A Drawer Full of Kitchen Gadgets

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

A tisket, a tasket, a drawer full of kitchen gadgets. Yes, you all know the drawer I am talking about. It is the drawer you approach with trepidation every time you must dig to find the vegetable peeler, or the wine opener, or one of the few gadgets you actually make use of.

This drawer is not born overnight, but usually after many years of wishful thinking by various people in the household. First there was your husband who could not stay away from the gadget section in the kitchen store. Before you knew what had happened, you seemed to have a need for a garlic press, an orange scorer, and an egg yolk separator. Or maybe your wife was spending a bit of time watching QVC and, next thing you knew, packages began arriving with cake lifters, pineapple slicers, and corn kernel removers. Now, sadly, these once useful-seeming items gather dust, patiently awaiting their appearance at your next garage sale.

The paradox with most of these kitchen gadgets is that as much as they purport to make your life easier, many of them require just as much time and effort as doing the task the old fashioned way. However, there are a few exceptions to this gadget problem where the tool not only will make your life easier but also save huge amounts of time. At the risk of adding more to the clutter, the following items should be an essential part of every cook’s kitchen, at least those interested in making better use of their cooking time.

Microplane

The microplane began its life as a wood workers' tool for smoothing edges and can still be found in hardware stores. Now, kitchen gadget companies make cook-friendly versions with better grips than the industrial variety. The sharp edges of the microplane effortlessly zest lemons, grate whole nutmeg or hard parmesan cheese. The result is so fine it is almost a powder and the tool is as simple to clean as it is to use.

Mandolin

A mandolin is the tool to make even a novice chef look like an expert with knife skills. It is a contraption whose various blade settings allowing one to julienne carrots, criss-cut potatoes, or make just about any vegetable into paper-thin slices. If you have the money, shell out the $150 for the full service mandolin. If you don’t want to spend quite that much, for about $25 Kyocera makes a porcelain blade adjustable mandolin that slices vegetables in perfectly consistent pieces with a blade that never goes dull.

Silpat Baking Mats

These may not save you time in cooking, but these non-stick baking mats made of kitchen-grade silicon will save hours over the course of your life in cleanup. Get rid of the Pam, forget greasing with shortening, these mats keep even the stickiest of cookies from attaching themselves to your baking sheet and all it takes is a damp sponge to wipe down what is left behind.

Silicone Pastry Brush

Every kitchen needs a pastry brush and once again, kitchen grade silicone improves upon the original. With the silicone brush there is no worry about bristle falling out, melting when in contact with high heat, or transferring colors and flavors from food to food. The brush can be used to do anything from brushing melted butter on biscuit tops, egg wash on pastry crust, or even basting a roast with pan juices.

In addition to some of these new-fangled contraptions, kitchen essentials you already own can be more useful than you probably have imagined.

Take the bread knife, its serrated edges not only seamlessly carve through the toughest crust, but also make quick work out of the tough skin of a ripe tomato without damaging the fruit in the process. The quick whack with the flat side of a chef’s knife will take the skin off a garlic clove or a pit out of a kalamata olive faster than it would take to pull one of those complicated kitchen gadgets out of the drawer. A coffee bean grinder not only wakes you up with the perfect grind for your morning cup of joe, but can double as a grinder for everything from whole spices, to rice or nuts.

They claim to make your life easier but most of those kitchen gadgets cause more clutter than convenience. Do yourself and your kitchen a favor and let those gadgets see the light of day with a little Spring cleaning and a yard sale. With the money you make in contributing those gadgets to someone else’s collection, buy yourself some tools you will really use, then get back in the kitchen to enjoy the grated, peeled, thinly sliced, or finely chopped fruits of your labor.

Serves/Makes: 4

• 1 pound pork tenderloin
• salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 loaves French bread
• 4 tablespoons mayonnaise
• 4 tablespoons sriracha hot sauce
• 1 medium carrot
• 1/2 English cucumber
• 1/4 cup pickled jalapenos
• 1 small handful chopped cilantro leaves