First Penny says you need a bread knife when you don’t know how to make bread, and now all this junk?
I can’t remember he last time I used one of my wooden spoons. I do most of my stirring with one of the tablespoons from my silverware set. Most of the time that I need a ladle for cooking, rather than for serving, I grab one of the measuring cups. The silicone spatula is for non-stick frying pans; for an iron skillet, you want a steel spatula — and it’s heat*proof* — you could stick it into the fire. A potato peeler is handy, but not essential — why do you think they call them paring knives?
A wire whisk is essential for advanced cooks, but I use mine maybe once a year — it’s a lot harder to wash than a three-tine fork. (A regular eating fork scrambles eggs just fine when my three-tine fork is dirty or I can’t find it, and the other cook swears by a teaspoon instead.)
That “digital thermometer” looks a lot harder to use than my meat thermometer — and I’d been cooking thirty years before I got one. I did get a candy thermometer early on, but candy-making is for fun, not for lunch.
I leave my “liquid measuring cups” on the top shelf; my two largest powder measures are marked on the inside for measuring liquids. The only difference is that the “liquid” measures extend above the top line so you don’t spill the liquid while carrying it across the kitchen. Penny read somewhere about “dry quarts” and didn’t understand that dry measures are fractions of a bushel (where fluid measures are fractions of a gallon), and they are used only for selling produce. Nowadays produce is sold by the pound and I haven’t seen a bushel basket since before the turn of the century.
First Penny says you need a bread knife when you don’t know how to make bread, and now all this junk?
I can’t remember he last time I used one of my wooden spoons. I do most of my stirring with one of the tablespoons from my silverware set. Most of the time that I need a ladle for cooking, rather than for serving, I grab one of the measuring cups. The silicone spatula is for non-stick frying pans; for an iron skillet, you want a steel spatula — and it’s heat*proof* — you could stick it into the fire. A potato peeler is handy, but not essential — why do you think they call them paring knives?
A wire whisk is essential for advanced cooks, but I use mine maybe once a year — it’s a lot harder to wash than a three-tine fork. (A regular eating fork scrambles eggs just fine when my three-tine fork is dirty or I can’t find it, and the other cook swears by a teaspoon instead.)
That “digital thermometer” looks a lot harder to use than my meat thermometer — and I’d been cooking thirty years before I got one. I did get a candy thermometer early on, but candy-making is for fun, not for lunch.
I leave my “liquid measuring cups” on the top shelf; my two largest powder measures are marked on the inside for measuring liquids. The only difference is that the “liquid” measures extend above the top line so you don’t spill the liquid while carrying it across the kitchen. Penny read somewhere about “dry quarts” and didn’t understand that dry measures are fractions of a bushel (where fluid measures are fractions of a gallon), and they are used only for selling produce. Nowadays produce is sold by the pound and I haven’t seen a bushel basket since before the turn of the century.