About This Quiz
Does a knife work just as well as a mango pitter? Do you really need a flexible frosting spreader, or is a knife dipped in water just fine for spreading frosting evenly? Unless you're someone known for the best strawberry jam this side of the Mississippi, you probably don't need a strawberry huller. So it's time to take a good hard look at that kitchen drawer that hardly closes, due to the potato masher and ladles you have stored in there.
However, there is a price for minimalism, and that price is paying more than you think you need for utensils. If you are only going to have a few tools, they need to be of the very highest quality. That's especially true for knives, cutting boards and serving utensils.
This quiz will help you take a fresh look at that old drawer and see if you can donate a few items to charity. When you hear the description, you may initially think, "Hey, a knife could do that," and realize you may not need that bagel slicer after all. Check out this quiz now. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain, including a kitchen drawer that's easier to close!
Although a paring knife can do the job, it can do many other jobs as well, including cutting meat and slicing dough. So the correct answer is vegetable peeler.
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Use a wire whisk to whip eggs or cream ingredients together, or add air to a batter. Do not try to use a whisk with thick mixtures.
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Using a metal spoon might do the job, but a rubber scraper is perfectly shaped for mixing, folding soft ingredients, and especially removing batter from a bowl completely and efficiently. The rubber flexes to match the contour of the bowl.
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Although you can flip things with your fingers (ouch) or with a fork, it's preferable to do it with a spatula. Plus, spatulas come in various sizes and shapes for every serving situation.
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Whether the dough is used to make cookies, pizza crust, pie crust or rolls, a rolling pin is an essential tool in any kitchen. Choose the style that is most comfortable for you.
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Although it's also good for cutting, a chef's knife doesn't make you think of one particular food. A pizza cutter is useful for cutting pizza, as well as noodles and dough.
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A strainer is a wire mesh bowl or scoop, while a colander has bigger holes in the container and is often plastic. You may need to use a strainer, depending on the foods you're separating. For example, spaghetti or julienned veggies could slip through the holes of a colander, but not a strainer.
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This utensil is used to shred or grate foods like potatoes, cabbage or cheese. Depending on the size of the grating holes or surface area, a shredder can also be used to zest lemons or ginger.
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A butcher's knife is a specialty knife used for cutting meats because of its thicker broad blade. A butter knife only cuts through and spreads soft items, like butter and cream cheese.
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Wooden spoons don't scratch pots and pans. They also don't heat to scalding temperatures or chemically react with acidic foods, as metal does. Wooden spoons won't melt or leach chemicals or strange tastes into hot foods, as plastic does.
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Although a knife or spoon might work, it will be a sloppy experience. Instead, use a pastry brush to do the job right. Traditional pastry brushes are made with natural bristles, while modern kitchen brushes usually have silicone bristles for easier cleaning.
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Although you could theoretically use all of these to smash up potatoes, the perfect tool is the potato masher, which has no other purpose. The only drawback is that the potato masher has a clunky shape and doesn't fit neatly in the drawer with the rest of your utensils.
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After washing a head of lettuce, do you dry each leaf? Heck no! That's what a salad spinner is for, as “spinning” your greens is by far the easiest way to do it.
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Slotted spoons are used to stir foods that are in liquids and, if needed, to separate the solid foods from the liquids when serving or transferring temporarily to a plate.
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Today's bottle openers are useful and fun, and many people like to collect them. They can come in crazy shapes, sizes, colors and themes.
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One of the most basic tools you need in your kitchen is a good cutting board. Since you’ll be using it every time you cook, it’s important to choose one that’s durable and well designed.
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Measuring cups and spoons are used for precisely measuring the volumes of liquid or dry cooking ingredients. You'll want measuring cups that are stackable and have a pouring lip.
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A colander is a metal or plastic container with a perforated bottom that is used for draining and/or straining food from liquid. It can also be used to cold shock vegetables to stop the cooking process after blanching, by running the vegetables under cold water in the colander.
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A cherry pitter removes pits quickly and cleanly, without any cherry juice splatter. If you don't have one of these pitters, you can always use chopsticks and a cherry sitting atop the mouth of an empty bottle to get the job done!
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A bagel slicer keeps your hands away from any potential slicing harm. The cradle holds the bagel while the two plastic safety shields keep fingers away from the cutting blade.
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If you like to grill or cook meat at home, it's a good idea to have a meat thermometer on hand. The best options are digital probe thermometers and instant-read thermometers.
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Whether you're tenderizing your meat or pounding chicken breasts to have consistent thickness, use a meat tenderizer, meat mallet, or meat pounder. Don't want to pay for one? Use a rolling pin or the bottom of a heavy pan to pound meat instead.
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Avocados and their pits are notoriously hard to separate. That's why you might want an avocado pit remover. It takes the mess out of preparing avocados for fajitas, salads, dips and sandwiches.
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Apple corers can core and divide fruit into even wedges. Besides apples, you can use it on pears and other fruits with small cores.
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Why not use a knife to cut and then squeeze a lemon or lime half? It's actually more hassle than it should be - as you get juice all over your hands and seeds in your food. Plus, a citrus juicer is known to get more juice out of the fruit.
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Sweet, delicious mangoes are hard to efficiently peel and slice because of the odd-shaped seed. That's why many people will buy a mango slicer. With one downward press the sharp, stainless-steel blades core and cut even the ripest mangoes.
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Any of these utensils will help you get a sharp edge on your knives. The honing rod is used to grind away material from the blade. A whetstone is a fine-grained stone used for sharpening cutting tools, and a knife sharpener performs exactly as titled.
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Tongs make it easy to flip meats and gather vegetables. Most people prefer to have tongs with silicone tips to prevent scratching pans and pots. Because the tips have a high degree of heat resistance, they don’t melt away after frequent use.
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A ladle is essentially a very large, long-handled spoon with a deep bowl. It is used for serving liquids, like soups, stews or punch.
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A trivet is a heat-resistant surface that you place hot dishes on, so you don’t burn your table. It can be cloth, bamboo, wood - you name it - as long as it keeps the heat in the food container and not on the table.
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Shears are more versatile than knives. They are great for snipping herbs, cutting pizza into slices and pitas into wedges. They also make fast work of splitting a chicken and toddler-sizing food.
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Although some of these options will work to get cookie dough on a tray, extracting that perfectly rounded dollop of cookie dough and using a spring setup to release the dough is what makes having your very own cookie dough scoop so great.
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Dress a salad beautifully with thinly sliced hard-boiled eggs. Use the egg slicer to turn your hard-boiled eggs into bright, colorful accents on a plate.
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Since tea leaves don't all fall to the bottom of your teacup, you might want to use a tea infuser, tea egg or tea ball to make sure the leaves stay contained. Tea shouldn't have a leafy texture.
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This stainless-steel utensil was formally called a Parisienne scoop. The melon baller is a small spoon-like tool used to cut round- or oval-shaped sections of melon (melon balls) by pressing it into the fruit and twisting the handle.
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