When you shop for items in the kitchen, you will come across dozens of tools and options to make cooking easier. In many cases, you may find some of your best kitchen tools at the hardware store. Household tools often serve multiple purposes, and many of the tools can double as kitchen options.
Purchase new versions of each of the following tools to use exclusively in the kitchen. Each tool serves a specific purpose and will speed up your cooking process while eliminating a lot of the hassles along the way.
1. Power Drill
A power drill and a kitchen may sound like a disaster, but you have multiple ways to utilize a drill within the kitchen. Easily create a mixer by attaching a mixer or spoon to the end of the drill. The quick rotations allow you to mix and sift items quickly. When you use a hand drill, you have complete control on the directions you move the mixer around.
Many drills allow you to easily reverse speeds and go in the opposite direction. For example, connect a power drill to a rotating cheese grater. The cheese grater will spin a lot faster than a hand lever and provide you with freshly shredded cheese. You could also insert a clean drill pit into the center of a fruit like a pear and hold a peeler up against the skin as the drill spins around.
2. Hammer
If you need to crush ingredients down or flatten meat, skip out on the typical kitchen mallets and go straight to the steel hammer. The strength of a hammer will speed up the crushing process. For example, you may need to make a graham cracker crust or break up some cookies for a dessert.
When using a hammer, protect the surface underneath with a hand towel or thick cutting board. The hammer is often more direct and works better than other options like a rolling pin.
3. Sharp Chisel
When cooking and baking, you often need to take small sections off of big blocks of chocolate and cheese. One of the easiest ways to do this is with a sharp chisel. A chisel can glide across the surfaces of food and take off just the amount you need.
A chisel can also create curled pieces. Curled pieces of chocolate look delicious on a cake, and curled pieces of cheese add an elegant touch to a salad. Keep a set of chisels in the kitchen to have different sizes to choose from.
4. Ice PickWhen testing baked desserts like cakes and cupcakes, you will typically use a butter knife or toothpick. A butter knife can disrupt the shape of a cake, and a toothpick is often too short to stick in far. An ideal solution is an ice pick. Long and thin, ice picks can go deep inside a baked dessert.
When you pull the pick out, see if the baked treat is ready. The thin size of ice picks makes them easy to clean and reuse.
5. Drywall Knives
Once you're done with the ice pick, pull out a drywall knife to frost a dessert treat. The wide and flat design of a drywall knife makes it easy to cover large surfaces. The knives work well with large sheet cakes. When you finish frosting, use the bigger drywall knives to cut even slices of a dessert. The thin sides slide easily into a cake and come out cleanly.
6. Hacksaw
Freezing meat is ideal for saving it, but you may run into problems when you want to portion out the sections you thaw. One way to cut meat into specific sizes is with a hacksaw. The teeth on the saw easily grip into frozen meat and often work better than a knife. Achieve more accurate cuts with a hacksaw. Many saws are strong enough to cut through any bones as well.
Shop for all of your hardware and tools with us at
Koontz Hardware. Completely transform your cooking prep with our massive selection of tools.
