If you aren't familiar with the kitchen, or you've just been curious about a weird looking kitchen gadget you've seen somewhere, here is an explanation of some of the things you may have seen or wondered about.
1. Off Set Spatula
Kind of sort of looks like it could be a really skinny spatula, but these are used in baking. Their purpose is to help one easily frost a cupcake or cake. They are better than using a knife because of the large surface area that comes in contact with frosting. It is easy to push the frosting around evenly and smoothly. One applies a dab of frosting to a cupcake and then uses the utensil to slowly and evenly work the frosting round. You can use the tip to make little designs. They come in many sizes according to your project. The biggest ones are for cakes.
2. A Garlic Press
Pieces of garlic are pretty small and come in these oblong shapes that can make it difficult to dice or cut without getting your fingers in the way, so you peel off the skin, and then put the garlic inside, and then press. The garlic will come through the holes on the one side. If you need more of a garlic paste consistency, you can use the mallet side to further smash the garlic.
3. Potato Masher
These come in a lot of shapes but all do the same thing. If you want mashed potatoes, or a guacamole, or to mash some fruit for a jam, you can use any one of these to get that consistency. The food item needs to be soft or typically cooked or boiled first, like soft fruits like avocados or boiled potatoes before mashing.
4. Flavor Injector
It looks like a needle, because it is, except for food. As the name suggests, it is for injecting flavor, in this case, into meat. You would create a liquid based seasoning mixture, place it into the canister and then usually in the thickest parts of raw meat, like the breast of a chicken or into a steak, you inject the flavor inside so that as the meat cooks, the seasoning permeates the meat rather than just spice the outside skin or layer of meat which may leave the inside of the meat dry and flavorless. You can find ones which look more like a doctors needle that are plastic with measurements along the sides.
5. Herb Scissors
These are used as the name suggests, to easily cut herbs. Hold the herbs like a bunch of cilantro, or basil, in one hand, and cut them with the other as fine as you'd like. The handles are usually green so that you can remember that these are for food and not for any other projects. You never want to risk cross contamination by using any old scissors to handle your food.
6. Avocado Slicer
If you like nice even slices of avocado, this is the tool for you. Cut the avocado in half, remove the pit, and then line the outer rim of the gadget with the edge of the flesh, and run it evenly and smoothly towards you scooping down into the flesh until you've got your slices.
7. Collapsible Vegetable Steamer
This is one of my favorites because it's like some kind of cool metal origami, but it's purpose is for steaming vegetables, though I've used it for steaming dumplings as well. The metal basket sits on 3 legs with a small center pole with a loop hook on top. You open up the metal basket into a pot/pan big enough for it to fit evenly inside either with the sides raised or spread out like pictured, but not so small that the basket can't be covered with the lid of the pot. Add water into the pot all the way until you see it just under the holes in the basket, and heat it up, and then plop your veg or dumplings (line basket with parchment paper first) on top and cover the pan with a lid until they are properly steamed. When done use a knife or something that's not your valuable fingers, to pull the entire basket out of the pan using the loop on the center pole.
8. Crab Crackers, Mallet, and Forks
If you see these, someone is a crab lover for sure. A crab mallet (the wooden device) is used to break the outer shell of a whole crab. The crab crackers are used to hold a piece of crab leg or lobster leg in place whilst you crack open the shells (similar to a hand held nut cracker which can also be used for the same purpose). The tiny crab forks are used after the shells have been cracked, to dig into the shell and retrieve any meat that you can't get out by hand.
I know what all of these are bcause i tried catering for a while at college although i definitely got used there to just make lunches for the college but, we used the spatula and the garlic press all the time, people really don't call them off-set spatulas though jsut spatulas because people use them for cake making too to level the icng or chocolate they put on it, there is an amazing trick people use with chocolate and that's by running the spatula under hot water then smoothing out the chocolate and it makes it all shiny too :D.
Typically you inject into the thickest parts of the meat like the breast of a whole chicken or just chicken breasts by themselves. You couldn't need much into the wing because there isn't that much meat there to begin with. The depth depends on the thickness of the meat. Aim in at an angle towards the center or into the fleshier parts of the meat.
Offset spatula is used in the process of making Blue Cheese ( Stilton )! its used to seal all the air holes in the cheese to prevent pre mature mold growth.
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