Blog Tools for the Gourmet Welcome to the Gourmet Chef blog Hi everyone! Welcome to the Gourmet Chef blog. We are a locally owned kitchen store located in Minot, North Dakota. We have been in business on Main Street in Minot since 1993. Over the years, we have seen our fair share of new kitchen tools and gadgets. Some have been great, and some not so great. In this blog, I'd like to share with you some of the current tools that our customers have been buying recently and ones that are really worth the price you pay for them. Let's start with cutlery. Everyone needs a good set of sharp knives. Not dull. Not the ones that haven't been sharpened in years. If you have a good sharp knife, it makes preparing food so much easier. Buy a knife that is a combination of stainless steel (so it doesn't rust) and carbon steel (so it is easy to sharpen). Then, remember to sharpen it! Solingen German steel has been the most popular in our store. You might pay a little more for a good, forged knife, but it will last you for years, as long as you take care and sharpen it. We carry a number of easy to use sharpeners that make it simple to keep the edge on the knife. And please, don't put your good cutlery in the dishwasher! This time of year, cherry pitters and pineapple slicers are very popular. Our favorite cherry pitter is by Oxo. Easy and quick, and can be used for olives, too. A corkscrew style pineapple corer is the one our employees chose in a test of the corers we carried in the store. Some of the most popular gadgets right now are the onion, tomato, and bell pepper keepers. They are shaped like the vegetables and used to store produce in the fridge. They are bright and colorful, and easy to see when you open the door. Plus you know exactly what is inside. Who hasn't opened a cottage cheese container and found out it wasn't cottage cheese, but the onion that was cut up 3 months ago?! The Cheese Knife is also a great item to have. It is a graduated resin blade that cheese will not stick to when you slice it. Plus it is safe for kids to use. It's such a simple thing, but one that works great. I like it better than a wire cutter because you can slice all the way down to the counter without having that little curved piece at the bottom of the block of cheese. A ChopStir is a perfect tool to have for chopping up hamburger in the frypan. It has four heat resistant cutters on the bottom and is safe to use in your non stick pans. My husband even likes to use it when he's cooking. Now if I can just get him to turn off the burner when he's done. The last item I'll talk about for now is the oven liner. The day after I put mine in the oven, I made lasagna and it bubbled over onto the bottom of my oven. I just pulled the oven liner out, wiped it off, and put it back in. Nice! Talk about being worth every penny. Happy cooking! |
