Oh boy! You had all the gear, so you made the fresh fruit pie recipe! It looks heavenly and you can’t wait to take a bite, but…you don’t have the right thing to get it from the pan to your plate. Rats! Foiled again…until now. Today, let’s talk about…

Tools for Serving

Serving tools are for maneuvering your food from the pan to either a serving dish or directly to your plate. A lot of the tools we’ve talked about in previous posts can be used for serving: tongs, wooden spoons and turners are all good serving tools. Yay, multi-taskers! But there are also a few that are used almost exclusively for dishing up the goods. Here are the ones I consider necessary for everyone.

Large spoons, regular and slotted

 

The most popular tools for serving up grub are honkin’ big spoons cleverly called serving spoons. They’re big and sturdy and incredibly useful. I have at least a dozen of these things, divided about equally between regular spoons and slotted spoons.

 

 

 

I’m pretty sure we all know what a regular spoon is and how to use one, so I won’t elaborate on that.

Slotted spoons combine the scooping of a regular spoon with the draining ability of a mini-colander. The holes in a slotted spoon are often quite large, so they’re not great for straining small things, but there’s nothing like one for getting green beans out of the juice you cooked them in. They can be made of metal, plastic, melamine, silicone or nylon; they all have their pros and cons. And, happily, decent ones are often inexpensive. My favorite ones are made of melamine; they’re inexpensive, have a better heat tolerance than plastic and won’t get hot like metal.

Good serving spoons cost anywhere from $1 to $10. Believe me, you’re probably going to want more than one of each kind…you can thank me later.

A spatula (part 3)

”Oh, for the love of Benji! Another spatula?” Yes, another spatula.

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s version is called a serving spatula and is similar to a turner, but much smaller. They’re for getting a delicate slice of cake to your plate or digging brownies out of the pan. They can be solid or slotted (it doesn’t really matter).

 

 

 

 

 

Occasionally the front edge of the blade is sharpened for chopping straight down.

 

 

 

 

I usually don’t promote one particular product over another, but my absolute favorite serving spatula is made by Norpro and is actually called “My Favorite Spatula”. It’s strong, has the perfect combination of rigidity and flexibility needed for serving and is heat resistant to boot. It’s made of nylon, so its only weakness is that it can snap if it gets too cold (discovered through personal experience). They come in 4 kindergarten-bright colors (also black for you minimalists out there) and run anywhere from $2.50 to $6, depending on where you buy them. I have 3 or 4 of them and have them squirreled away in drawers all over my kitchen. Get one. You won’t be sorry.

 

 
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A ladle

A ladle is nothing more than a little bowl on a handle that’s extremely handy for serving up wet things like soup or gravy. Your honkin’ big spoon can sorta do the job, but nowhere nearly as elegantly as a ladle can. They come in a lot of sizes, from those wee little one ounce ones in the dressings at the salad bar to big school lunch ones that hold 8 ounces (1 cup). The standard home kitchen size is 4 ounces (1/2 cup). They come in metal, plastic, nylon and melamine. I’m not a fan of the metal ones; the handles can get hot and slippery and the bowl can scratch your non-stick cookware. I just got a new nylon one where the bowl is flat in the front. This allows you to get all the way into the corner or down to the bottom of the soup pot. Expect to spend anywhere from $1 for a cheapie to $8 for the spiffy flat-fronted one.

 

 

A disher

When you saw the picture, I’ll bet you thought “ice cream scoop”. This particular tool is known by chefs as a disher. And for many years, this was the only option for ice cream scoops. But I want you to think past ice cream. What did the lunch lady use to put mashed potatoes on your plate? A disher. Love the look of a beautiful, perfect mound of rice on your plate? Use a disher. Craving chicken salad-stuffed tomatoes? Put that disher to use. In fact, the one thing I hate to use a disher on is ice cream. They’re shaped all wrong for ice cream cartons and they tend to freeze up and get clogged. Dishers are best for scooping up soft and semi-soft foods and for portion control.

 

 

All dishers have a half-sphere-shaped bowl with a spring-loaded scraper fitted around the back of the bowl. There’s a trigger in the handle of the disher that, when squeezed, causes the scraper to move across the back of the bowl and eject the food from the disher. I have two sizes (they come in about a zillion sizes), a 2 ounce one (1/4 cup), the size most of you are familiar with and is awesome for getting perfect portions of muffin batter into the tin, and one that holds about 2-1/2 tablespoons, which is awesome for making cookies or meatballs that are a uniform size. Please spring for stainless steel dishers, especially if you have any plans of putting it in the dishwasher.

 

The shiny aluminum ones look nice and are cheaper, but one trip through the dishwasher will turn the finish a muddy, unappetizing gray…blech. They’ll cost anywhere from $5 to $15 depending on the brand.

 

 

 

 

An ice cream scoop

 

Did you really think I’d leave out an actual ice cream scoop? As I said before, the traditional one is not particularly good at dishing up ice cream. Happily, it’s been left in the dust by scoops with more efficient and more ergonomic technology. Today’s ice cream scoop doesn’t freeze up, can reach into the corners of an ice cream carton and has a comfy, non-slip grip. They also have beveled front edges that allow the ice cream to curl into the bowl of the scoop for a perfect portion. Get one with a nice, chunky, comfortable handle and is dishwasher safe. The best ones are $8 to $12.

 

 

You should be able to serve up all the yummy things you make with these things. I have a couple of others I use more frequently than you might think. They’ve landed on the not strictly necessary, but really spiffy to have list.

Serving dishes

If you’ve eaten before (and I know you have!), you must know you need plates. For everyday meals, serving things directly from their pans onto your plates is just fine. But one of these days you’re going to want to cook to impress someone and on that day, you’ll want some serving dishes. And by serving dishes I mean platters and bowls. A platter is a great big plate meant to hold the main dish. It’s usually at least 50% larger than a regular dinner plate and can be much larger than that. You should have at least one. Prices for new start at about $10 and go up from there. Vegetable bowls are for your side dishes. They’re generally about two or three times the size of cereal bowls. Get at least two. New ones start at around $5 and go up. Don’t get too concerned if your serving dishes don’t match your regular dishes. Mismatched pieces look funky and cool. The best places to look for gently-used serving pieces are garage sales, junk stores and Goodwill. You’ll find gorgeous pieces for next to nothing; my favorite platter cost me $1 at my local “antique” store.

A serving fork

A few posts ago (Equipping Your Kitchen…Part 3: Sharp Things) we talked about carving knives. I told you that carving knives sometimes come in sets with big pointy forks. This is the fork I’m talking about. It’s also known as a pot fork. They’re about a foot long with the tines (usually two) making up about 3 inches of that length. They’re designed for holding a big hunk of meat steady while your slice it, then serving up those slices of meat once it’s carved. It’s also pretty handy for lifting up an entire roasted chicken from a pan. If you’re lucky, one came in a set with your carving knife. If it didn’t, one by itself costs about $10.

 

 

A pasta server

Pasta servers (also known as a spaghetti server or a pasta rake) are one of the more unusual looking tools in the kitchen. They’re a bit like a slotted spoon, but with fingers sticking out all around the bowl. When you scoop the server in your pot of boiling pasta, those fingers are meant to hold onto the long strands (spaghetti, linguine, fettuccine, angel hair) so you can retrieve them without dumping out the entire pot. This lets you take a single noodle out to test it for doneness or to serve the pasta itself while keeping the water. (Pasta water is useful while making sauces; more on that another time.) It’s a pretty specialized tool, but it’s handy. Expect to pay about $5 to $7 for one.

 

A pie server

A pie server is a small turner with a triangular blade shaped like a piece of pie. The blade should be pretty flexible so you can slide it underneath the most fragile pie crust with relative ease. Many have serrations on one side so you can use it to slice the thing you’re planning to serve. If you think a pie server sounds suspiciously like our serving spatula from a few paragraphs ago, they do share a lot of similarity. Here are the differences: 1) A pie server is pointier at the tip than a serving spatula, and 2) Pie servers are nearly always made of metal, although I’ve seen a few nylon ones recently. Getting a pie server is determined solely on how often you think you’re going to serve wedge-shape foods. Perfectly lovely ones can be had from $7 to $10.

 

And now a few words about cooking (and serving) utensil sets…I’m all for them. In my humble opinion, they’re a great way to get all the recommended tools at once for a very reasonable price. I’d stick with sets of 4 to 7 items. These sets usually have a turner (solid or slotted), a serving spoon, a slotted spoon and a ladle. Larger ones may add a skimmer, a pasta server and maybe a rubber spatula. I was digging around on Amazon.com and saw several really nice sets of high quality tools for $20 to $25, which drops your price per tool to around $3 to $6 each…sweet!

Now you’ve got the scoop on all kinds of serving tools. Next time…a plethora of awesome gadgets!

You’ve got the pans. You’ve got the bowls. You’ve even got measuring stuff. All good stuff, but, unless you’re planning to turn your fried chicken with your fingers, you’re going to need some implements for dealing with hot things in the pan. So, today, let’s talk about…

Tools for Cooking

Cooking tools are for maneuvering your food in the pan and protecting your delicate flesh from hot, hot things. Here’s what I consider necessary for everyone.

A pair of tongs

Tongs might be the single most useful gadget in your kitchen. They’re essentially an extension of your hand that can manipulate things in hot places; flipping meat in the pan or on the grill, stirring pasta while it’s boiling in the pot, retrieving baked potatoes from the oven…the possibilities are endless. There are two main styles: ones like scissors and ones like tweezers.

 

 

 

The scissors type are your Great Aunt Tilly’s tongs. They have handles like scissors and operate the same way. I have to say that, in cooking situations, they’re only slightly better than having no tongs at all. It can be very difficult to get a good grip on things with these, which defeats the entire purpose of tongs. The only kind of scissor-style tongs I use with any frequency are my salad tongs.

 

← NO!

 

The infinitely-preferable tweezer kind are either made from one long piece of material (metal, plastic, nylon, bamboo, etc.) folded in the middle or two pieces of material (usually steel) hinged at the end. The hinged version is generally spring-loaded and often has a lock to hold the tongs closed for easy storage.

 

 

 

 

There are a couple of kinds of lock used on hinged tongs. I’m not a fan of the type with a sliding ring. It tends to deploy itself at the worst possible time.

 

 

← Also NO!

 

 

I much prefer the pull-ring locks. Push the ring in and the tongs open wide. Pull the ring up and they remain closed. And they won’t spring open unless you want them to…awesome!

They come in a lot of sizes, but the most useful are 9 inches (good for everyday tasks) and 12 inches (good for the grill and getting things from the back of the oven). Be sure the tips are scalloped, not saw-toothed, for best gripping power.

And if you plan to use them in your non-stick pans, consider getting tongs with silicone-coated tips so you don’t scratch the coating.

 

 

 

 

Best of all, you don’t need to spend much to get good ones. You should be able get a single pair of tongs for less than $10 or a set with two sizes for under $15.

A spatula (part 2)

I can hear it now…”I already have a spatula. Why do I need another one?” Yes, you have a spatula…a rubber spatula. In an effort to confuse you as much as possible, the word “spatula” has several meanings. So now you need an entirely different kind of spatula. The kind we’re talking about today is also called a turner and it’s for sliding under a piece of cooking food to turn it over or moving it to another location. And, yes, there are about a hundred designs for them. What they all have in common is the offset angle built into them so you can get the spatula under the food you want to turn without burning yourself or destroying the food. The angle can either be built into the handle or into the tip of the blade, but it’s always there. There are two styles I’m particularly fond of, the pancake turner and the fish spatula.

 

 

The pancake turner has a wide blade (either solid or slotted) and a good angle between the blade and the long-ish handle. These are great for fairly robust foods like pancakes (duh!), grilled cheese sandwiches, hash browns and burgers.

More delicate foods do better with a fish spatula. A fish spatula has a triangular blade with an angled tip, a lot of slots and a straight handle. The angled tip of it lets you get under fragile foods like fish filets or fried eggs without tearing them.

Get these spatulas in nylon or silicone so they’re safe for all surfaces. Neither should cost more than $10.

A colander

Some would say that a colander is just a bowl with holes for draining stuff. To those folks, I would say that’s essentially true. But the holes themselves make all the difference.

Many colanders, especially plastic and silicone ones, have holes that are way too big. You might think that larger holes equal better drainage and that’s true up to a certain point. But if you’re draining something with a small diameter like angel hair pasta, orzo (rice-shaped pasta) or rice in a colander with larger holes, you’re going to drain away a fair amount of product along with the water. So it turns out that lots of small holes work better than a few large holes. And to get a colander with lots of small holes, you need to turn to metal, specifically stainless steel. Steel, however, has a couple of problems. It’s pricey and it gets hot when you pour hot liquid in it, which is what you’ll do to your colander nearly every time you use it.

So, let’s go over the pros and cons of each kind:

 

Stainless steel

 

Pros: Sturdy, small holes, built to last

Cons: Expensive, gets hot, takes lots of cabinet space

 

 

 

 

Plastic

 

Pros: Sturdy, inexpensive, stays cool

Cons: Large holes, cabinet space hog

 

 

 

Silicone

 

Pros: Collapsible for storage, stays cool

Cons: Large holes, often flimsy, pricier than plastic

 

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A colander is often a purchase a cook makes once. In my mind, a purchase like that deserves a few extra dollars to get a good one that’ll last for years but not everyone’s budget will allow that. If budget is your primary concern, look for a plastic colander, specifically one called a rice washer. They’re very inexpensive and they have small holes, so product loss isn’t in question, but they’re not the sturdiest option available. A good sized one (5 quarts) costs between $7 and $10. If storage space is a problem, consider a silicone colander. There are several styles available, including one that’s designed to fit over your sink for stability. But they have large drainage holes, so be prepared to lose a few strands of spaghetti or grains of rice down the drain when you use it. You’ll want the sturdiest one you can find so it won’t collapse at an inopportune time. They run from $15 to $30. If durability is your thing, go for a stainless steel one. Make sure it’s dishwasher safe, has small drainage holes or is made of mesh and won’t dent easily. Highly rated ones run $25 to $30.

 

A sieve

Colanders are awesome for draining large amounts of things, but what if you need to separate an entire jar of pickles from its brine? For smaller tasks like that, you need a sieve or strainer. A sieve is fine mesh (like a window screen) bowl with a long handle and is nearly always made of stainless steel. There are varying sizes of mesh, but they all have holes smaller than your colander. And they’re good for more than just daintier straining. I use mine for sifting flour for certain recipes, putting a light dusting of powdered sugar on desserts and washing quinoa. Happily, sieves don’t cost much. You can get a single one (get one that’s at least 3 or 4 inches across) for around $5. They also come in sets of 3 various sizes for around $10 to $15.

 

A pair of potholders

Ah, the humble potholder! It’s often an afterthought in the kitchen with cooks opting for something to go with the décor or ones your grandma crocheted for you. There’s nothing wrong with pretty or handmade potholders as decorations. Hang them on a hook and admire them while you spend a few moments thinking about whether you want to remove a screaming hot pan from your 500° oven with something made from materials obtained at Yarn Barn. If you make your living with your hands (like I do), you’ll want a lot more protection than that. Potholders should be thick enough to protect from high heat, but still allow enough dexterity to easily grip a heavy pan. They need to have a pocket in the back for your hands so the potholder doesn’t shift while you’re trying to use it. They need to be machine washable because, at some point, they’re going to get yucky. Silicone seems like it would be the way to go, but they’re often too stiff to be much use and they rarely have pockets so they can seem unwieldy. I like ones made of heavy cotton batting, although I’ve seen some recently with a thin layer of silicone on the outside for an extra layer of protection.

 

 

 

For those looking for even more security, think oven mitts. These are the potholder’s cartoon mitten cousins and provide the safety of a pot holder all the way up your wrists. But you lose some dexterity for that extra coverage. I prefer pot holders to oven mitts, but that’s just me. Either way, remember that you’ll need two of them to be useful. Expect to spend around $15 to $20 for a really good pair.

 

 

A trivet

What the heck is a trivet? It’s a buffer zone between your hot pan and a vulnerable surface like your countertop, like a heat-resistant coaster. They come in a stunning array of shapes, sizes, varieties and materials. They also come in a stunning array of prices, ranging from under $5 to over $50.

 

The really expensive foo-foo ones are often made of enamel-coated cast iron. This strikes me as odd because the entire point of a trivet is to insulate and cast iron (or metal in general) is a terrible insulator.

 

← These babies retail for about $60! Each!

 

 

Beautiful and somewhat less expensive ceramic trivets are excellent insulators, but they’re often tippy and pans tend to slide around on them.

 

 

 

 

Better choices are the much more budget-friendly wood, bamboo, cork and silicone. Wood, bamboo and cork are excellent insulators and they look pretty stylish, too.

 

 

Cork ones are the least expensive option with packs of three going for less than $10.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wood and bamboo trivets are also easy on the wallet. A set of two goes for somewhere between $10 and $15.

 

 

 

 

 

Silicone trivets are my favorites. They stay in place, keep the pan from sliding around, are incredibly heat resistant and clean up easily. In fact, this is why I own silicone potholders; they’re fantastic trivets. (Bonus: They’re also awesome for opening troublesome jar lids.) A set of four colorful silicone potholders costs about $10.

 

 

 

 

There are also tons of other cool silicone trivets; they run from $5 to $15.

 

 

 

We’re nearly ready to actually cook something. There are a few other things in my kitchen that I use from time to time and I have to admit they’re pretty handy to have. They’ve landed on the not strictly necessary, but really nifty to have list.

A steamer basket

There are a lot of ways to cook food: frying, roasting, boiling, etc. But some things just need to be steamed. It’s a remarkably healthy way to cook since this process adds no fat to the food. And it’s a very gentle way to cook delicate foods like fish or dumplings. For the best results, you need a steamer basket. They look like someone cut up a colander and made a flower out of it. The petals of that flower allow the steamer basket to fit in nearly any size pot. They also have little feet on them to keep the basket out of the liquid at the bottom of the pan and handles so you can retrieve the basket when the food is cooked. Most are made out of stainless steel, while a few are made of plastic or silicone. I’d steer clear of the plastic or silicone ones, though. The silicone ones are flimsy and the plastic ones tend to melt if the heat gets too high. Some of the stainless ones have silicone coatings on the feet and/or petals to make them safer for nonstick surfaces. I’ve never had any trouble with my stainless one scratching my nonstick pans…just be careful and you should be okay. A sturdy one with a good handle runs about $10.

 

A splatter screen

A splatter screen looks a little like a giant ping pong paddle made out of window screen. The idea behind it is that it helps to keep you from getting popped with blistering hot oil, tomato sauce, etc. while you’re cooking. The mesh needs to be small enough to keep painful and messy blobs of goo from flying out, but large enough to allow steam to escape. The one you choose needs to be at least 1 inch wider than the largest pan you think you’ll use it on and have a handle that’s sturdy without being too heavy. A too-heavy handle makes the screen tippy and ineffective. Well-reviewed splatter screens cost about $15.

 

 

 

A skimmer

There are times when you cook food in a large amount of liquid that you don’t want to drain completely away all at once or remove the cooked food a little at a time, like boiling ravioli or deep frying hush puppies. Wouldn’t it be cool if you had a mini-colander on a long handle for a time like that? Well, today’s your lucky day because just such a tool exists! It’s called a skimmer or a spider (because the wire mesh sometimes looks like a spider web). It allows boiling water or oil to drain away while you safely flip your food over or retrieve it from the pan. I have a plastic one (I bought it at a drug store for $1) that I use in nonstick pans and an Asian one that has a brass basket and a bamboo handle (about $7) for my stainless pans.

 

 

Now you’re all set with a basic set of tools for cooking your food. Next time…tools for serving!