This is... my favourite kitchen tool

Ok ok, I've already blogged enough about my knives... so I'll post about my second favourite kitchen tool... but it's a tie between the mandolin and stab mixer.

The mandolin

Gib gave me this for my birthday and I was concerned that it would become one of those gadgets I never use, but boy was I wrong! After watching Iron Chef America, I always wondered how they made those "noodles" out of carrot or zucchini, and then we started to notice that every Iron Chef had a mandolin and how much it sped up their food preparation. The mandolin really comes into its own when chopping/slicing lots of vegetables say, for stir fries or stews, or for slicing lots of vegetables to go on the barbecue (onion, eggplant). It's most awesome for slicing up cabbage for okonomiyaki (recipe here), which needs the cabbage nice and thin for best results.

Tonight's meal: onion cooked on the bbq to go with our veggie burgers! (Hmm, I should really get onto cooking that after posting this...)

The stab mixer

With 800 watts of blending power, it's the ultimate tool for making soups, dips and sorbets. In winter making soups, it's just a tool I can't live without. Why fuss with transferring to/from the food processor then having to reheat when I can just blend it up in 2 minutes with this? My favourite thing to make in summer is canteloupe sorbet and without an ice cream machine, the stab mixer works great. It crushes all of those ice crystals and makes perfectly smooth sorbet.

Thanks to handmaiden for another great topic! To join in the "This is..." fun, head here.