hey everyone welcome to Pai's kitchen today we are going to look at some kitchen tools now a
viewer has asked me to share all of the different tools that I use on the show which I thought was a
great idea but that would make a very long show so what I've done for you is I've picked out my
top 5 favorite kitchen tools now these are just small tools that are inexpensive easy to find
easy to store but they are so useful that they're going to make your life a lot easier so the first
one on the list is this fine mesh skimmer now I get this at the Asian grocery store you probably
have seen me use this a lot now for stock because this is so fine that when you skim it won't only
pick up the sort of scum it'll also pick up the fat that floats up but it will let go of all the
water I love that because before I got this I just use a ladle to skim all the scum and you
know when you use a ladle you always get a little bit of water along with it it's kind of inevitable
and then when you deep-fry there's always little crumbs especially when you do things with panko
on the outside there's always little Bernie bits that fall to the bottom you want to get rid of
those bits you don't want to deep fry and let those things sort of hang out because they'll
burn and that's how your oil quality gets bad really fast this is the size that I use most of
the time but there's also a little tiny one like this it's so cute I got this because I discovered
that this one is a little too big for when I use a regular medium size pot it's really awkward I
mean it's as almost as big as the pot flip pot mouth itself by the way this was $4.99 and this
was 399 Canadian dollars when I got them it also makes great stocking stuffers if you're giving it
to someone who loves to cook next is one of my most loved possessions it is this small offset
spatula you may think that this is used a lot in the pastry world and you're right when you
are decorating cake and things like that it becomes a very useful tool but I actually use
this a lot for just lift singing food so I think it's a great pie lifter it's great when you need
to get desserts or things out of a pan and you've only got like a awkward angle to go in it's also
great because it's so thin when you need to run something along the edges of a cake pan in the
restaurant industry this is actually used a lot for plating so when I worked in the restaurant
you know how chef jackets there's two little slots on the sleeve some chefs will actually put
one of these in their sweet little sleeve pocket because they use it so much for plating because
it's so small when you plate it it won't knock off things that you've already put on a plate you know
because you know in restaurant things are nice if you're using a big old spatula it it's just
awkward and it might knock things over so this is so useful right now you might think that oh
I'm not going to use that very much but trust me once you have it you find all sorts of reasons
to use this little tool again really inexpensive super easy to find gotta get one of these disher's
now honestly I don't use these two too often but when I need it I need it because there's no other
tool that can do as good of a job as these now a lot of people call these ice cream scoopers but
that is not what they're made for okay I know I've even used it for ice cream before but it's
not supposed to be used for that this is called a Disher technically and it's used for portion
control when I made my shrimp cakes I use it to portion out my shrimp cakes if you make cookies
you can make evenly size cookies ice cream can be a little too hard if your ice cream is soft
no problem but if it's hard it'll actually this little piece here that moves around it won't be
able to go through and you'll actually dislodge this mechanism I've done it before because I was
trying to force it for ice cream knowing that it's not an ice cream scooper but a little note
about these is they have a size written on them so right here or sometimes at the end of the
bottom like here it'll have a number on it this is a number thirty this is a number forty the
bigger the number the smaller the scoop that's right because that number talks about how many
scoops it'll take to fill up a quart and a quart for those of you who are not familiar with this
system is a little bit less than a liter it's about nine hundred and forty six milliliters when
you buy it feel the spring it should be firm and solid so it should so resist your grip a little
bit if it's really easy that means the spring is weak and those will break quite easily and
there's so much fun once you have them you want to portion everything and now the microplane zester
now you might think that this is only used for zesting oranges lemons lime you know for using
the zest to flavour things I've used it before in a number of recipes but there are actually so
many things you can grate for grading garlic to get it really really fine in marinades to
make garlic butter it's also great for grating Parmesan cheese over your pasta makes cheese
really fine and fluffy and beautiful and it mixes and melts easily a little dusting of chocolate as
garnish on your ice cream or on your dessert on your mousse I also use this a lot for palm sugar
because it makes the palm sugar so fine that it literally dissolves instantly it's slower
so if you're doing a lot I wouldn't great you know two tablespoons of palm sugar on here but if you
just need a little bit things just need a little extra sweetness it's perfect you can also grade
your palm sugar on butter toast to make a palm sugar toast so many useful things I also have
one of these now this is uncomfortable to grip however this one has two sizes a bigger one and
a smaller one I find that most of the time I just use this medium sized one by the way microplane
is actually the brand of this one but it's one of those things where it's so widely used that
the brand has become sort of the word for the tool itself microplane makes other things as well but
if somebody say hey I need a microplane usually they're talking about this thing and last but not
is this rubber tube now a little caveat here I usually am against single purpose tool okay
usually I like to buy things that can be used for multiple things like everything else we've
talked about the spa but for this one I made a little exception because first of all this was
three dollars so you know it's not like I'd to think hard about it second of all it's brilliant
so this is a garlic peeler normally when I peel garlic what I do is I smash it with a knife and I
peel it the peel comes off easily there have been many many occasions where I actually wish I could
peel the garlic without having to smash it okay one situation being I actually want the garlic to
not be smashed when it's peeled like if I am going to grade it with my microplane another situation
is I am using a mortar and pestle or something to pound it and I don't need to get off my board or
my knife or really anything else but because I want to peel garlic quickly I have to get on my
board my knife smash it you know so it's a bit annoying sometimes so you take your garlic that
you have you know dismantled and you stick it in here and then you can do many cloves at a time I
feel like you're like an infomercial but trust me I'm not being paid by these people to do this and
then you did a roll it with your hands and then a few times only and then the garlic comes out
oh that didn't work for this one very well let's try this again there you go the only downside to
this that I will tell you is you can't put cloves that are super big and super small all in one go
because the little ones won't get rubbed because the big ones are kind of you know shielding it
from the rubber right if you like to have garlic already peeled and ready to go in the fridge you
can put your garlic cloves in the fridge and then there it is already peeled and this is also why
this is better than peeling it by smashing because if you've smashed it then you've opened it up then
all the smell it doesn't last as long right once it's broken oh if you didn't know garlic doesn't
actually smell when it's not broken smells nothing No garlic garlic only smells if you start making a
cut or a bruise in it that's when the smell comes out so you know as kind of a gimmicky little thing
but so useful and so brilliant I love it and there you go these are my top 5 favorite kitchen tools
now I would love to know what is your favorite small kitchen tools we're talking small here not
big appliances maybe one of these days I'll do a show on appliances because I got a favorite set
of those as well but definitely let me know in the comments maybe you'll know something I don't
know and you'll change my life and so I hope you enjoy today's episode and I will see you next time