would
guess that there's probably
no video where I don't
use this at some point.
It is the tool I reach
for most frequently,
there's just so many uses for it,
it just really kinda
lets you do detail work,
I like to put, I position
my finger right here,
you get a lot of control that way.
It feels like sometimes
an extension of my hand,
I just can't really do
anything without it basically
So I have a piece of
toast, you could just use
a butter knife for this but
I think it's particularly
useful for spreading things,
it just spreads more efficiently.
I mean this is, that's quite difficult.
So it spreads the butter out very easily
and then I go in, this is
this incredibly delicious,
fantastic, Sicilian,
Mandarin orange marmalade.
It's so good, I love it so much.
Also really good for getting
a super thin layer on things
because of that little curve
and angle in the blade,
it's just the perfect spreading device
and I love it!
[lively music]
- I mean this is like a real tough one,
I feel like there are a
lot of things in my kitchen
that were vying for my favoritism.
But you know, this little
staub, min dutch oven
sort of thing is really kind of like,
when I think about it is the thing
that I use almost every day.
You know, just like a regular
staub it's got kind of
that lid like a nice heavy lid with
those little kind of bumps in it
and then has like you know,
is like a sturdy enameled cast iron,
I don't have a microwave
so I do a lot of reheating
in pans and pots and
this is kind of like for
super stew for two
people, it's really great,
for heating up broth,
honestly what I use it for
almost all the time is, it's
my perfect little rice pot.
I'm just gonna go ahead
and make some rice I guess.
[lively music]
Cover this, we're gonna
bring it up to a boil,
drop it down to the
barest simmer, cover it,
let it cook for 18 minutes and
then take it off the stove,
wrap a towel around the lid and let that
sit for like 10 more minutes.
There you have a fluffy,
beautiful pot of rice.
[lively music]
- Hey guys, it's Carla, I am
here in my home kitchen today
and I'm going to talk to
you about my favorite tool.
I cannot live or cook without
my Escale digital scale.
A lot of us in the test
kitchen have digital scales
that we use, we don't
all use the same one,
I have gotten into a friendly debate
with one of my coworkers
who shall remain nameless,
Molly Baz, she likes a
different model that has like
a tray that pulls out and a
whole extra set of buttons,
this has been my ride or die
for about 16 or 17 years,
I just replaced this so
this is the second one
that I've ever owned,
so that's a pretty good life cycle on
a really simple piece of equipment.
What I love about it is
it's small, it's lightweight
and for baking I just find
that it's so much easier
and more accurate than
measuring stuff out.
But I use it for all kinds
of things including like
grains, beans, pasta, liquid measurements,
you can actually make a
cocktail on top of this
and measure your ounces of liquid.
Down on the bottom here,
it's got the on off,
and that's also where you zero stuff out.
So if you have something
on the scale but then
you want to go back to zero,
you can just hit that
button without having
to empty the bowl and then
over here you can toggle
between grams and ounces
which is really convenient
again for baking for
example if I needed like,
recipe calls for a half a pound of farrow,
I keep that stuff in a jar like this
and instead of having to
get out a measuring cup,
I can just weigh it out on the scale.
And that way, I know I didn't
have to use anything else
and it's in the bowl
that it's gonna be in.
It's super compact, really
simple, it's on off,
it's grams it's ounces, that's it,
you don't need anything
more than that, sorry Molz!
[lively music]
- Hey guys it's Molly,
today I'm gonna show you
one of the most valuable
kitchen tools that I have
with me right now, I'm
not in my home kitchen
so I don't have my all time
favorite kitchen tools,
we'll save that for another episode.
But one thing that I am
relying on all the time
is this pair of Cuisinart kitchen shears.
I have a pretty small cutting board here
which means that I have
to be really picky about
what takes up space on the
cutting board if I don't
wanna be back and forth washing
the cutting board a million
times throughout the course
of my time in the kitchen.
So, I've started using the kitchen sheers
for things like chopping herbs
so that you don't get
little sprigs of dill
all over your cutting
board and your counter.
And you can actually,
literally just chop them right
onto your salad or onto your
roast chicken or whatever
you're garnishing the herbs with.
And it also doesn't bruise
them as much as it would
if you were using a perhaps dull knife.
The other thing that
I've been using them for
is snipping the ends of green beans.
Same thing, just cutting them real quick,
it's actually a lot more efficient
than trying to lineup all
the green beans in your hand
and get like an even row of them to snip
the little buds on the end.
Normally I wouldn't grab
them but I'm finding it super
useful for a lot of reasons today.
[lively music]
- Hi, I'm Rick and I am coming to you from
Mazatlan, Mexico!
This is my Mexican kitchen!
So I wanna talk to you about
my favorite kitchen tool,
this is something I grew up with,
my mom had one, my grandmother had one,
I actually broke my mother's molcajete
when I was probably in college.
This is something that pretty much
every Mexican family
has that likes to cook.
What I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna make a salsa
molcajetada which is
basically just a salsa
made in a malcajete.
If you don't have one,
you can actually just use
a bowl and a potato masher,
or you can use your the
mortar pestle you have.
First thing I'm gonna do is
I'm going to smash my garlic in here.
When you're doing this,
you're actually smashing
all of the oils and
getting all of the flavor
into the malcajete so that
everything that you do
from now on is gonna have
the essence of garlic into it
because you're grinding
it up with lava rock,
you don't have to take off the skin.
So, a lot of times when you roast a chili
or a tomato, you have to pull the skin off
because it kinda has that
sort of plasticy feel to it.
But in the malcajete,
you're just pulverizing it
so there's really no need to do that.
But this sort of really nice chunky,
homey texture is really only achieved
if you use some type of mortar pestle
to smash you salsas, gonna
add some onion, right.
Wow, that is so good, oh my God.
Now I'm gonna go grill some fish
so I can have something
to put my salsa on.
- What, I don't know, what's it called?
Yes, you can probably use it to spackle,
is what I'm saying, or just buy
something separate for that.
