- 3 minutes ago
Martha Stewart shares her favorite kitchen tools, gadgets and genius cooking hacks to help you work smarter in the kitchen and make the most of equipment you might already own. From choosing the right turkey baster, whisk, spatula or lemon zester for the job to using a mandoline to make restaurant-style waffle fries at home, Martha reveals the surprising uses for everyday kitchen essentials and the clever gadgets that can make cooking easier. Plus, discover the differences between the various types of pots and pans, the reason classically trained cooks swear by copper cookware, and how you can buy some for less than you think.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00All of these tools will really greatly aid in your culinary arts.
00:04Well, it's kind of hard to peel a clove of garlic with your fingers.
00:08It'll take quite a while.
00:10You have to peel all this white, hard skin off the clove.
00:15You can also peel it by using the flat side of a big chef's knife
00:20and going like that, the skin comes right off.
00:25It's released from the flesh of the garlic clove,
00:28but you're left with a bashed and split piece of garlic,
00:33which you may or may not want.
00:35And then you have this tool.
00:38It's called a garlic skinner,
00:39and it's a piece of flexible plastic pipe cut on an angle.
00:43It looks like with a pinking shear.
00:45It's a very simple implement.
00:47You put an unpeeled clove of garlic right in the middle of the pipe,
00:52and you roll like this.
00:55Here's a crackling.
00:56Not too hard.
00:57And what emerges is a perfectly peeled and unbruised clove of garlic.
01:04And here is the next tool in my repertoire.
01:07This is called a mandolin.
01:10Leslie, my producer, calls it a banjo because she keeps forgetting to call it a mandolin.
01:14But whatever you say, banjo, mandolin, loot.
01:18It's a great tool.
01:19I like to do some very special kinds of cuts with this mandolin.
01:24Take a peeled sweet potato, for example.
01:26Help yourself along by just cutting off the pointy end of your vegetable.
01:32This is the slicing blade.
01:33It will slice very nicely.
01:37Now look, this is a hard, really hard sweet potato.
01:41It is making absolutely perfect rounds of that sweet potato.
01:46And you can make them thick or paper thin.
01:48The second thing that this does is waffle cut.
01:51Just keep turning your vegetable.
01:53You can make birds' nests.
01:55I learned how to do that, and David Letterman, one night, he had the chef of Le Cirque doing
02:01these beautiful waffle potatoes and layering them in a wire basket and deep frying them.
02:10Look what it does.
02:11It makes these terrific, transparent little waffles.
02:15Now fry these in olive oil and sprinkle them with a little coarse salt.
02:19You have the most delicious french fries you've ever tasted, or potato chips, and you can use
02:24them for hors d'oeuvres or just for snack.
02:26It's a big treat.
02:30Now the other thing that I like to use the mandolin for is to julienne.
02:35I find that using a towel like this works very well.
02:38And you can go quite quickly and get a lot of vegetables julienned in no time.
02:43That looks so beautiful on your plate.
02:46Steamed, tossed with it, just a touch of butter or oil.
02:50These will be delicious.
02:51Whether you're trying to break unsweetened chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, or white
02:57chocolate into bite-sized bits for melting or for adding to a batter, you can use a knife
03:03like this, which makes it rather difficult.
03:06Or you can use our tool of the week called a chocolate chipper.
03:10And look how easily it works.
03:12It just breaks the semi-sweet, the unsweetened, or the white chocolate very easily into very
03:24appropriate sized chips.
03:27There are many different tools to use for steaming.
03:29I have just a few of them here in front of me.
03:32You can use a deep pan with a store-bought insert like this.
03:37This is a great little steamer basket.
03:40And it opens up like this and fits in a variety of sized pots, right like that.
03:47This is an insert that can come with a pot.
03:51This has holes in the bottom, you can see.
03:53And this works very effectively also.
03:56These are bamboo steamers, typically found in Chinese restaurants, each layer filled
04:02with a different kind of dumpling.
04:04This is more for a meal size.
04:06And that's a giant one for a whole small fish, larger pieces of vegetable.
04:11A turkey baster at Thanksgiving time, if you're going to cook a turkey, is a must.
04:16And that's why we've chosen the baster as our tool of the week.
04:20Basters come in glass, which I prefer because I can see the liquid and I feel that it gets
04:25really clean.
04:26It also comes in plastic, and this is most commonly available at most stores where they
04:32sell kitchen wares.
04:33And the wonderful stainless steel.
04:35This is a little bit heavier than the glass, but it is non-breakable.
04:39And then we have a new and improved version.
04:42Jane picked up on this one.
04:44You like this one, don't you?
04:45This one has a very sharp end, so you can insert for basting under the skin of a turkey.
04:53You can actually use it as an extractor too, Jane.
04:56I know.
04:57For roasting goose, you can even pull out some of the fat or duck.
05:01You wouldn't want to make a lot of holes into a turkey skin, but if you want to insert
05:04underneath, you can do that.
05:05And in the very hard to reach areas in between the drumstick and the thigh, so that's a good
05:12one.
05:12When you want to take them apart to clean, just remove the rubber end.
05:17This should be washed out with hot soapy water and then rinsed very, very well and allowed
05:22to dry upside down like that.
05:24You can use this little brush.
05:25And then this is excellent for cleaning the tube, because it goes in and really does the
05:29job.
05:29Test tube cleaner.
05:30Yes.
05:31I also love a French rolling pin for pastry.
05:35And this one is made from durable beech wood.
05:37It is very traditional, tapered shape.
05:40It's great for rolling out dough for cookies, for pie crusts, and really works very well.
05:47And now for picking up the pastry, just roll it around your beautiful French rolling pin,
05:53and unroll it right into your dish.
05:56Great tip, don't you think?
05:57What's the best tool to use for beading and whipping little pockets of air into egg whites
06:02or heavy cream?
06:03It's a whisk.
06:05A whisk like this, big balloon whisk.
06:07And I am whipping whipped cream, and it happens so fast.
06:11And the cream is so smooth and silky and shiny, that's exactly what you want as the result.
06:17Whisk consists of a number of wires curved around and gathered into a handle.
06:23And whisks have really evolved over the last few years amazingly.
06:27The length and thickness and the number of wires and the material they're made of actually
06:32determines a whisk's flexibility and function.
06:35This, the big balloon whisk, has a very nice, comfortable handle.
06:41It's good to the touch.
06:42It's not cold metal.
06:44It's actually coated with a nonstick surface, and it's a nice, sturdy whisk designed to whip
06:51as much air as possible into egg whites or cream so that you get a lot of volume.
06:57The bulb shape, this big, bulbous shape, increases the whisk's content area as well
07:03as speeds up the process.
07:04Thin wires work better than thick ones because they place less pressure on the egg whites
07:08or the cream.
07:09And remember, this is science.
07:11It's not just something that's been made up.
07:14And they also don't press out any air that has been incorporated into the cream or the
07:19egg whites.
07:19And the more wires the whisk has, the better.
07:23This is called a French whisk or a sauce whisk.
07:26And it's used for mixing and blending.
07:29It's sturdy.
07:29It fits into most pans.
07:31It has an elongated pear shape, the bent wires, and a shorter handle.
07:37And the wires are generally thicker and more rigid than those of the balloon whisk.
07:41And the sauce whisk is very good for working heavier mixtures like a pastry cream or a hollandaise
07:47sauce.
07:48A very useful whisk to have in your kitchen drawer.
07:51And these three whisks are called standard whisks.
07:55If you were to choose pretty much one whisk, we'd recommend a standard all-purpose whisk, probably about this size,
08:03because it will do most of the functions of all
08:06of these whisks.
08:07And so these are the standard whisks.
08:10Now, here's a new fangled whisk.
08:12It's coated with a non-scratch surface.
08:16It won't scratch and remove the finish from a Teflon-lined pan, a non-stick pan.
08:22It's also heat-resistant.
08:24And it is a very useful whisk, a little bit fragile because it's coated, but very useful
08:30indeed.
08:31Now, this flat whisk is lots of fun to use.
08:34It's great for whipping up a plate of eggs for our scrambled eggs.
08:37It's used to incorporate flour into melted butter when making a roux.
08:41And it is just a very nice shape, and it goes into corners of a flat dish.
08:47It's great.
08:48And my favorite, because it's so cute, is this little tiny mini whisk.
08:54No job is too small for the five-inch to eight-inch mini whisk.
08:58And I use this actually to mix up salad dressings when I'm just making dressing for two to four
09:03people.
09:04You can also use it to mix the fruit on the bottom of the container of yogurt.
09:08It helps a lot.
09:10And you can also use this to combine just that little tiny bit of lemon juice and prepared
09:15mustard that you use for your vinaigrettes.
09:18And then this is hybrid homemade, we call this.
09:22This is this whisk snipped off so that you have lots and lots of individual wires.
09:29And this is used to create spun sugar.
09:32When you heat sugar to the hard bowl stage, dip the whisk in and fling, and you will absolutely
09:38create the most beautiful golden strands of hard sugar.
09:44Very, very useful tool.
09:46So this you make yourself.
09:48Well, a whisk is just one of those indispensable kitchen tools and no kitchen should be without
09:53at least one or two of the whisks that you see in front of me.
09:57Have you ever heard of a reamer?
09:59Made out of a hard wood, reamers come in different shapes, basically the same size.
10:05And these are great for extracting the juice from lemons and oranges and limes.
10:10If you just roll your lime before you cut it, that sort of gets the juices running.
10:19Do the same for lemons.
10:21And then cut it in half, nice and juicy, and then use the point of the reamer, hold the
10:29half of the lime in one hand and the point of a reamer stationary, and just turn the fruit.
10:34You get a lot of juice out of a lime with a reamer.
10:42And it goes very, very quickly.
10:45Same thing with lemons.
10:47This is great if you're making caipirinhas, lucen.
10:56A caipirinha, if you don't know, is the famous national alcoholic beverage of Brazil.
11:03Now look how much juice is just pouring out of this lemon.
11:07And this enables you to squiggle it around inside the shell of the fruit and extract the
11:15maximum amount of juice.
11:17Oftentimes when a recipe calls for a half a cup of lemon juice, a cup of fresh lemon
11:22juice will diligently squeeze the lemons and throw away the rinds.
11:26Here's a hint for saving that deliciously tart rind so that it can be used in the future
11:33for other cooking projects.
11:35I have five different tools that you can use to get the perfect lemon peel.
11:41You can use, of course, the little paring knife.
11:44This is a little bird's beak or curved blade knife.
11:48And it makes a very fine tool for just taking off the yellow peel of the lemon.
11:56This is great if you want to have a twist of lemon peel in your espresso coffee.
12:02If you want to have a twist of lemon peel in your club soda or in your martini.
12:07And you can put these little lemon peels in a little baggie, seal it up, and just keep
12:12it in the freezer.
12:13It stays fresh and delicious.
12:15Now, for larger pieces of lemon rind like this, you can use the regular potato peeler.
12:21Make sure you always scrub your lemons before you make your strips.
12:26And then just gently pull your peeler along the rind.
12:32Comes off very clean with very little of the white pith underneath.
12:37And this is great for making strips of candied lemon peel.
12:40Now, if you want to have a lot of lemon zest for, say, the meringue pie that you're going
12:47to be making, use a great grater.
12:49It is a wood rasp, really, adapted to kitchen use.
12:54And it is so sharp.
12:56And it takes just that bright lemon peel off the edge.
13:01And it's tender and fine.
13:03And it is great.
13:04And this is available, by the way, for Martha by Mail at MarthaStewart.com.
13:07It's so easy to use.
13:09And it can be used for all other kinds of things, like grating nutmeg or lime or orange.
13:14Now, this is called a lemon zester.
13:17It's very sharp.
13:19And you just take your lemon and just draw along your lemon peel.
13:24And you get long, beautiful strips of lemon peel.
13:28This, too, is great for candying.
13:31Wonderful.
13:31It's also great for use in certain vegetable dishes.
13:36But there you have a really pretty lemon zest.
13:39Now, if you want to have lemon strips, this tool is known as a channel knife or a stripper.
13:46It has one sharp blade.
13:48And you can just go round and round your lemon, taking off that lemon peel in one long strip.
13:54These are beautiful, used as decorations on Christmas desserts.
13:59You can use this to chop if you want a little bit coarser pieces of lemon peel in your final
14:04dish.
14:05Now, you see why it's cold zesting?
14:06Look at my hand.
14:07Can you see how shiny my hand is?
14:10When you're doing this, all that oil from the skin just pops right off.
14:15And that is what gives that wonderful, tart taste to the lemon peel and very fragrant.
14:21So, see?
14:22A nice, long strip.
14:23So, whether you want minced zest or grated zest, long peels, short peels, using the right lemon
14:30zester for the job, it's a good thing.
14:32Make your task easier and more enjoyable by having the right pot for the right thing.
14:38In Morocco, cooking is quite simple.
14:41A tagine like this, which is really a pot made out of clay, is placed on a tripod over
14:47hot coals.
14:48Everything, whole meals, are cooked in pots like these.
14:52In Mexico and Brazil and places south of the border, rice is cooked in great quantities
14:58in pots made out of aluminum like this.
15:01These are the best rice cookers, and I couldn't live without this particular kind of pot.
15:07Good, all-purpose kitchen pots and pans can be made out of stainless steel.
15:13Invented in 1913, the first stainless steel pots and pans were very thin.
15:19Everything burned.
15:20But now, Allclad makes a very wonderful pot that is stainless steel, good-looking, but
15:27the bottom is extremely heavy, filled with an aluminum alloy, which distributes the heat
15:33evenly and beautifully, and cooking is done very nicely in this kind of pot.
15:37In China, the pot of choice is the wok.
15:42And this is my wok that I must have bought 30 years ago.
15:46It's made out of a very, very thin steel, and it has been aged well.
15:52I never use soap on it.
15:54I just wash it out with hot water after use and a Chinese scrub brush, which is kind of
16:00a wooden brush, and then oil it lightly for next time use.
16:05But it works very well.
16:07Everything stir-fries beautifully.
16:09And then when I was in Japan, I found this little copper steamer basket or little grill
16:14basket.
16:15It's just like a screen.
16:16Lovely craftsmanship.
16:18And I use this in the bottom of the wok with a little moisture underneath for steaming vegetables
16:23or shellfish.
16:24And I also can use this same little basket on top of a grill for grilling small things
16:31like little neck clams or small mussels or oysters.
16:36It's these kinds of things that you find the world over that make your cooking more interesting.
16:43Another favorite of mine is the enamel-coated, heavy-duty cast iron.
16:50Le Creuset makes what I think is the best.
16:53These are very heavy, though, so you have to be prepared.
16:56But everything cooks beautifully in these pots.
16:59Another heavy kind of cookware, but indispensable for all kinds of basic cooking, is the cast iron
17:05skillet.
17:06This little fry pan I've used for many, many years.
17:09Well-seasoned and well-cleaned after each use.
17:12These will last for year after year after year.
17:15I have this size.
17:17I have a big skillet like this, which is for home fries on Saturday morning.
17:23Wonderful browning, browning techniques can be done in these pans.
17:27And then, for those of you who don't have a grill in your kitchen, this is a grill pan.
17:32You can cook in this as if you were cooking on an open fire.
17:38But, of course, my very favorite, as you can see from over my head, is copper.
17:43Copper allows for the maximum control in fine cooking.
17:47And if you've been trained classically or by any great chefs, you'll know that that's
17:52really their choice for cooking.
17:54I initially started my collection when I started traveling to France.
17:58I bought them in the little towns where they were made.
18:00And then I bought some more in New York.
18:03And then now, because they've become so expensive, I searched flea markets and tag sales and garage
18:10sales for these pots and pans.
18:13I just got a great bargain.
18:15This oval casserole or a cocutt I found for $5.
18:20It has its top, it's not damaged, and the tin lining is still perfect.
18:25The only trouble with copper is that, first of all, it is expensive.
18:29And second of all, if the tin lining, which is very important because if you try to cook
18:35in real, just unlined copper, everything would turn kind of green.
18:39If the tin lining has melted or worn off, you have to find a tin man to redo it.
18:45I just wanted to make the point that when you're going to invest in pots and pans, you look for
18:49quality, durability, and usefulness.
18:52If you have the right tools, every job that you have in your house can be done with ease
18:58and with exactitude.
19:00I'm talking today about simple hand tools for your kitchen.
19:03And when we place them out here, everybody says, oh, that's a lot of tools.
19:07Well, it's not really a lot of tools, but they're essential.
19:10An easy way to organize most of these tools is to put them in a big glass jar.
19:15You can have a crock, you can have a big copper pot, rubber scrapers.
19:19Let's talk about them.
19:20You should have flexible rubber scrapers like this that will easily clean out a bowl, a
19:26little bit larger for folding in egg whites in a souffle or into a cake.
19:30So those should go into your crock.
19:32This is a great rubber scraper because it acts as a scoop.
19:36So if you're making bread and you have to scoop up large amounts of sifted dry ingredients,
19:40this is the right rubber scraper.
19:42And it will also scrape.
19:43So that's a good one to have.
19:45And the last rubber scraper, this is a heatproof rubber scraper.
19:48This won't scorch.
19:50It won't stain.
19:50It won't absorb food odors.
19:52It won't melt around the edges like the old fashioned rubber scrapers.
19:56And it's supposedly heatproof to 800 degrees.
19:59And now you always should have at least one pair of really good tongs.
20:05This is a very good pair.
20:06It can just stand right here in the crock.
20:11Spatulas.
20:12This is the chef's favorite.
20:14Every chef wants to have this spatula.
20:17It's extremely thin, extremely flexible, wonderful for lifting up light fillets of fish.
20:24And it helps drain any fat or drippings from the bottom of that pan-fried fish fillet that you're cooking.
20:31Now, I don't put this in here.
20:33You can damage the top and you can bend it a little bit.
20:36So this one and this very flexible spatula, this is great for cookies.
20:41Because if you've done really thin tuile cookies, this lifts them right up.
20:47Very nice for getting under delicates.
20:49And this for large cakes, for turning over heavier foods.
20:53This one's more rigid and it is offset.
20:56That's what this bend in it means.
20:57This too should go into your baking drawer.
21:01Wooden spoons, you should have a variety.
21:03This is only two.
21:04I have many, many wooden spoons.
21:06But don't ever leave them on the stove while you're cooking.
21:09I always like to put a little saucer right here on the griddle or on the edge of the stove
21:14so that the dirty part of the spoon can rest in the saucer.
21:17Don't rest them on the pans, in the pans.
21:20Don't cook them.
21:21They're not to be cooked.
21:22They're only to stir.
21:24So those also can go right into the crock.
21:26This, invaluable for blanching vegetables.
21:29It's the Chinese strainer.
21:31It is wonderful for frying foods too.
21:34It's used to remove solids from liquid.
21:36So if you are frying chicken, this is very nice to pick up the chicken.
21:41Let a lot of the fat just drip out.
21:44If you're blanching vegetables, as I said, it's so easy to scoop them out of that boiling water.
21:48Also, if you're doing noodles or potatoes or whatever, this is great.
21:51Don't put them in the dishwasher.
21:53Same with the rubber scrapers.
21:54I just don't put them in the dishwasher.
21:56These are great spoons for stirring, for lifting, for scooping a solid, and one with holes in it for draining.
22:04These are stainless steel.
22:06They won't react badly with food.
22:07Now, whisks, if you do a lot of soufflés and a lot of wonderful late French-style cakes that don't
22:14have any leavening agents in them, you'll want this big balloon whip.
22:18It's wonderful.
22:19It whips a lot of air into the egg whites or heavy cream for whipped cream.
22:24This is good.
22:25It works really well.
22:27And that should go in the crock.
22:28This is for beating up eggs or stirring sauces in a pot.
22:33Same with this slightly smaller one.
22:35A variety of whisks is always good to have on hand.
22:37And these fit nicely in your crock.
22:40And then ladles.
22:41Because if you're making sauces or you're serving soups, ladles like this are very, very nice to have.
22:48Stainless steel.
22:49Very good.
22:50These can either hang on hooks in your kitchen or on a pot rack.
22:53Or they, too, can be put upside down in your crock.
22:58Notice I can see exactly what I have in my crock.
23:01If this were upside down, I wouldn't know which spatula that was.
23:05So that's why I put them with the heads up so that I can easily choose what I need in
23:10a very, very quick way.
23:12So that is great.
23:13And do you notice how this is sliding so nicely on my countertop?
23:17Well, it has little easy glides.
23:20Little pieces of felt or nice little sliders right on the bottom of my crock so that I'm not ever
23:28going to scratch my counters and I can move it really simply.
23:32This is a basic kit that every well-stocked kitchen, whether you're a beginner cook or an advanced cook, must
23:39have.
23:40And once you get really good at cooking, well, look back there, lots more tools.
23:46It becomes an obsession.
23:47This one, I think, I don't believe that I'm going to do yet.