Christopher Kimball is a chef, cookbook author and the creator of Milk Street (a magazine and cooking school) — and he's also a friend of Rach's (and our show). He's pretty much our go-to guy when it comes to the latest and greatest kitchen tools.
Chef Chris stopped by to share his current kitchen obsessions, and each one of these trendy gadgets helps make cooking more efficient.
Seriously — from a storage bag that keeps your onions cool and dry to a food scale that's easy to read and zero out, Chris says these items address kitchen frustrations we've ALL experienced and make your life so much easier.
1. Palmpress
(Sold in Chris Kimball's Milk Street online store.)
"Palmpress has invented a single serving French press," Chris says.
The reusable, one-cup coffee press is small enough for your home or office, or even to take on-the-go. "If you travel like I do, you can take it with you," Chris adds.
It takes about three minutes to make a cup, he says. Watch Chris demonstrate how it works in the video above.
2. Zipstrip Herb Stripper by Chef'n
"When you get a recipe, the worst thing is [when] it says thyme leaves, or it says parsley leaves," Chris says. "You need cups of this stuff, so what do you do?"
For herbs with woody stems, Chris says you can use this tool to help you separate herb leaves from their stems.
Whether you're baking like Chris or making pasta and pizza like Rach, it's important to weigh your flour and other dry ingredients.
You'll need a digital scale, though, which tend to be big, cumbersome and expensive, according to the chef.
This is a compact digital scale — it folds up for easy storage.
"Some scales, the read-out is right under the bowl, so you can't see it," Chris says. That's not the case with this particular scale, because the digital display sticks out in the front so it's easy to read.
"What's also good is then you can tare it," Chris adds. (Translation: All you have to do is press a button in order to zero out the scale before adding the next ingredient to the bowl, rather than moving ingredients on and off.)
See how the scale works in the video above.
Many of us store our onions in a wire fruit basket or a wooden bowl, but do you really need your onions out on your table or counter all the time?
"This is a bag which stores onions," Chris says. The bag helps keep your onions cool and dry, and you can hang it up so the onions are out of the way until you need one.
So handy!
5. Rachael Ray Bench Scrape Shovel
Collecting chopped vegetables and other cut-up ingredients with your knife can be tedious (not to mention dangerous if you face the knife blade the wrong way, Rach says!).
That's why she made this bench scrape shovel, which is essentially a bench scrape with sides.
"You can use it for making pastry and to scrape your 'bench' (or your working space)," Rach says. "But I call it the food mover, because when I chop a lot of stuff, it efficiently [picks up] the food."
"It's also ribbed," Chris says, "I like this, because if your hands get a little slick, it holds onto it."
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