Unitaskers

[porcupine]

He has a point, and you could get all pedantic about what exactly a unitasker is. What else do you use a chopping board for, and could you live without one?

I try really hard to limit kitchen gear to stuff I really use, unitasker or no, even if it's used infrequently. My "can't live without" unitaskers include a pizzelle iron and a spaetzle making thingy (like a big box grater with a sliding hopper). How about you?

[blakegwinn]

He has a point, and you could get all pedantic about what exactly a unitasker is. What else do you use a chopping board for, and could you live without one?

I try really hard to limit kitchen gear to stuff I really use, unitasker or no, even if it's used infrequently. My "can't live without" unitaskers include a pizzelle iron and a spaetzle making thingy (like a big box grater with a sliding hopper). How about you?

Handheld citrus presser. I know you could just use your hands but I love that thing and use it every other night.

[laniloa]

What else do you use a chopping board for, and could you live without one?

This one's easy...you use chopping boards to turn pans upside down to unmold cakes and brownies.

I have scoopers I just use for cookies. I can think of many other things they might be useful for if I ever made those things but so far it is just cookies. Makes it much easier to get consistent size for even cooking.

[Waitman]

I have a truffle shaver and two (count 'em -- two!) mother-of-pearl caviar spoons. The latter utensils were, admittedly, part of a package Fedexed to us from the late great Caviarteria in NYC after my wife kicked a particularly lucrative deal to an acquaintence at an investment banking firm.

[Joshua Grinnell]

I love Alton and I love our ceramic vegetable peeler, but you can really only use it for one thing unless you add in "taking the tip of your finger off" as a task.

[Pool Boy]

This one's easy...you use chopping boards to turn pans upside down to unmold cakes and brownies.

I have scoopers I just use for cookies. I can think of many other things they might be useful for if I ever made those things but so far it is just cookies. Makes it much easier to get consistent size for even cooking.

Could you share a link for what spatula you use for this purpose? My wife is a serious baker and she does not do this, so I am wondering if it is worth a look and a buy to experiment.....Grazie

[Scott Johnston]

Unitaskers I love,

Popcorn Popper

Fire Extinquisher

Popover pans

Several mold pans for baking

Waffle irons (three, mickey mouse, rounds and sqaures)

Devil egg plates

Coffee Pot

[laniloa]

Could you share a link for what spatula you use for this purpose? My wife is a serious baker and she does not do this, so I am wondering if it is worth a look and a buy to experiment.....Grazie

Not a spatula, more like different sized ice cream scoops. Just scoop and go. You can find them at a lot of places such as this.

[Sthitch]

I always took his admonishing of unitaskers to mean something that you need for just one dish (i.e. a waffle iron), not general tasks like a peeler that can be used to peel various vegetables, and also for shaving cheese, or painfully thing slices of carrot, onion, or whatever.

The one unitasker I cannot live without is my rice cooker.

[synaesthesia]

The one unitasker I cannot live without is my rice cooker.

I don't know if you have the new ones. But I have an old-fashioned one that has a smaller sized bowl that you set inside. I love it for when I buy the frozen Chinese steamed breads. Do a sort of double boiler with a teensy bit of water in the cooker bowl and is much, much better than using the microwave. Probably generally good for steaming anything. The new-fangled ones are crap. Though I am sure you could set another bowl within the existing one.

[southdenverhoo]

I suppose one could shuck oysters with any number of things in a pinch, including a screwdriver, a church key (Julia Child famously used this) or a Swiss Army Knife, but I don't.

And I don't really do anything else with my oyster shucker. It's the kind with a round sort of handle that fits perfectly in the palm, a short thick "blade" that's actually only relatively sharp--just sharp enough to slide between the lips of the shell-- at its triangular tip.

[Waitman]

I suppose one could shuck oysters with any number of things in a pinch, including a screwdriver, a church key (Julia Child famously used this) or a Swiss Army Knife, but I don't.

And I don't really do anything else with my oyster shucker. It's the kind with a round sort of handle that fits perfectly in the palm, a short thick "blade" that's actually only relatively sharp--just sharp enough to slide between the lips of the shell-- at its triangular tip.

The screwdriver thing doesn't work so well, but it does work. The main blades of Swiss Army knives are a little thin, I thing, and the auxiliary blades too thick -- stupid landlocked country leaving such an important tool off their signature contribution to popular culture.

[DanielK]

The main blades of Swiss Army knives are a little thin, I thing, and the auxiliary blades too thick -- stupid landlocked country leaving such an important tool off their signature contribution to popular culture.

WRONG!

Actual Swiss signature contribution to popular culture:

[Heather]

Truffle shaver, tamis, and the Le Creuset terrine mold.

[Al Dente]

I haven't found any other uses for my wolverine nipple extractor.

[Scott Johnston]

Someone told me the terrine mold is good to bake lasagna or meatloaf, of course they were trying to sell it to me at the same time.

Truffle shaver, tamis, and the Le Creuset terrine mold.

[Heather]

I haven't found any other uses for my wolverine nipple extractor.

I hear it makes an awesome cherry pitter.

Someone told me the terrine mold is good to bake lasagna or meatloaf, of course they were trying to sell it to me at the same time.

That's funny. I can see doing meatloaf in it, maybe, because what is meatloaf but an Americanized country terrine? But lasagna? Only if you want it one noodle wide.

[Banco]

Herringbone-patterned collapsible paté-en-croute mould. I've never used it, but perhaps when I retire and can use the kitchen in the rest home...

[hillvalley]

...But lasagna? Only if you want it one noodle wide.

Actually, if you are making lasagna for one it works perfectly

[Pool Boy]

Not a spatula, more like different sized ice cream scoops. Just scoop and go. You can find them at a lot of places such as this.

Sorry, I misread your original post. My wife has several sizes of scoopers. I was wondering if there was some magical spatula that flawlessly lifted cookies off of a baking sheet all the time for all kinds of cookies. The search continues.

[squidsdc]

Sorry, I misread your original post. My wife has several sizes of scoopers. I was wondering if there was some magical spatula that flawlessly lifted cookies off of a baking sheet all the time for all kinds of cookies. The search continues.

Not a spatula, but Silpat certainly helps in that regard.

[dinwiddie]

The one unitasker I cannot live without is my rice cooker.

Ditto. Once I got one, I couldn't figure out how I lived without it. We use it all the time, and no more boiled over pots messing up the stove. But I don't know if it is fair to call it a unitasker since we also use it to steam vegs, etc.

[Ilaine]

The one unitasker I cannot live without is my rice cooker.

In my Zojirushi neuro fuzzy logic rice cooker I can cook polenta, grits (not quite the same thing), wild rice (which is not rice), oatmeal porridge, congee (OK, that is rice), and am told, though have never tried it, that I can cook risotto and jambalaya, and probably more.

The one unitasker I would rather not live without is my garlic press.

[zoramargolis]

The one unitasker I would rather not live without is my garlic press.

Mine isn't a unitasker-- I use it for squeezing ginger and onion, too. Sometimes you want just a little juice to add flavor to a sauce or a dish...

[ohstate]

Any idea of what to do with this other than its pictured use? We just got it as a gift and I'm voting to return it for something we can really use. We rarely cook for large crowds, so I'm not sure we'd even use it much at all. We already have a small grill basket, although not made of small mesh w/ a lid. What am I missing? Forgot to add that it is so big, you can't close the grill's lid when its on the grill. (We checked out the fit, but didn't actually use it).

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/52...hef's%20Pan

[goodeats]

My stoves have had hot spots so there would be spots that are brown.

Mmm...crisped brown-sticked rice. Used to dig that stuff up when mom forgot to put enough water in the old rice cooker.

On a different note, perhaps the OP is talking about non-asian rice? I've found that regular supermarket rice (e.g. Minute, Uncle Ben's) is easy to cook on the stove, but you really need to watch the burner for the rice variety I'm used to. I really hate scrubbing pots out with a bed of rice stuck to the bottom.

However, I still make porridge rice on the stove -- the neuro fuzzy cookers just don't make them the same, no matter how much excess water added. But it makes great mass quantity of solid food for DS for the week!

On a side, side note, I've used my chopping board as a trivet sometimes....

On another side note, I really like my silicone spatula from the WS outlet to remove my cookies from non-silpat-baked ones.

I think so far the unitasker that I haven't gotten to work yet is the my whipping cream dispenser. *sigh*

[edenman]

Any idea of what to do with this other than its pictured use? We just got it as a gift and I'm voting to return it for something we can really use. We rarely cook for large crowds, so I'm not sure we'd even use it much at all. We already have a small grill basket, although not made of small mesh w/ a lid. What am I missing? Forgot to add that it is so big, you can't close the grill's lid when its on the grill. (We checked out the fit, but didn't actually use it).

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/52...hef's%20Pan

Return it. Unitasker to the extreme.