Already have an account?
Get back to the
Food & Recipes

The One Cooking Tool Alton Brown Says Is Missing From Every Home Kitchen

Tags:

Alton Brown obviously knows a thing or two about whipping up good eats. So when he says there’s a cooking tool most home kitchens are missing out on, we listened up.

The Food Network star shared his personal kitchen essentials while chatting with Men’s Journal. As you’ve probably already guessed, Brown mentioned a few tricks that would have never crossed our minds — like using dry ice to quickly freeze leftover chunks of avocado to save for later. “People are afraid of dry ice, but really, is it more dangerous than open flames?” he reasoned. “Just be safe.” He makes a good point, but we still aren’t sure we’re ready to handle something so potentially painful just yet. 

Brown also gave some less intimidating tips, like how he thinks most people are missing a simple yet seriously handy item in their kitchen cupboards. “I don’t understand how people can exist without a board scraper or a dough blade,” he explained. He’s so baffled by it, in fact, that he apparently makes sure to pack one in his suitcase every time he travels. “I spend a lot of time in AirBnBs and they never have one in the kitchen.”

You might be wondering how a humble board scraper could be so beneficial — or what one even is. They are broad metal or plastic blades (but not sharp) that are typically used for shaping ingredients in recipes like bread or pizza dough, but Brown explained how they can be helpful in other ways, too. “I move things around with it. If you chop up a bunch of ingredients, how are you going to move them all around? I use it as an extension of my hand. I can use it to clean a counter quickly. I find it’s an extremely simple but useful addition to any kitchen.” 

And here we’ve all been using our regular hands to move ingredients around like total amateurs. If you want to up your culinary game (and make Brown proud), you can invest in your own board scraper for relatively cheap (Buy on Amazon, $6.86). It couldn’t be easier to cook like a pro!

We write about products we think our readers will like. If you buy them, we get a small share of the revenue from the supplier.  

Use left and right arrow keys to navigate between menu items. Use right arrow key to move into submenus. Use escape to exit the menu. Use up and down arrow keys to explore. Use left arrow key to move back to the parent list.