#kitchen-essentials

#kitchen-essentials

When churning out cover after cover at the saute station you can't exactly be picky about what's on the shelf above the stove. But that doesn't mean professional chefs don't have opinions about the pans they use every day during service.

Most pizza stones are made with a high-grade cordierite material, which allows them to tolerate the heat of your grill or outdoor pizza oven, which was one of the best investments I ever made.

If you've ever mixed something vigorously in a large bowl during a cooking project, you have probably experienced the universal frustration of a tilting, wobbly bowl. Maybe you're whipping cream by hand, whisking a vinaigrette, or even just beating eggs for a casual, but perfect, omelette, and notice the bowl starts migrating across the counter. There are some low-tech workarounds, like a damp towel or a silicone mat slipped underneath the bowl. Neither works terribly well, especially with super-slippery granite countertops.

Cheesy comparisons aside, the reason chefs are responsible for their own knives boils down to subjective preferences and comfort. "I want the knife to be an extension of my arm and my hand," says Fredrik Berselius, executive chef at Aska. Since there are far too many variables that go into a knife's design-handle shape, blade shape, weight, balance, material, and so on- determining which knife is the best knife is fundamentally impossible.

They're also a good source of fiber, are jam-packed with vitamin C, antioxidants, and even have anti-inflammatory properties. But their peels tend to keep many of us from reaching for them all that often at the market. Sure, they're cute with their brown fuzz, but how do you actually peel them effectively and quickly enough that it's just as easy as eating any other fruit? The answer lies in a kitchen tool you might not expect: The balloon whisk.

Whether donning an apron at home or in a Michelin-starred restaurant, pretty much everyone agrees on the merits of cooking with cast-iron pans. They've been around for generations, passed down like an heirloom and fired up for all kinds of meals, from everyday comfort food to special company-is-coming fare. But there's one thing that needs to be acknowledged: it's not ideal for everything - specifically, cooking eggs.

Don't get us wrong, stainless steel cutting boards have their merits. On a maintenance note, they're easy to keep clean, and don't hold onto stains as fiercely as plastic boards. They also don't require regular seasoning, which is a major convenience factor over wooden boards. For aesthetically-minded home cooks, they perpetuate a sleek, contemporary vibe sitting on the countertop. These boards are made from food-grade stainless steel, often 304 steel, the material used in professional restaurants and hospitals.

You don't need to spend an arm and a leg to get sleek and functional kitchenware. Dollar Tree makes it easy to stock your home with practical, everyday kitchen essentials that look good and get the job done. And one of the most underrated kitchen tools sold at this dollar-store chain is the Cooking Concepts stainless-steel chopper/scraper, also known as a bench scraper. Best of all, it's just $1.25, a fraction of the cost of many similar scrapers elsewhere.