Essential Spatulas for Cooking and Baking

Feature, Gear, Tips — By reginavarolli

While I agree 100% with vmac in the article Kitchen gadgets you think you need (but don’t), that egg-poachers, garlic peelers, julienne slicers, and choppers aren’t essential equipment, I do differ with his opinion on spatulas.  To me, an active home cook (who also bakes) can have more than two spatulas without it being too many.  I myself do have too many to admit, but a lot are doubles (which is handy when cooking with your partner or friends, or when multi-tasking).  But here’s the nine-yes 9-spatulas I consider essential, and why.

Pictured in the image, left to right:

1)      Small, off-set metal baker’s spatula:  This is an indispensible tool for icing small baked goods like cupcakes, petit-fours, and holiday cookies.  The off-set feature puts the spatula at an angle for easier frosting.

2)      Large, off-set metal baker’s spatula:  You’ll want one of these for frosting anything larger than a cupcake.  Again, the off-set angle of the spatula makes icing cakes a breeze rather than a mess.

3)      Large, flat metal baker’s spatula:  This is indispensible for rolling out dough.  As you roll, you continuously slide this spatula under your disk of dough to keep it from sticking to the surface.  When used in unison with the large, off-set cook’s spatula, you slip them under your cake cross-wise, and can transfer any cake from prep surface to presentation platter without it ending up in pieces or on the floor.

4)      Small, heat-proof rubber spatula:  This is good for cooking and baking.  In cooking, you can use it in small pans without melting your spatula.  In baking, it’s ideal for scraping your paddle attachment, or scraping the large rubber spatula you’re using.

5)      Large, heat-proof rubber spatula:  I wouldn’t even think about folding without one of these.  They’re slightly flexible but rigid enough to handle folding, say, the two parts of a Chiffon cake batter into one homogenous batter.

6)      Standard metal spatula:  This is a must-have for flipping burgers and pancakes, as well as removing cookies from a sheet pan.

7)      Standard, off-set metal spatula:  Also for flipping, great for frying fish (whole or filets), and it works in combination with the large off-set baker’s spatula for transferring anything from point A to point B.

8)      Wood straight-edge spatula:  This is a must-have for making pan sauces from roasting pans, they scrape all that flavorful fond out of your pan with ease.

9)      Hand-held plastic spatula (a.k.a. plastic bench-scraper):  Not only is this the ideal tool for loading batters and icings into a piping bag, smoothing a crumb-layer onto a cake, or scraping flour or dough off your work surface, it also makes removing baked-on or fried-on gunk left in your pan a cinch.  After a bit of soaking in water, just use this plastic spatula to scrape the tough gunk out of your pan, then say bye-bye to heavy scrubbing!

Tags: spatulas