7 Essential Kitchen Tools, According to Our Test Cooks

Thermometers take the guesswork out of knowing when foods are done. In the test kitchen, this is vital for ensuring success—especially when we’re working on more than one recipe at once. If you want to stock your kitchen well, invest in an instant-read thermometer, an oven thermometer, and a clip-on probe thermometer for cooking meat, deep-frying, and candy-making.

We use a chef's knife for just about everything, from breaking down tough squash to butterflying a roast. A sharp, comfortable chef's knife is the most important tool in your kitchen, and using it properly is essential. So before cutting into anything, make sure your knife is sharp. A sharp knife is a fast knife, and a dull knife is an accident waiting to happen.

We love a bench scraper in the test kitchen for cutting clean edges into baked goods, but we also use it for a variety of other kitchen tasks. It’s a great tool for cleaning up your station, and gathering and transporting ingredients easily to a pan.  

Although they're not a necessity, we like to keep a few squeeze bottles on hand. They’re perfect to use for oils bought in a bulk. Pour some oil into a squeeze bottle and refill them to your liking. We do this in the test kitchen with our winning olive oil, California Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Squeeze bottles are especially great for recipes that call for slowly drizzling oil into a vinaigrette, because they make it easy to control the flow and speed of the oil. Many of our test cooks use this handy appliance at home to store and serve sauces neatly—making beautiful designs on plates to impress guests for get togethers.

A heatproof silicone spatula is one of the busiest tools in our kitchen and can’t be beat for certain tasks. It’s very durable—withstanding high heat in a skillet or oven. Our winning spatula, Rubbermaid 13.5” High-Heat Scraper, even has a clean-rest feature that keeps the blade from touching countertops, reducing the possibility for cross-contamination.

It will be a dark day in the test kitchen if we ever run out of plastic wrap. We rely on plastic wrap to help store and freeze food. Our test cooks also use it for pounding cutlets and making logs of cheese, cookie dough, or compound butter.  

Tongs have so many uses in the kitchen: handling and frying tortillas, rotating and transferring a roast, stirring and portioning angel hair pasta, dredging and frying chicken-fried steaks, and lots more. This tools grip comes in handy for grabbing and transferring just about everything.

TIP: If you ever find yourself without a bottle opener, open a bottle by sandwiching the cap between the handles and gently pulling to pop it off.

Many of our test cooks are working on more than one recipe at a time and as we know, timing is everything with recipes. That’s why we rely on our trusty kitchen timer in the test kitchen. With our winning kitchen timer, OXO Good Grips Triple Timer, we’re able to track the time of up to three different things at once and easily tell them apart with individual unique alarm sounds.

 If you’re looking for some new gadgets to add to your personal collection, browse our newest kitchen equipment reviews. And for more articles on our test cook's favorites check out the articles below:

• Team Favorites From the June/July 2018 Issue of Cook’s Country
• Team Favorites From the April/May 2018 Issue of Cook’s Country
• The Cook’s Country Team’s Favorite Chocolate Recipes