Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
OK, I realize that it’s kind of pathetic to wax poetic over a kitchen utensil and mourn its “passing.”
But I’m gonna do it anyway. (It’s the holidays; be charitable.)
I once had a soft, bendy plastic fork (with just two tines) that was my favorite kitchen tool. Boy, that thing was great for stirring hot or cold ingredients and stabbing food and scraping bits and getting into corners of pans like nobody’s business. Over the years, I went through lots of them.
Until I couldn’t find them anymore.
I searched high and low, then had my family and friends look for them at Bed Bath & Beyond, Target, Walmart, and dollar stores, and spent hours online, all in vain. Just like that massive bag of popcorn at Costco I fell in love with in 2012 (really, it was the size of a toddler), my favorite cooking forks were — poof — gone, never to return.
The vanishing fork incident was around 2015, and I’m still nostalgic. Crazy. But avid home cooks and bakers will know what I’m talking about. You find that one tool that’s your go-to, that’s so indispensable you seldom go through a day without using it.
I now have one that’s similar, but it’s not as pliable. (Before you try to help, there are a LOT of soft kitchen forks out there, but none of them are like the one I had. They are too wide, too big, too hard, too wrong.)
So I adapt — grumpily. Now I use a wooden spoon to scrape; a metal fork to stab; tongs to turn; a silicone spatula to blend and swoop.
Then, last holiday season, I was gifted my new favorite kitchen tool, sent by my sister: a Danish dough whisk.
Turns out it was something I didn’t know I needed.
You know that point when you’re done beating cookie batter in your mixer, then add the nuts and chocolate bits but can’t use the beater attachment cause the recipe calls for “stirring”? Or when you don’t feel like taking out the giant mixer for a quick, small batch? Or you’re making bread or pasta and need something more than a spoon to blend before kneading? That’s when you use this tool. It truly doesn’t take a lot of hand strength or effort, making the mixing of batter less of a chore.
A few friends had that whisk in their Christmas stockings that holiday, and I just ordered one for my niece who is coming from New England for a visit next week.
My BFF and I recently met up for our annual chocolate-chip-cookie-making fest. We make a double batch, so I can freeze the little dough balls for whenever a sweet treat is needed. She was thrilled to use that Danish dough whisk to make quick work of the process.
You might be, too.
