GoKawiilYou don’t need chef training to be picky about the tools you use in the kitchen. That goes doubly for when you might be called to someone else’s kitchen, whether that’s a family holiday situation or a rental property. If you’re cooking for the group — by coercion or self-nomination — you have every right to want to use whatever tools and gadgets make you most confident about the outcome. Especially when feeding a crowd.
I’m known to travel with cooking supplies and have even taken my cake pans across the Atlantic. In my defense, I was A) making a multi-tiered birthday cake and B) making it for my future siblings-in-law, whom I was meeting for the first time. My then-boyfriend, now-husband, is a great cook, it must be said, but cake wasn’t a regular part of his repertoire, and I didn’t want to take my chances with whatever might have been lurking in the darkest corners of his kitchen cabinets.
I used to travel to summer beach rentals with all manner of basic tools: tongs, a whisk, a rubber spatula, you name it, plus a fleet of knives, a good bottle of olive oil and bagged-up samples of my entire spice rack.
After a couple of years, I realized that most beach rentals, at least on the East Coast, were pretty well-equipped, and I was happier not having to schlep my entire kitchen to feel empowered to make dinner. I might stash a chef’s knife, just in case, but more often than not, even that would stay tucked in my bag.
Kitchen gear at a rental house is always hit-or-miss. Connect Images/Getty
There is only one tool, however, whose utility is so singular that it can’t be substituted, that, in my experience, is the key between a good dinner and a great dinner (and dessert) and that, surprisingly, you can’t always reliably find in other people’s kitchens.
My Microplane, myself
The Microplane is an essential tool I can’t count on finding in the drawers of an Airbnb. Pamela Vachon/CNET
Yes, it’s a Microplane. If you’re now puzzling over how a handheld zester of all things is that important a tool, well, some of you have never enjoyed scraped-together key lime pie for breakfast at the beach, and it shows.
But seriously. There is no other tool that does what a Microplane does to the same degree. Using a paring knife to gingerly cut the rind off citrus fruits without taking the pith with you and then mincing that up? I’ve done it. Hard pass.
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