Nifty Kitchen Tools

I enjoy my minimalist kitchen and cooking.  While I like playing with an array of kitchen gadgets once, I often get bored and put them down quickly.  I find that having a good set of knives and pans and a small handfull of tools to be the best option. Lately, I’ve found it fun to mince vegetables fine for recipes (such as the meatballs and simple sauce). While a processor would perform the task quicker and more uniformly, I enjoy the rhythmic chopping and fewer appliances to clean up.  Here are some items that substitute for fancier, specialized gadgets in my kitchen:

–Dental floss – this is a trick I picked up from my mom. Dental floss is great to cut items that are slightly soft and adhere to knife blades. I often use dental floss to halve boiled eggs when making deviled eggs. Some people use it to cut gelatin-firmed items or cheesecakes.

--Scissors -- I often use my kitchen shears to cut herbs, chives, basil leaves, right over the pan as I cook.  I also find a sharp pair of scissors great for cutting raw or not-quite crispy bacon. At Korean restaurants, they often use scissors to cut the main dish meats of bulgogi (Korean spiced beef).

–Pan instead of hammer or tenderizer – I have used a pan to flatten chicken breasts, as well as a jerry-rigged pannini press. I haven’t tried weighing the top pan to make pressed chicken as in Chicken Diablo, but would like to do that soon. I also use old wine bottles to crush nuts and things.

–Ziploc bags for pastry bags — I find that a snipped ziploc bag makes a great dispenser for items that normally require a pastry bag. You can use this to fill deviled eggs, emergency frosting dispenser, melted chocolate, and a range of other items.  I’ve also seen people use a snipped bag as a way to skim the fat off of homemade stock, (fat rises to the top, snipped edge is at the bottom), but I haven’t tried this myself.

I’d be interested in other makeshift kitchen tools that you use in your kitchen.

shared at Works for Me Wednesday and Frugal Friday