This Cook’s Tools

Bob del Grosso

I’ve got nothing profound to throw down here tonight. (Sorry Bobby.) I’ve just
been thinking today about cooking tools that I use at home that I would rather
not do without and decided to write about them. So I worked up a short list
that I thought would fit into the blogmat. What I wrote is by no means a
complete list, and only includes stuff that I can remember quickly. None of
them are essential and I don’t need to have them -nobody does- I just prefer not to be without
them.

I didn’t link to
sellers of any of these things unless I thought someone might need a picture to
understand what it is. (I don’t want to
create the impression that I’m shilling for anyone.) Finally, I’m sure some of
these things are going to provoke a few laughs but hey, chances are if you are
laughing, so am I.

Kitchen-Aide 5qt stand mixer with grinder attachment

I use mine at least three times a week –I used it twice today- for
bread and grinding meat (I won’t buy ground meat). The thing is a beast
that will not die. I bought it in 1985 for a restaurant I was helping to build
out, and took it home when it broke down in 1989 after the repair shop said it
could not be fixed. It sat in my house for a year until a friend who services
high-tech industrial machinery looked at it and said that all it needed was new
motor brushes. (Doh!) It’s white, full of dings, and looks like hell. I’d love
to replace it with a larger capacity machine but can’t bring myself to spend the scratch.

Global Cromova 8” Stainless Vegetable Knife, 8” G-2 chef’s
knife, and Wurstoff 8” bread knife

I’ve got more knives than an army of Huns rushing through the Alps on its way to Rome. But I
use these three almost exclusively. None are more than five year’s old. The Global
chef’s knife is so deft that I don’t have to take out my paring
knife more than once or twice a week.

Copper Pots

I’ve got a dozen serious copper pots and pans that my wife and I bought on a trip to France in 1993 and carried home in
our luggage to avoid paying air freight. If we had bought these in the US, they would
have cost at least $2K. But we bought them all at a factory in a town named Villesdieu-les-Poeles  (Village of Pots) in Normandy.  The lot cost around $700 after we were rebated the VAT
(Value Added Tax). They are a really hard to keep clean (I use Barkeeper’s
Friend) but they perform beautifully. A few of them are so
finely finished I can take them from the stove to the table.

Analog Instant Read Thermometer

After a few years of cooking on the line and prepping stuff
for service, I almost never needed one of these. In those days, I could have a
dozen orders of meat roasting in the oven and just yank one out when I sensed it was done. And if there was any doubt, I’d poke it with my finger to proof it. But now I find that I need an instant read thermometer fairly often.
Not everyday, no way -I’m not dead yet.  But an IRT has saved my aging tail more times than I
care to admit. 

Immersion Blender

I bought mine (a plastic-housed Braun) in 1985 for around
$25. I used to use it everyday at work for a la minute sauces and now use it
for tomato sauce and anything I want to puree without trotting out the big
blender –which I rarely use (too messy!).

IR Surface Reading Temperature Reading Thermometer

This is a point and shoot infra-red thermometer with a laser pointer.
I use it to identify hot and cold spots in a pan or oven, to tell me whether or
not a loaf of bread is getting hot enough to brown (browning typically occurs
at temps above 300 ⁰F), to determine temperature variation throughout the
refrigerator, and for more things than I can list here.  Many professional chefs use one of these to
check surface temperatures of foods that are being held in hot and cold lines,
but I have found mine extremely useful to help me understand how food cooks. It’s also fun to point at kids and dinner guests.

Mortar and Pestle

Mine was given to me by Anna and Bruno Monguzzi, whom I met
in the Ticino, Switzerland soon after I completed my undergraduate degree. It wasn’t expensive then, and
it’s not expensive now. But I’d be crushed if I lost it. I use this all the time to smash things that I don’t want to fly all over the kitchen. And you can’t beat the
aesthetic rush of using something that’s been in use since like, forever. I’ve
got a book on Roman tools that shows one like I have – a massive marble mortar
with four snubnosed handles and a knobby wooden pestle- and dates it to the 2^nd
century BCE. I’m pretty sure the design is older than that, but have yet to test
this idea.

Chinois Strainer

This is a fine meshed conical
strainer that I use about 2-3 times a week, mostly to strain stock. Mine is about
20 years old, and would never have lasted this long if I’d used it at work -too many numb nuts grab them and jam in ladles to force the liquid through. 

Bron Mandolin 
Ive had mine for 22 years and my kids like French Fries, end of story.

pH Meter

I’ve got a cheap one that I paid about
$50 for ten years ago. I use it to prevent myself from making
stupid mistakes and discover why I’ve screwed up. For example, the science says that a lot of cooking processes are affected by sometimes subtle
changes in alkalinity and acidity. It also says that most food brown via
Maillard browning reactions which are retarded when there’s too much acidity
and speed up under more alkaline conditions.  So let’s say I’m cooking a marinated pork chop
and it isn’t browning properly. I’m sure my technique is sound (the grill was
hot enough, the meat dry enough) and suspect the marinade as the culprit. If I
stick the pH meter in the marinade and it reads below pH 7 (acidic) I’ve nailed
the problem. Of course the pork chop is still going to be a ugly pallid lump of flesh that nobody but the dog will want to eat. But at least I’ll know what to do next
time.

Cuisine Technology Anti-Griddle

Just kidding.

BdG