Tooling Around
Monday, November 7, 2011 at 1:00AM 
By Sandy Hu
Just in time for holiday cooking, Special Fork is featuring Tool Week. For the entire week Special Fork Bloggers will be blogging about their favorite kitchen tools.
And we’d like to know which are your go-to tools. Those of you who are our fans on Facebook will be eligible for a drawing of some cool kitchen tools especially selected by Special Fork (value: $75). And don't forget to let us know what your favorite tools are.
I love kitchen tools and my utensil drawers are chock-full of them But here are my go-to choices.
Top:
Everybody needs a slotted spoon – it drains out the liquid as you scoop out the solids. What I like about this one is that the spoon is designed so the bowl of the spoon never touches your counter, eliminating the need for a spoon rest. I also use this spoon for sautéing.
Left to right:
I passed on the onion keeper the first time I saw it in a cookware store. It seemed like a silly thing when you can just store leftover onion in a heavy-duty plastic bag. But I thought about it…how many bags of onion did I have in the crisper because I didn’t remember I already had a cut-up one? Now my leftover onion is very prominent in my fridge. The keeper contains the smells and it's probably more environmentally friendly in the long run, because it's reusable.
Below the onion keeper are cooking rubber bands. We bought these to help Dave with trussing his chicken for a Special Fork video, but now that I have them, I rather like having them around. It's a lot easier to truss a bird and you can also use it to bundle asparagus for steaming. These can be washed and reused. Check out the rubber bands in this video on roasting chicken.
Salad Hands: If you watch Special Fork video demos, you know we LOVE Salad Hands. With their short handles, you get good leverage and you can get under salad greens or hot pasta to give a really good toss. Here are Salad Hands in action in a quick pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and anchovies.
Tomato corer: This unassuming little tool has little teeth around the edge of the scoop, allowing you to scoop out the hull of a tomato or strawberry. Because of its teeth, the corer cuts cleanly, without tearing the tomato skin.
Zester: This OXO zester scrapes citrus peels to give you nice, grated shreds. They’re thicker than what you would get from a microplane or box grater but I like a pronounced peel. It's great when you need just a teaspoonful or so of peel -- you don't need to take out a cumbersome box grater. The slit on the side makes a strip of peel to create a twist for drinks.
Tomorrow Katie shares her top tool choices.
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