Professional Kitchen Tools & Gadgets

Chef Brian Roland

What is it about cooking that draws the home cook in? There is a sort of excitement that leads up to a finished meal, or a feeling of great accomplishment when completing a successful feast or event. How do professional chefs make it look so easy? Although most of us have much more experience and education in the kitchen, there are a few tricks of the trade that assist us in preparing these sensory pleasing creations.

One of the most difficult kitchen skills to perfect, in my opinion, would definitely be knife cutting skills. I have had the great pleasure of working for some world renowned chefs that can cut circles around me. My knife skills have improved more and more over the years, but the saying still goes "practice makes perfect." Or, you may be able to find some fun gadgets to take the stress out of your cooking experience.

A Mandoline, or Japanese Mandoline (Benriner) is a kitchen tool used to thinly slice or julienne a food item. It has a very sharp blade, and normally, several interchangeable attachments to change the thickness or type of cut. These tools are very good for consistent size cuts, and are a great way for you to uniformly julienne an item to make a fine dice, or brunoise. Warning: It is important to always use the safety guard to protect your fingers when using a mandoline.

I love fresh pasta, but rolling and cutting it by hand is a lengthy project, so I found an attachment for my home kitchen standing mixer that turns my mixer into a pasta roller and cutter. Many different attachments can be purchased with varying thicknesses to create for example: fettuccini, linguini, cappelini, tagliatelle, etc. This has cut the work load in half for me, and allows me to spend more time on the filling for my raviolis, or the sauce that will accompany the pasta. In addition to pasta attachments, there are also meat grinders, ice cream makers, citrus juicers, can openers, roto slicers/shredders and sausage stuffers.

Baking can be tedious and precise, and as Chef Paw and I have written about in the last few months, reading and writing recipes is so important to the success of a dish. Measurements can be difficult to get just right, especially when dealing with volume vs. weight. I found a gadget out there that combines the two into a very versatile precision spoon/scale. The graduated scales on the sides of the spoon will help you measure out your volumetric measurements, or you can use the LCD display built into the handle to measure the weight. It can weigh as little as 1/10 of a gram all the way up to 300 grams.

If you are a sushi lover, and have unsuccessfully tried making it at home, then this is a perfect tool for you! There is a new Sushi maker set out there, that allows the home cook to create a sushi roll with ease. Just fill in both sides of the tube with the rice and filling, then snap the two together. From there, you just push it out like (remember the Play-Doh extruder set?) onto the Nori seaweed, rice or a soy wrapper. Then wrap it and cut it up into bite size pieces and you’re done.

Cooking is the only industry that can arouse all the senses of the body; sound, sight, taste, touch and smell. The mind accepts food on so many different levels, and the smallest variance in flavor combinations, or consistencies can make a world of difference. The consistency of mashed potatoes, for example, can be thick, dry and clumpy, or smooth light and airy. I prefer the latter, and have found a useful tool to help me achieve the perfect consistency of potato and vegetable purees. A food mill, also known sometimes as a ricer, is usually made of stainless steel with a turn crank and an interchangeable bottom. When the crank is turned, it pushes the food through the tiny holes in the bottom and the result is a food item that is smooth and even in consistency. I often mill some butter and the seasonings together with the food to evenly distribute them during the crank process, this also prevents over working the food so it doesn’t get too starchy.

Another good kitchen tool used to make smooth purees is a bar blender, or those of you who want to spend a little more, a Vita Mix. These high powered blenders not only puree the food smooth, but tend to aerate them as well, leaving the mouthfeel extremely light and airy. The trick to using them properly, is to add enough liquid in the bottom of the canister to allow the blades to continuously move during the puree process. Otherwise the blender may jam up and potentially burn out.

I hope some of these tips and tricks assist you in wowing your family or dinner guests at home. Practice makes perfect, but the professional chefs still don’t do it alone! The most important thing to remember when cooking, is have fun, cook from the heart, and believe in yourself. The rest will fall into taste…or place!

Should you have any questions at all, go to the Contact Page and type 'chef brian questions' into the subject line.