The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

most high-quality forged blades) useless. Second, even the best models provide only an adequate edg ...

Shopping and Maintenance When buying a water stone, look for a large one, at least 2½ inches wide a ...

ever slicing your onions thin enough for that soup). And, again, remember to hone your knife on a ...

Step 4a: Begin the First Stroke. Hold your knife with the blade edge pointing away from you. Pl ...

thumb (with really-fine-grit stones, though say, 2,000 or above, you won’t feel it). It may take up to ...

towel for this purpose, as the grit from the stone will never come out. After thoroughly drying th ...

Top row: honing steel; middle row: small offset spatula, Y-shaped vegetable peeler; bottom row, from left ...

ESSENTIAL SMALL ELECTRIC TOOLS There’s no shortage of fun gadgets for the kitchen, but there are only a few tha ...

the best inexpensive model, which is slower and more difficult to use but still perfectly serviceable, ...

stick with the OXO (that’s what I use). Otherwise, the Salter Aquatronic wins. Digital Timer/Stopwatch Did you kn ...

tool, and you don’t need a silly infomercial from the 1980s to tell you that. Want a pitcherful of mar ...

Finely chop dry ingredients like nuts and bread crumbs. In order to do this, a processor must have ...

mounted motor that drives the blade via a belt. Failing at even the easiest of tasks, those proc ...

It should have a paddle attachment to cream butter and sugar effortlessly, as well as make short w ...

Here, the Cuisinart’s all-metal Large Meat Grinder Attachment ($128.95) has an advantage over Kitchen ...

Vitamix Pro Series. This is what every professional kitchen I’ve ever worked in has used, and wit ...

upgraded to a fancy-pants model with a fuzzy logic processor¶ and a nifty latching top that keeps ...

aren’t obvious until you start using it regularly. I keep one on my cutting board whenever I’m doi ...

guarantee that if you don’t already have one, putting a saltcellar on your counter will make ...

Isn’t it annoying trying to chop carrots on your cutting board when that little pile of parsley ...