Posted on Wed Jul 2, 06:48 AM in Food
Only good for one thing… and it ain’t multitasking.
My first job, at 16, was working in the kitchen of River Wildlife. I knew the basics—I’d had Home Ec in junior high and taken it multiple times during summer school sessions—but not much else. Which was fine, because I was Cook’s Assistant I, basically a dishwasher and prep person.
I credit this job, which I had intermittently through my freshman year in college, with teaching me a lot about the possibilities of food. Unlike most of the other Kohler restaurants, the cooks at RW were very down-to-earth and ran a fun kitchen, letting us try leftovers and even cooking for us on occasion. I asked a lot of questions and they were kind enough to explain things to me. Mostly, it was watching them turn familiar foodstuffs into unfamiliar, but incredibly tasty, dishes… all seemingly pretty easy, too. I say “easy” because with few exceptions, the way we turned food out in that kitchen involved very basic techniques (or at least quickly-learnable ones) and readily available tools. Tasty food, it turned out, involved… well, tasty food, not always fancy implements.
It wasn’t until after college when I got back into caring about cooking (maybe I simply had the budget to begin caring). I started getting good recipes and stocking a simple kitchen (good cutting board, chef’s knife, etc.). Later, when I felt I could splurge, I indulged in a couple Cuisinart’s, a stand mixer, and a crock pot. But ultimately, I did a lot by hand. I thought most people did, too.
Turns out I wasn’t paying attention. Not long ago I signed up (or was signed up) to receive Williams-Sonoma emails. Among many things, they seem to really push what I like to call single-tasking kitchen implements. A sampling:
Sell it and they will come? What gives here? Unless you are spending hours doing nothing but mincing herbs, or work in a kitchen that whips you unless your avocado slices are nothing but capital-U Uniform, who needs this stuff? I look at designer kitchens and now wonder if half the storage space is for all these single-tasking tools. People! Good knives are your friends. Learn how to wield a well-balanced chef’s knife and use every bit of it to peel that garlic clove, pit that avocado, mince those herbs! Do your hamburgers, for Christ’s sweet sake, need to be identical? Salad scissors? Mango pitters???
When did we all turn into Opus?
In a weird way, it all sounds like the 1950’s “In the future, things will be EASIER!” campaigns… except here we are, with implements that purport ease, but really deliver clutter to the consumer, and profits to the companies. I appreciate how W-S tries to hook you with a nice recipe—I like recipes, and have tried several—but to ensnare the weak with promises of “better food through specialized utensils” is just wrong. The marketing tools work. The culinary ones do not.
Since you don’t have easy access to the Food Network, you mightn’t be aware that on a weekly basis, Alton Brown rails agains “unitaskers” on Good Eats. He says the only unitasker in his kitchen is the fire extinguisher.
And the kitchens that need capital-U Uniform avocado slices have CIA-trained prep cooks who do it by hand. :)
I think the unitasker/multitasker paradigm is kind of dumb. Buy things you will use. Don’t buy things you won’t use. (Unless they cost a dollar and make awful gifts.) I don’t know why I waited so long to buy a waffle iron (unitasker, bought it last month), but I don’t know why I have a coffee machine (unitasker) a coffee grinder (unitasker) or a microwave (unitasker) because I never use any of them.
Nice post. I agree with you about that W-S stuff. At the same time, I think there are a few unitask things as Redchuck mentioned that really do make cooking easier, depending on your style of cooking. For instance, I LOVE my lime squeezer. http://www.kitchencollection.com/Temp_Products.cfm?sku=01021281 I use it almost every day. It gets more juice out of the lime than I can by just squeezing with my fingers, doesn’t aggravate my fore-arm tendons and keeps the seeds out. But if you don’t cook with limes juice very often – totally useless!
