Can You Identify These Utensils You'd Find in a Chef’s Kitchen?

By: Lauren Lubas
Image: Wiki Commons by Ɱ

About This Quiz

There are dozens of kitchen utensils and gadgets available on the market. We watch celebrity chefs use them all the time, and we think they are necessary for our kitchens. When you watch celebrity chefs work their magic on TV, you immediately think you need a Microplane in your life. Whether or not you use it in your cooking doesn't matter. The chef has it, and you must have it. If you love owning (and using) every kitchen gadget available, you have probably created the perfect chef's kitchen for yourself. You have utensils you may never have heard of before, but seeing a chef use those utensils has given you confidence in your cooking skills.

If you think you know a thing or two about what utensils belong in a chef's kitchen, we've found 40 that you should probably know. Let's see how good you are at identifying kitchen utensils and their uses. If you ace this quiz, you will prove that you are at the chef level, at least when it comes to knowing your kitchen gadgets and utensils.

Immersion blenders are a great tool that help chefs make sauces with the perfect consistency. Some households have them, but the ones in chef's kitchens are usually industrial-sized for the amount of food these chefs make.

That's right, graters were originally created for woodworking. The difference between a Microplane and a hand grater is the size of the grate. Microplanes grate very fine, which makes them perfect for spices, roots and hard cheeses.

Bread knives can be spotted by their serrated edges and long blades. They are perfect for cutting bread that has a hard crust and a soft center. While many think they have to saw through the bread, applying pressure on an angle is the best way to cut it.

For those who don't like mincing garlic with a knife, chefs recommend the garlic press. They are especially helpful if you have a lot of garlic to mince for a single recipe (or for a single day's cooking).

You've probably seen chefs use this while they are making soups and other liquid-based dishes. This mesh straining system gets small particles out of liquids, and it also sifts flour and dry ingredients for baking.

The potato masher (or hand masher) is a tool used to pulverize boiled potatoes. While many use electric beaters for this task, doing it by hand gives you a better texture and consistency.

While most chefs buy their flours from restaurant supply companies, some chefs like to go the extra mile and create their flour meal because it adds flair to the restaurant.

There are several different types of graters, and if you've ever been to Olive Garden, you have probably seen a rotary grater. They make grating hard cheeses easy business for chefs and servers alike.

Zesters are an essential tool for every chef. While some chefs don't mind using graters for zesting, others require a unique tool to ensure the perfect consistency of the zest they produce.

Vegetable spiralizers are all the rage these days. Not only do they help home cooks stay healthy, they help master chefs plate gorgeous spreads with ease. They look and function much like pencil sharpeners, except they cut the vegetables into thin strands.

While many home cooks might not see the need for them, perforated spoons have many uses in a chef's kitchen. They are great for fishing out large ingredients from soups and stews or other liquids.

Mandolines are great tools for every kitchen, and chefs use them in their prep work all the time. This is because mandolines cut food the exact same width every slice, and they do the job much faster.

You may have seen these on a few cooking shows where restaurant workers are making things like pancakes. Each squeeze of the sauce gun trigger gives a chef the same amount of liquid to release either onto a plate or onto the cooktop.

For chefs who work with a lot of seafood, this tool is essential. Oysters are notoriously difficult to shuck without making a mess of the shell, and the best way to do it correctly is with an oyster knife.

If you don't have a meat thermometer in your kitchen, you are either extremely intuitive, or you don't cook frequently. Every chef has at least one meat thermometer in the kitchen. Many chefs have one for each type of meat.

Whipped cream is not easy to make. It's even more difficult to make while under pressure and the hot lights of a cooking set. That is usually why you see a chef's whip fall flat as it comes out of one of these tools.

When it comes to fine plating, various kinds of tweezers are used in the kitchen. They are perfect for adding delicate garnishes and toppings to beautiful meals. Remember, a chef's hands get dirty, and a pair of tweezers can make or break the plating situation.

Chocolate can be a lot of fun to work with ... if you don't mind getting a little messy. Chocolate spatulas have many uses, including spreading the chocolate for tempering and creating even lines.

Fish spatulas are long and flat because fish are generally long and flat. Using a spatula that is too thin might break the fish that it is very delicate as it cooks. That is why nearly every chef has a fish spatula on hand.

Shrimp cleaning tools are meant to help chefs remove the vein that is found down a shrimp's back. If you don't clean this, the taste and texture of the shrimp will be affected. While a paring knife will do the job just fine, it takes considerably longer.

Truffles are all the rage in high-end cooking. Many chefs dump truffles into a typical dish and tack on $20 to the price. A few truffle shavings are then put on the top of the meal. That's where this gadget comes in handy.

While many home cooks buy ground pepper, there is something to the aroma and coarseness of fresh ground pepper. For this reason, many chefs keep a pepper mill on hand, so they can have fresh ground pepper whenever they want.

Ice cream scoops have become more versatile over the past few years, as people realized that they could be used to portion out sticky or soft foods, such as mashed potatoes.

Cube graters are the perfect tool for prep work. They give chefs no-mess grating results, as all the gratings fall into the box. They are perfect for large grating jobs that need to be done before a dinner service.

Citrus cutters and slicers are usually tools seen in a home cook's kitchen. However, when it comes to prepping a banquet or a large spread, these are excellent tools for any chef with a big workload.

Whether a chef is cooking on a flat top grill or a charcoal grill, a grill brush is an essential tool in their kitchen. Not only will these remove any excess food particles, but they also help maintain the texture and flavor of foods that are about to go on the grill.

A bain-marie is a pot that is basically a double boiler. It heats food by heating water underneath a cooking vessel (such as another pot or a glass bowl). While many believe this is only used to melt and heat chocolate, it has several other purposes, including the preparation of delicate sauces.

Those of us home cooks who take on cake making from time to time will generally use a toothpick to test whether a cake is done or not. However, for those who bake a lot, cake testers are an excellent tool for the kitchen.

Sea urchin isn't a common menu item in most restaurants. However, for those restaurants that take on fine dining and random delicacies, a sea urchin cutter is one of the tools a chef will always have on hand.

Though most home cooks won't have one of these in the utility drawer, chefs find them to be one of the essential tools available on the market. They are perfect for pastry chefs and expeditors alike.

With the popularity of engineering food to look and feel like different foods, many chefs have taken to turning food into caviar. That is why this tool was invented. It helps chefs of fine dining restaurants create interesting dishes.

Any good seafood restaurant will have one of these on hand for a chef. Bringing in fresh seafood every day is important to maintain quality standards in a seafood restaurant ... and with fresh fish come a whole lot of scales.

When you are frying foods, you have to be aware of the high heat in which your food is cooking. Your average utensil won't work, and you should always use utensils that are made of metal when working with hot oils. Chefs know this, and that is why you can find one of these in every chef's kitchen.

Olive oil's functionality can seem endless at times, which is why it's such a staple in households all over the world. Due to its high demand, it's no wonder the world would have found a more convenient method with the spray can!

Getting a smokey flavor without having to light up a grill is difficult to do. However, when chefs want to smoke meats with minimal space, you can generally find one of these in their kitchen.

Most chefs and restaurant kitchens will have a kitchen scale on hand (at least one). This is because the restaurant business is all about consistency and portioning. It's important to give those who dine in a restaurant a dish that tastes exactly how they've come to expect it to taste each time they order it.

Coil whips might look weird, but when a chef needs something whisked properly, this is the tool they turn to. You can find these near any prep station in most restaurants around the world.

While some people might think that anything turned into foam is gross, many chefs think that foaming is essential. It might be an outdated concept, but you can still find foamers in chef's kitchens.

If you walk into any high-end steakhouse in the country, you will probably see marrow on the menu. It might sound disgusting, but the center of a bone has a lot of flavor and nutrients. To get it out of the bone, chefs use a marrow spoon.

Butcher's twine is perfect for any roast, stuffed item or whole poultry that is being cooked. You will usually find butcher's twine at the prep station of every chef's kitchen because it is such a necessary tool.

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