Imported Tomato Strainer

What do you do when your new neighbor gives you a ton of plum tomatoes that are already nice and ripe? If you are me then you pull out your tomato strainer and put it to use.

Top of Strainer

I’ve had mine for about 15 or more years at this point and I love it, I got it in a little Italian import store way back then. It is still shiny and bright and is made of stainless steel. If you go looking for one of these let me suggest you get the tallest one you can find, the shorter ones make it hard to get a bowl under the places where the pulp or skins come out. This one stands at 12 inches tall and I would like one even taller if there was one. If you can’t find one in a store in your area and would really like one then give EBAY a try, I saw them on there when I did a search a few minutes ago, I always try to at least find a place for readers to get the things I put here as they often ask.

Tomato Strainer

Mine has suction on the bottom that adheres it to the counter or a table, a lot of the others have a clamp that adheres them, for me the suction is better as my counters are too thick for the clamp to hold onto well, plus the fact that if I did adhere it with a clamp to the counter top there is only one place I would be able to work and that would throw off the flow to get into and thru the kitchen area, so I would be getting interupted often.

These strainers are very simple to use. You either take whole or cut plum tomatoes and put them into the hopper at the top and turn the handle, a few turns and you get one bowl of tomato pulp and another bowl filled with the skins and seeds from those tomatoes. When fresh tomatoes are in season and very ripe you get an amazingly fresh tomato sauce with the addition of some fresh herbs and a bit of onion and garlic and a quick cook to thicken it up a little. I make a little sauce as soon as I finish processing the tomatoes and then freeze the rest of the pulp for later use. You just can’t beat a nice fresh tomato sauce, and having the rest in the freezer all ready to go into sauces or soups is really handy and tastes so good in the middle of a cold winter spell.

Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper

See this little smiley faced gadget? I love this thing!  It is made by one of my favorite kitchen gadget makers, Kuhn Rikon, and makes getting that wonderful fresh corn off the cob with no problems or struggle. Really, just pull this along the cob and it removes the corn beautifully. If you get some great corn but aren’t going to use it right away then get yourself one of these and remove the kernels, bag them up in freezer bags and freeze them. Or make yourself some nice corn chowder. Right now sweet corn is plentiful and cheap so I will be putting this little guy thru his paces. As I go thru the gadgets and things in my kitchen I am noticing something, many of my favorite most used and well made gadgets are made by this company, I never paid much attention before but now it seems to just stand out, they make some really useful things and the quality has held up on the ones I have and use a lot. I have good knife skills and can cut the corn off the cob with a sharp knife but this little guy actually makes that job more fun and I am all for a little fun in the kitchen. Seriously if you like fresh corn off the cob get yourself one of these little guys.

Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper

Meat Tenderizers

I thought I would start going through all the gadgets I have collected in my 40 years of playing in the kitchen and listing some of my favorites and tossing those that don’t perform well enough to earn the space they take up. First up are the tenderizers I use with meats and poultry, the three in the picture are my all time favorites, at the top is my Jacquard circa 1996, back then it cost me over $50 but it has repaid that well over the years. Next on the right side is a triangular mallet type, it has one side with fine spikes, one with bigger triangular spikes and one flat side, this one allows you to use the weight of the mallet more than the stregnth of your arm to do its job, it does its job very well indeed, you can flatten steaks into see thru scallops in seconds. The third at the bottom is the flat mallet, it is stainless steel and works well but not as well as the triangular one on the right, it has a large flat area but I think it has more to do with the leverage you have with the other smaller one that does the job better. This larger flat one is good for chicken breasts, you can hit the whole suface area of a breast in one hit. I threw out all the others I ahve had over the years, they more tore up the meats and poultry than flattened it, it I had to only chose one of the above I would keep the white handled triangular one, it is just an all around great gadget and gets the job done quickly with no arm fatique, I have this in a large size too, I remember I paid $12.99 for it at TJMaxx years ago but have seen them there recently too.