Tuesday, March 2, 2010

A Shear Thing

I love a good kitchen gadget- give me an apple peeler-corer, or an egg slicer or a whipped cream maker and I'll be entertained for hours. But the truth is that you don't ever really NEED any of those things, and you can get almost any cooking task accomplished, as long as you have a few solid and high-quality basics: a chef's knife, a paring knife, a serrated knife, and a good pair of kitchen shears. And (arguably) the greatest of these is shears.
You can use a sharp pair of scissors to do almost everything in the kitchen- butcher a chicken, mince herbs, snip the ends off green beans, cut parchment paper or twine, open packages, or `even cut wire or trim flower stems in a pinch (just don't tell my mom I do that). The trick is to get a good-quality stainless steel pair that come apart, so you can throw them in the dishwasher after every use without fear of rust, and sharpen the blades just like knives when they get dull from cutting wire (even though your mom told you not to). I also like pairs with non-slip handles (for when your hands are covered in chicken goo) and built-in bottle openers, for enjoying a tall frosty one when you're done. Here are three worthy pairs. Owning any of them would be shear luck.

Top left, Titanium kitchen shears, $13.50, from Williams-Sonoma; Right, Wusthof come-apart shears, $19.95 from Amazon.com; Bottom left, Shun Classic 'Taskmaster' shears, $39.95 from Sur La Table.

3 comments:

tiana16 said...

omg, perhaps you were a korean mom in a former lifetime?! korean women use scissors in the kitchen for everything, including to cut up the noodles in your soup before you're allowed to start eating them.

Anonymous said...

Hello. My wife and I bought our house about 6 months ago. It was a foreclosure and we were able to get a great deal on it. We also took advantage of the 8K tax credit so that definitely helped. We did an extensive remodeling job and now I want to refinance to cut the term to a 20 or 15 year loan. Does anyone know any good sites for mortgage information? Thanks!

Mike

Lily said...

T- your mom is a woman after my own heart!