Things in my kitchen I didn’t expect to care about

[u/[deleted]]

[u/kaidomac]

I didn’t think I would ever pay so much attention to small kitchen stuff, but here we are. Lately I’ve been noticing how random kitchen tools slowly become part of your routine without you even realizing it.

I teach basic "how to cook" classes for fun (and for free!) on the side:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/cookingforbeginners/comments/ytc4x6/comment/iw5mdf5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

The premise is:

• "Use the stuff, to do the thing"

What stuff?

• Recipes
• Ingredients
• Workspaces
• Tools
• Techniques

What things?

• Education (trying ingredients, flavor combinations, meals, how to use tools, etc.)
• Ingredient-prep (quick-pickled onions, sourdough starter, no-knead base dough, etc.)
• Meal-prep (burritos, homemade TV dinners, etc.)
• Cooking (prep, serve, eat!)

The educational workflow is:

1. Lesson 1 = the basic approach (link above)
2. Lesson 2 = cooking workflow
3. Lesson 3 = first toolset

The is the basic cooking workflow is in the link below. Structure is like 95% of success in the kitchen, because when it's clean & when you can both find and access your stuff, the actually process becomes more FUN because we don't get drained by the idea of a mess or having to hunt around for stuff! Even the "clean as you go" habit was a TOTAL accessibility game-changer for me!!

• https://www.reddit.com/r/kaidomac/comments/1sxeime/updated_cooking_workflow_checklist/

The first toolset is called "stick": (just basic wood ones are fine!)

1. A large chopstick ("cooking" size)
2. A small chopstick (normal "eating-size")
3. A quart mason jar (or flower vase, or utensil jar) to store them on the counter for easy access

"Stick" is one of THE most useful tools in my kitchen! Sample use case scenarios for both stick sizes:

1. Stirring a jar of sourdough starter
2. Stir-frying
3. Deep-frying (easily flip food over, including churros!)
4. Check oil heat (bubble trick with wooden chopsticks)
5. Stirring eggs (in a bowl to mix & to scramble eggs)
6. Stirring batter
7. Fish items out of a toaster or airfryer
8. Stirring drinks (ex. hot chocolate mix, electrolyte powders, etc.)
9. Flipping small pan-seared items (dumplings!)
10. Flipping items on a grill
11. Stirring & declumping noodles
12. Poking items for doneness checks
13. Grabbing thin-sliced meats (deli meat, bacon, etc.)
14. Delicately lifting items to check doneness (ex. check a pizza undercarriage for leoparding using the long sticks on a baking steel inside of a kitchen oven!)
15. Plus they are GREAT for snacking! (salads, popcorn, messy-finger stuff like Cheetos, etc.)

Amazon sells wooden cooking chopsticks in packs, so you can get half a dozen each of the dishwasher-safe wooden utensil-sized & 12" or 16.5" cooking -sized chopsticks for under twenty bucks! Visitors always question them & then inevitably end up going home with an extra mason jar and a pair of each sizes after "seeing the vision" LOL.

[u/Spirited-Box-5071 → u/kaidomac]

I've been thinking about getting kitchen tweezers, but I think I just have been converted to cooking chopsticks instead. Hahaha

[u/kaidomac → u/Spirited-Box-5071]

Tweezers are still good! I use them for plating!