5 Kitchen Tools Every Home Cook Should Own | Think Like a Chef
Dan Souza from America’s Test Kitchen shares the kitchen tools he loves to use most when cooking.
Half Sheet Pan:
Quarter Sheet Pan:
Eighth Sheet Pan:
Carbon Steel Wok:
Vegetable Peeler:
Saucier Pan:
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ABOUT US: The mission of America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) is to empower and inspire confidence, community, and creativity in the kitchen. Founded in 1992, the company is the leading multimedia cooking resource serving millions of fans with TV shows (America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country, and America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation), magazines (Cook’s Illustrated and Cook’s Country), cookbooks, a podcast (Proof), FAST channels, short-form video series, and the ATK Essential Membership for digital content. Based in a state-of-the-art 15,000-square-foot test kitchen in Boston’s Seaport District, ATK has earned the trust of home cooks and culinary experts alike thanks to its one-of-a-kind processes and best-in-class techniques. Fifty full-time (admittedly very meticulous) test cooks, editors, and product testers spend their days tweaking every variable to find the very best recipes, equipment, ingredients, and techniques.
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10:01 alternatively, or additonally, Gestura spoon.
On sheet pans, costco business center had some viking brand ones. Sadly they say theyre not dishwasher safe. Which sounds ludicrous to me
Am 60 yrs old and will never get the y peeler!🤷🏻♀️makes no sense to me at all!😂
My go-to tools are narrow and wide blade putty knives. Invaluable in the kitchen…
Bamboo scraper is usually cut at an angle before using by most chinese restaurants.
Works better that way.
I love ATK and Dan, but how exactly is this a "class"? I hope this isn't the direction the company is moving in.
4:52 — Wrong! The whole "they get better with time" thing is such a played out myth. ESPECIALLY carbon steel pieces like woks. You don't want to "build up seasoning" on carbon steel like some people like to do with cast iron. Carbon steel is meant to keep razor thin seasoning because the surface is already smooth. And woks are cooked over a high heat, so they typically burn off extra layers of seasoning. The best thing you can do to a carbon steel wok is to completely strip it bare, blue ir over a high flame, and then give it a single layer of seasoning. The oxidized bluing layer (called magnetite) is oleophylic and will make that first layer of seasoning insanely bulletproof. Just do regular maintenance after each cleaning, but no need to build up seasoning. My carbon steel wok and skillet both have stupid thin seasoning on them, and eggs glide around on them just as well as teflon.
5:35 — Again, you're wasting people's time with this silly advice. You do not need a bamboo scrubbing brush for your wok. What an unbelievably large and clunky waste of money. The only thing you need is a blue sponge and some soap; this will remove 95% of anything that gets on the pan. For those times that you actually burned food onto the surface, all you need is a non-scratch sponge and some baking soda. You just make a little paste with the baking soda, and it will provide the shearing force to remove stuck on stuff WAY better than the bamboo brush will. Then just wipe off the baking soda residue with regular dish soap, and you're all set. Super slick cooking surface good as new.
Love it and thank you
Grate parm on 1/8 sheet pan: check.
woks are also fantastic for pasta! you have a lot more room to mix sauces and chunky veggies without making a mess. you can also boil your pasta is less water in the wok itself, if you use even less, you can still fully cook the pasta and then have enough leftover pasta water to bind your sauce with already in there.
What is the pasta dish featured in the saucier?
I use my 1/8 sheet pans for thawing as the metal is a better heat conductor than a plate or plastic tray.
Ok Zaddy 😊
Amazing work! Looking forward to more.
My son highjacked all my sauciers for cereal .. so much better to shovel it in !!
Thank you Dan, for showing us kitchen equipment that is really useful. I especially like the saucier and sauce spoons and the smaller sheet pans… And yes, I will give the Y peeler another try…
Smart 👍
This tiny sheet pans are cute. And apparently durable.
I have multiple mini sheet pans and love them for cooking, baking, prepping or whatever you need. I love these mini sheet pans
I still think all those Y-peeler holds are better served by a standard-hold peeler.
the saucier pan link in the descrip isn't working for me. what brand is it?
Living on the stove implements: cast iron skillet, mini wok, and a tagine.
using that kind of peeler hurts my wrist
I love those little baking sheets. We make individual dinners in them by filling them with various veggies and some feta in the middle, throw in the oven. Bam done
Informative and fun to watch.
If you can only afford one saucier pan, which size would you recommend? TIA!
I fell so in love with those cute, tiny sheet pans, I now own a small army of them. Thanks a lot ATK.😂
would be nice if you posted a link to the two spoons shown in video. I searched for “spoons” on the ATK website, and nothing like the those spoons shoed up in the results.
Do you have a favorite sauce spoon? Not listed in your video. Thanks
The small pans work great with a good quality countertop convention "toaster" oven. I do almost all our baking, roasting etc. in ours, which is a great solution for two person preps. Plus it heats up faster than a big wall oven and pumps out less heat into the kitchen in the summer, a huge deal here in the South.
Dan #1!
I would say the high sided sheet pans are 10x more useful. You don't see them as often today, but if you used one, it will easily replace the low sided sheet pan for 90% of tasks. Its the future.
I don’t “-think like a chef.” I think like a home cook, and what I think is that if I bought all the stuff featured on all the YT videos “X things you should have in your kitchen,” I wouldn’t be able to move in there. As with other things, I prefer to think minimally, of what is enough.
You may have convinced me to try a good quality Y peeler. Thanks!
Happy to say that, with the exception of the wok (I desperately want one but don't have the space,) I have all of these already!
Quality content from Dan AS ALWAYS. Not sure why you didn't tell people that's a SAUCIER. I love my sauciers (and my short sauce spoons)! Great tips on the 1/8 sheet pan and the peeler!
This might seem like the silliest thing to whoop in joy about; I finally know what they are called. Baking SHEETS! I kept trying to figure out the name for them so I could buy them, but never figured that out. Thank you!
Funny how he’s so crazy about this peeler. I bought some a while back because I prefer those types of shapes but they’re a PITA to use besides being expensive for 2cts piece of plastic.
I can do the same and more with the one I bought at Walmart 20 years ago that has a nice nonslip handle that fits perfectly in any size hand.
Agree on the rest of the equipment.
I've improved my kitchen utensils and that made cooking healthy dishes easier.