DinnerTool.com

Hi, I'm Ariane Duarte, and we're at home here in our DinnerTool kitchen, and I'm going to show you today some great tips and tricks for everyday cooking. Having the right tools and gadgets in your kitchen will really help speed up prep time and cooking time. Here are a few of my favorite kitchen tools and gadgets. Of course we have the standard can opener, tongs, wooden spoons - those are most-haves. Another important tool in the kitchen is actually your knife. There are so many different knives to pick and choose from. Basically what it comes down to is how it feels in your hand. There's different weights, there's different sizes, there's different lengths, there's different thicknesses of the blades. So really when you're shopping for your knife, take your time, go to your store, have somebody help you, play around with them, don't rush into it. You're going to keep this thing around with you for a long time if you take care of it properly. And, just so you know, they do make knives for lefties, so it's something you may have to research a little bit but if you're a lefty they will have lefty knives for you. Also, you must have a peeler. Again, peelers come in different shapes and sizes, too. I find that I like this one, the way you can hold it in the palm of your hand. It has a great drip, it's kinda just - move along, move along - it's very quick. This is your standard. It's just as great, but I tend to go to this one, and again, and again, it's going to be what you like. This is called a reamer. This is what I use to juice oranges, lemons, limes. I love this item because I tend to juice a lot of fresh fruit, so this, for me, comes in handy, as well as my fine strainer. So after I juice, I strain my juice through there, and it catches all the extra pulp and seed, so I have nice, clean, fresh juice. This is what you call a Microplane. This is great for zesting, grating. I find I use this for garlic. I use it for lemon zest, orange zest. I use it for nutmeg. You can use it for grating cheese. It's very fine. It's like snow when you grate the cheese. But this is a must-have, I think you'll really enjoy this when you purchase it. One thing I find we use a lot in our kitchen here is our spice grinder. There's nothing better than grinding your own spices, toasting them up, whether it's peppercorn, to cumin, or coriander. The peppercorn you're using is just going to be so fresh and so pungent. So this is a great, great investment, not only for your coffee beans, but also for your spices as well. And then, of course, we have thermometers. This one is a candy thermometer. If you see here, it has a hard crack, firm ball, bread. So what it does is it attaches itself to a pot of, let's say you're making sugar, you can just watch it and it tells you where you're at. So this is really great. And then this one as well attaches itself to the pot, and this is great for your fry oil, if you're going to fry at home, and create your own fryer if you don't have a machine. This is great too. These are really great, how they just hold on to the pot so you don't have to worry about keep putting it in and putting it out. It just sits in there. And this is just your basic one you keep in the oven. This is to make sure your oven is always calibrated at the right temperature. And those are my favorite kitchen gadgets, so go to DinnerTool.com now and check out some great recipes and ideas how you can use each and every one of these.