I’ve Never Felt This Passionately About a Spatula
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My cooking-utensil collection is extensive but curated: wooden and enamel spoons I’ve picked up while traveling, stainless-steel fish spatulas and whisks from restaurant-supply stores, ladles from antique shops, cooking tweezers the professional chefs I know have turned me on to. I have items in a plethora of shapes, sizes, and materials — all of which I use regularly. There are almost more utensils than can fit in the two bigkitchen crocksI keep next to the stove.
Point being: A new addition has to be extra special for me to make permanent room for it. Such was the case last year when I got my hands on Earlywood’s flat sautés. The tool comes in three sizes — 13, 11.25, and 9.5 inches — each one available in an array of gorgeous wood varieties. The tool is lightweight, thin, and flat, as the name suggests, tapering from the slightly curved top into a more rounded bottom. It’s basically like a cross between a spatula and a wooden spoon.
I primarily grab one for the same tasks I would turn to either of those tools for: mixing, stirring, and flipping. “The lack of offset means it’s not amazing for flipping pancakes or fish filets, but it’s fine-to-great at everything else,” says Strategist senior writerMichael Zhao, who uses his all the time, too. “Previously I might have switched between various spatulas and wooden spoons, but now I don’t.”
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I also find it handy when I’m making a dish that requires several actions (say I’m browning mushrooms on both sides, then adding risotto and stirring it all up). The straight edge is especially great at getting in the corners of pots and pans with higher sides, likeDutch ovensand braisers. The shorter edge breaks up ground meat beautifully.
There are a couple of more unexpected but smart applications, too. If I end up with any hard bits of food stuck on an aluminumsheet panor astainless-steelorcast-iron skillet, scraping the edge of a flat sauté across the surface (sometimes, depending on the material, with a bit of a soak first) does wonders. Thanks to the longer straight edge, it also works as a bench scraper; I’ve used mine to push ingredients to the side of my cutting board as I prep and to wipe scraps off of surfaces. A duo also makes a lovely, sophisticated-looking serving set. I think they’d be especially helpful if you store cooking utensils in a drawer since they can lie totally flat — though I love mine enough that I gave away a couple of spoons and spatulas to make space for them in the crocks.
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