I hope this turns out to be a fun, lighthearted topic!
On the Unclutterer blog recently, Erin posted about fingertip oven mitts, which she and a number of the blog post's commenters agreed were silly unitaskers. In response to one commenter, Erin expressed that she thinks that the jar lifter, a tool that many home canning enthusiasts use to handle hot jars, is a unitasker, and that she prefers to use her silicone oven mitts. I answered in jest that Erin can have my jar lifter when she pries it out of my "hot, scalded" fingers. It's a unitasker that I can't do without!
Today as I was doing the dishes, I considered some other kitchen unitaskers that I'm not willing to give up. Here they are:
(1) A heavy, restaurant-grade saucepan that I use only for cream sauces, and only infrequently for macaroni and cheese: I keep it because I'm less likely to scorch the sauce with this pan than with the similar-sized, lighter weight pan that I use for other meals, almost daily.
(2) A copper bowl for beating eggwhites: Nothing touches this bowl except for eggwhites, and I can count on one hand the number of times per year that I do something that requires beaten eggwhites (e.g., two or three rhubarb pies early in the summer, with a meringue topping). But I won't give it up! Never!
What unitaskers do you harbor in your kitchen? I don't mean like your can opener, or your (horrors!) toaster that is not also a toaster oven, or your knife sharpener. Do you have a pan that you use for only one thing, like my macaroni and cheese sauce pan? Or a bowl that gets used for a single task only a few times per year, like my eggwhite-beatin' bowl?
Please share!
