I Test Kitchen Tools for a Living. This $12 Staple Is the One Item I’ll Never Give Up.

A person using a bench scraper to portion dough balls on a wooden cutting board.

I acquired my first bench scraper during culinary school eight years ago, where I was taught to use it to maneuver sticky dough. However, it wasn’t until my first, very humbling day as a line cook at a bustling Los Angeles restaurant that I quickly realized a scraper could do much more than that.

As I stole tear-filled glances around the kitchen between hours of chopping — it was the onions, okay? — I noticed that my colleagues all had one familiar tool in common at their very tidy workstations: a bench scraper. But they weren’t using it to portion dough for baked goods as I had done many times before. Instead, they used the scraper as a mode of transportation, to cleanly and efficiently move piles of chopped ingredients from point A to point B without making an absolute mess (as I was). I came to work the next day with a bench scraper in hand.

This was just the tip of the iceberg in unlocking a bench scraper’s full potential. After working with and observing many cooks in the kitchen over the years, I’ve learned that most seasoned chefs swear by a bench scraper for one reason or another. For some folks, it’s a must-have baking tool that gracefully scrapes away stubborn bits of dough caked onto a cutting board or loose flour collecting in the hard-to-reach crevices of a kitchen countertop. For others, it’s a sharp edge for portioning pizza or pie-crust dough into the appropriate size and shape.

Of course, I also use and love my bench scraper for all of those reasons. However, its versatile meal-prepping abilities are what make it indispensable to me, and now I use it nearly daily to assist with small, mundane tasks like smashing garlic or keeping my cutting board clutter-free (a cardinal rule in the kitchen). I use it to portion dough for pizza night or to frost homemade birthday cakes. It also comes in handy when I’m cleaning up. Wherever I enter the kitchen, my bench scraper comes with me.

After spending almost a decade working in professional kitchens and as a food writer, I’ve acquired at least five different bench scrapers, yet all pale in comparison to my trusted sidekick: the OXO Good Grips Stainless Steel Scraper & Chopper.



from Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World https://ift.tt/CouvKzV
via IFTTT

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