Friday Food and Drink Post: The Right Tool For the Job

When it comes to cooking and my kitchen, I’m not really a fan of single-purpose tools. So I almost never feel impelled to investigate the “strawberry huller ” (just use a pointy knife); or the “condiment gun” (doesn’t most ketchup and mustard come in plastic squirt bottles already?); or the “carrot sharpener” (Wait. What?); or the “cookie dipr” (shown at right); or any other silly “let’s solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist” sort of appliance. (I’ve found it’s possible to avoid consideration, and even knowledge, of most of these items just by ignoring as many of those “As Seen on TV!” advertisements and aisles in the kitchen stores, as I can).

Nevertheless, I do on occasion discover a useful little implement that does one particular job better than anything else possibly could. Such a tool is my ceramic ginger grater. I have no idea why it only has 2.5 stars in the Amazon reviews. It’s a lovely thing. Stipulate that I love fresh ginger and that I have, over the years, grated my fingers down to stumps, and the ginger to a stringy mess that could not be used in the recipe, because all the tough, hairy fibers, not to mention the … umm … blood, overwhelmed the small amount of it that I’d actually managed to grate successfully. Followed by the cleanup issues, involving scrubbing, picking, and more bloody fingers, as I tried to rid the murderously sharp metal grater of the residual ginger bits.

This tool grates the ginger, and not my fingers, to a nice moist pulp. And the “stringy hairys” are left behind in a handful whose juice can be squeezed out into the mixture and then discarded. What’s not to like? Nothing, IMHO.

Do you have a particular kitchen tool that you’d not give up, no matter what? Inquiring minds want to know. (Or, if you’d like to nominate a particular item for consideration as the daftest, or most useless kitchen implement ever, we’d love to hear about that too!)

Have at it, please.