Not to toot my own horn, but I’m a pretty darn good cook. I didn’t go to fancy cooking classes—I just watched a lot of Food Network shows and read a lot of cookbooks until I got the hang of it. Nowadays I make almost everything from scratch, including my own stock, my own bread, my own preserves, and my own pasta sauce.
But since I’m not a professionally trained chef, I don’t have great knife skills, so no matter how good my dishes taste, they often come out looking decidedly homemade. There’s nothing wrong with the rustic look of a non–uniformly chopped onion, but there are definitely times when I wish my food was a bit, well, prettier. Neatly prepared ingredients don’t just look better, they also make for well-balanced food that cooks more evenly.
Luckily, it’s a fabulous and modern world that we live in, and there are dozens of gadgets designed expressly to help home cooks like me make food that belies its humble origins.
Mandoline
For the slicing-impaired, mandolines are a godsend. These small gadgets resemble the large slicers used at deli counters, except you use them for vegetables. Most come with several different interchangeable blades, allowing the user to quickly create perfect slices, juliennes, and rings in any thickness. However, using a mandoline carelessly can easily cause julienned fingers, so be careful. (Pinzon Stainless-Steel Mandoline, $34.99)
Food Mill
A food mill manages the consistency of soft foods, like sauces. Sometimes called a ricer, it removes lumps from mashed potatoes and applesauce and separates the seeds and skins from cooked tomatoes, and is an essential ingredient for any puréed item, like baby food. The food mill features a hand crank and a colanderlike sieve at the bottom of the bowl that filters the food while catching the odd bits. (MIU Stainless-Steel Tomato/Vegetable Mill, $62.99)
Pastry Cutter
These handy gadgets aren’t just for professional pastry chefs; they’re also useful for home cooks in cutting biscuits and cookies, crimping piecrusts, and cutting fresh pasta. No more using broken-down pizza cutters, attempting to flute piecrusts by hand, or using old aluminum cans as biscuit cutters! (Ateco 1397 Pastry Cutter, $3.49)
