Unitasker hall of fame

[Lapin d'Argent]

One wonders how Alton Brown brews his coffee.

My favorite unitasker is my c. 1940 Juice-O-Mat, a deco-streamliner-heavy-chrome lever-operated citrus juicer that has pride of place on my counter and is "only" used for juicing lemons and limes for cocktails... which is almost as common an event as my neighbors would like.

I must have been composing my post when you posted this. I have the juicer. And I also have a very classy Ice-O-Mat from the same era. It is an unusual color too. Will post a photo later if I can remember where I put the thing...

Sometimes the classics simply can't be improved upon.

I have lusted after both these items for a very, very long time. When you look that beautiful, who cares if you can do more than one thing really well? I think that's kind of a general rule of life.

[Moopheus]

My knife. I only use it to cut things. (No, I don't even smash garlic cloves with it.)

Indeed. Not only that, but many of us (most of us?) have more than one knife, because some knives are special-purpose, or at least better for some applications than others.

I don't particularly want to clutter up my kitchen with gadgets that are basically substitutes for knowing how to use a knife or some other basic piece of kitchen equipment, but I am not going to give up my waffle iron, coffee grinder, etc., because, as noted, those things just do those tasks better and more efficiently than any other way.

[Lilija]

As I'm making dinner, I realize my other favorite unitasker (if it could even be called that?) is my rice cooker. When I bought it, I was so doubtful...ah, I'll never use this thing, maybe once a month.

Seriously, I use it three times a week...for rice, steaming dumplings and tortillas. Rice puddings and pilafs, plain old white rice.

[Porthos]

I don't particularly want to clutter up my kitchen with gadgets that are basically substitutes for knowing how to use a knife or some other basic piece of kitchen equipment, but I am not going to give up my waffle iron, coffee grinder, etc., because, as noted, those things just do those tasks better and more efficiently than any other way.

I have worked on my knife skills a lot in the last few years (I've been cooking for 4 decades) but I find mincing garlic to be a royal pain in the postierior. I still prefer my unitasking garlic press.

[lesliec]

... my other favorite unitasker (if it could even be called that?) is my rice cooker.

My rice cooker is NEVER used for cooking rice - just for sous vide. How would we classify that?

[David A. Goldfarb]

I have a sturdy Teutonic metal egg slicer, because it's a beautiful thing, and my three-year-old son is more likely to eat hard boiled eggs more often if it means he gets to use the egg slicer. Interestingly, he prefers the whites and leaves most of the yolk on his plate--certainly a healthy preference, even if it runs contrary to the opinion of everyone else on the planet.

I have a duotasking pitter, good for cherries and large olives, but for small olives, I have a unitasker. Alton Brown is welcome to poke himself in the hand with a skewer or whatever he uses to pit olives without one.

My zester also has a canelleur as they often do. Isn't that an efficient multitasking tool?

I don't often use a garlic press, but I have one, and it can also press disks of fresh ginger.

[John Rosevear]

I must have been composing my post when you posted this. I have the juicer. And I also have a very classy Ice-O-Mat from the same era. It is an unusual color too. Will post a photo later if I can remember where I put the thing...

Sometimes the classics simply can't be improved upon.

I have an Ice-O-Mat too -- it sits on the counter next to the juicer, actually. Mine's the funky barrel-shaped model where the mechanism sits atop a little chrome pail. It gets a similar amount of use -- all those tiki drinks really are better with crushed ice.

I also have a Can-O-Mat, but that's currently languishing in a drawer.

[heidih]

Having moved from a large kitchen to a cottage, I really downsized and stored all but the essentials. The Ice-O- Matic ice crusher made the cut- the only real unitasker - not counting things like mortar and pestle, manual can opener, etc..that I brought to the cottage. As the weather warms up it will be in daily use.

[Corinna]

I actually use my egg slicer for mushrooms an strawberries as well, but am guilty of many other unitaskers, despite limited amount of storage.

[Darienne]

My zester also has a canelleur as they often do. Isn't that an efficient multitasking tool?

Please elaborate on the canelleur and its uses. Thanks.

[ray goud]

Wow! I don't ever remember so many replies to a post in as short a time as this one. Talk about touching a raw nerve. Everyone has touched on, in a very short time, all the salient points about the whole unitasker concept, including many satirical swipes at Alton Brown. I only wish I could have seen the original post and added something before others had. As it is, just about everything has been said, and very well, too. I can only add that I too hope that the original dinner guests were perhaps joking in a subtle way.

Ray

[Dakki]

I like the idea that you should avoid having a bunch of single-purpose items, if only to avoid clutter, but there's any number of specialized tools that make life much, much easier for the dedicated home cook. Funny thing is, Brown does use unitaskers. At least I've never seen him make soup in a coffeepot.

I have a whole bunch of them but the one that sees the most use is probably a rack that used to belong to a small toaster oven that broke down. These days it roasts chiles over the gas burner on the stove.

And how exactly are you supposed to make real salsa without a molcajete?

[HungryC]

HungryC the Angel-food Pan doesn't count because you can use it for holding corn that you want to shell

tracey

and do the beer can chicken thing on it.

Except that I already own a dedicated beer-can chicken stand! (talk about a unitasking item)

[Shel_B]

One 8" non stick pan that I use only for omelets.

Just because you only use the pan for omelets doesn't make the non-stick pan a unitasker. After all, it can be used for making sauces, frying and sautéing meat or vegetables ...

[andiesenji]

Earlier today I took a look at my kitchen and counted more than fifty unitask items.

The first one I noted was my seltzer bottle a unitasker of the first degree as there is no possible way to use it for anything else. (Except as a large paper weight!)

Less obvious is my antique marmalade cutter which produces very fine slivers of citrus peel and that is all it does. There are some people who would argue that a knife would suffice but I can't cut several pounds of citrus peel with uniformly fine slivers of peel as the final result.

My tamago pan is not used for any other task nor is a three section blini pan.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Please elaborate on the canelleur and its uses. Thanks.

Here's an example (nicer than mine) of a zester-canelleur--

http://www.la-carpe.com/outils-de-cuisine/699-zesteur-canelleur-rosle-en-inox.html

The canelleur ("channeler") is the loop on the side, and you can use it for cutting nice curls of citrus peel without too much pith, or for cutting channels down the length of a carrot as a garnish, or for cutting a band around the skin of new potatoes for steaming or boiling so they can expand without cracking.

In the kit that contains my zester-canelleur there's also a tomato stem scooper, which I think must be the ultimate unitasker.

It also has a butter curler. These things were all part of a Messermeister garde manger set that my father gave me once for my birthday, figuring that there were probably a few things in there that I didn't already have, and there were.

[ScoopKW]

I have two egregious unitaskers -- both Italian. And you can pry them away from my cold, dead hands...

1) A La Pavoni lever-actuated espresso machine. I will never be without this essential piece of equipment. No pumps to break, relatively easy to clean. And once learned, a perfect shot is only minutes away. If it wasn't so late, I'd pull a shot right now.

2) A Nuova Simonelli panini grill. It weighs more than 50 pounds. It often trips my circuit breaker. And there is no substitute. The panini craze will never die out in my house.

[Pierogi]

In the kit that contains my zester-canelleur there's also a tomato stem scooper, which I think must be the ultimate unitasker.

Ohhhhhh, not so, sir ! The tomato stem scooper is also quite, quite useful to hull and de-core strawberries, same princple as the tomato stemming action. But it is most especially spiffy to seed and de-vein chili peppers. That is probably what I use mine for most often. Its just the perfect size to fit into a nice, plump jalapeno. You cut off the stem end, halve the pepper, and ziiiiiiiip, ready to slice and dice. MUCH better than using my nails, and with less unfortunate side effects when I forget to wash my hands.....

[Beebs]

My mom's got a green bean/haricot frencher that us kids got her for a joke. It's a contraption with two blades. You thread the bean in one end and a perfectly frenched bean comes out the other side. Completely useless for any other application.

[andiesenji]

My mom's got a green bean/haricot frencher that us kids got her for a joke. It's a contraption with two blades. You thread the bean in one end and a perfectly frenched bean comes out the other side. Completely useless for any other application.

No, I have one that has never been near a bean but has split hundreds of yards of ribbon.

[David A. Goldfarb]

This has got to be the best unitasker--

http://www.testberichte.de/p/lurch-tests/spargelschaeler-testbericht.html

Be sure to watch the video.

[Dakki]

Ahahahahaha. She looks so happy her white asparagus are all nice and even!

[Porthos]

Ok I watched the video but I can't figure out what it is.

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's an asparagus peeler. If you google "asparagus peeler" or perhaps "Spargelschäler," you'll find a surprising variety of implements for this purpose.

[JAZ]

A couple of thoughts:

First, I find that most people who belittle "uni-taskers" do so out of a misguided feeling that it's somehow macho to cook with only a handful of tools -- they tend to say things like "All you need to cook is a chef's knife, a wooden spoon, a bowl and a pot." Then they immediately start adding things on (sort of like the Steve Martin character in The Jerk -- "all I need is this paddle game. . . and my thermos. And this chair, but that's all I need.") and pretty soon they have a a full kitchen outfitted. I don't know why, in cooking, so many people feel it's better to work without good tools -- would they try to play tennis with a ping-pong paddle?

Second, as has been mentioned, the more focused one is in cooking, the more specialized tools one needs. (Chocolate dipping tools can only do one thing, but if you're dipping chocolates, it would be foolish not to have them.) From what I've seen, professional chefs and cooks have more uni-taskers than amateurs. For instance, when I worked at Sur La Table, we carried an egg topper that cost $50 or $60, and I always thought it was one of the most ridiculous things ever. Until a brunch chef from the Ritz Carlton came in and bought two. She regularly served 200 soft cooked eggs in a typical Sunday brunch and told me that the expensive egg topper was the only one she could count on. All the sudden it seemed like a very practical item -- maybe not for me, but certainly for her.

Third, depending on how you define a "task," almost any kitchen tool can be described as a uni-tasker. As has been mentioned, knives do nothing but cut food, stoves do nothing but cook food. The list is endless, and includes all kinds of items that those Steve Martin types find indispensable when pressed -- scales, measuring cups and spoons, strainers, etc.

The deciding factor in whether to buy a particular kitchen tool should not be how many tasks it can perform. We tell our beginning students to consider three things when deciding whether to buy a tool: how often you need to perform a task, how well the tool does the task, and how hard it is to do the task without the tool. Then you balance those considerations -- along with the cost -- and you have your answer about the usefulness of the tool.