My readers opened my eyes to the world of kitchen gadgets.

I had originally thought I was biased against single-purpose kitchen. If I need to peel, cut & de-pit an avocado, I just use a knife. Or my fingers. Or a spoon! My parents loved to use their apple wedgers, but I’ve always found them difficult to press into the apple and they always left chewy core on many of the wedges. So yes, I was kind of biased.

Out of curiosity, I challenged my readers to change my mind and they shared their favorite kitchen gadgets that make their lives easier and more fun. I was surprised to find I didn’t even know many of these tools even existed. Anything that makes cooking enjoyable for someone has value. For now, I’ll continue to rip apart lettuce leaves by hand and remove corn kernels from a cob with my knife, but if I need to pit lots of cherries for a pie or make curly noodles out of vegetables, I know where to turn.

First, here are my favorite tools (besides my faithful knives):

  • Salad Spinner: Jake gave me a salad spinner for Valentine’s Day one year and it’s one of my favorite kitchen tools ever. Soggy salad is the worst and this is a must have if you break down whole heads of lettuce. I also use the spinner to dry cabbage or farmers market spinach.
Salad Spinner

I’m pretty sure I didn’t mean for this to look like a salad spinner maternity shot! I do love my spinner, though.

  • Microplane: I use these all of the time for finely grating garlic and ginger into pastes and making delicate showers of parmesan cheese.
  • Handheld Immersion Blender: We received this blender as a wedding gift and I use it to make soups. I used to carefully ladle hot soup into our blender and hope the liquid wouldn’t explode everywhere. Now, I can quickly puree soups right in the pot. I also love that this blender is easy to assemble and clean.
  • Vegetable Peelers: I find myself peeling a lot of carrots. A Y-Peeler allows you to make thin strips of a vegetable without a mandolin.
  • Spice Grinder: Indian food is one of our favorite cuisine’s. I kept wondering why the Indian dishes I made were so bland until I prepared a coconut chickpea curry from Raghaven Iyer’s 660 Curries. His recipe instructed me to toast and grind the spices and I can’t tell you how much of a difference this made. My curry was intense and spicy. Now that I’m not intimidated by this grinder, I’ll use it more often. It’s also easy to clean and the grinder container contains a lid for storage.
  • Box Grater: I use this frequently to grate cheese and vegetables.
  • Kiwi Pro Slice Peeler: This tool makes long shreds of vegetables. I only use it when I want to make the cucumber-tomato salad that we eat with laab, but it’s inexpensive and worth it for this purpose. I bought mine at an Asian market.

Veggie Shredder

Here are my readers’ favorite kitchen tools: