Eric Adjepong's favorite finds will up your kitchen game without busting your budget. (Daniel Zuchnik/Getty Images for NYCWFF, Amazon)
In mid-February, Eric Adjepong's childhood dream came true: He opened his first restaurant, Elmina, an ode to the Ghanaian food he grew up with, in Washington, D.C. It's a wonder he had time: The Top Chef finalist also hosts his own Food Network show, Wildcard Kitchen, and he recently joined a new culinary advisory board for PepsiCo, where he's using his knowledge of West African cuisine to develop snack foods. "It's a really cool opportunity to impart my own opinion and my own flavor profiles on things," Eric says. (He's also about to release a cookbook and has a line of tableware at Crate & Barrel. Phew!)
When he has a few moments to himself, Eric has been browsing online for — surprise, surprise — kitchen gear. "I'm lucky — at home, I have everything I need. But because of the restaurant, I'm shopping a lot! My cart is always open, and sometimes I'll just close my eyes and hit 'checkout,'" he jokes.
His recent buys for Elmina include a commercial slicer and a vacuum sealer. But at home, he is all about the basics, like a sturdy spatula and good kitchen shears. "They'll get you to 80% of what you need to cook," he says — and none of them will cost you more than $30.
Related: More chef must-haves from Andrew Zimmern, Marcus Samuelsson and Jacques Torres
To start, you'll want a great chef's knife and durable pots and pans. Then, fill your utensil crock with these must-haves.
"I use a zester often because besides zesting, it gives you an opportunity to release flavors in a new way," Eric says. "For example, you can use it on garlic to get a slow release of the flavors versus cutting."
"For six years, I worked as an editor at Food Network magazine, where I got to write about restaurants, cover culinary trends and interview dozens of chefs," says Senior Home Editor Jessica Dodell-Feder. "One of my favorite projects was our special pizza issue, devoted to all things cheesy, saucy and doughy. I learned many excellent tips while researching and reporting stories for that issue, but only one elicits shock (and a bit of delight) when I share it: The best way to cut pizza is with scissors.
"Think about the last time you tried to slice a hot-from-the oven pie with a pizza cutter wheel. Did it make it all the way through the crust on the first try? Or did you have to roll it back and forth several times, dragging the cheese and dislodging the toppings? My guess is the latter. Even the sharpest wheels aren't foolproof, and who really needs one jamming up their utensil drawer? The far better option is kitchen shears. They give you control over the size of each slice, and they cut cleanly through even the thickest dough."
Last, but certainly not least, you can't forget about grated cheese! I have a bit of an obsession with this tool because it does the job quickly and is so much easier to clean than a big box grater. Plus, I can grate the cheese right over my pasta bowl, meaning fewer dishes to clean. I also won't zest lemons with anything else.
Swiss ingenuity and excellence — it ain't just about cuckoo clocks, fondue and chocolate anymore.
Many offset spatulas have blades that measure less than an inch wide, which is great for icing cupcakes, but that's not as handy if you're using it for other tasks. Enter this highly rated tool from Oxo, which features a 1.25-inch-wide flat blade — perfect!
More than 4,000 Amazon shoppers are in love with this thing. "Whatever you're spreading, this is the way to go. Lose the butter knife and get this," wrote one succinct fan.
Unless you're trying to start your own OJ business, I wouldn't advise purchasing a citrus-juicing machine. I don't have a ton of cabinet space for storing an appliance — even a small one — that I'm not going to be reaching for on the daily. Plus, you still have to hold the orange or lemon half over the juicer, which means you're not really saving much time. This model does have a pulp control feature, but you could always just strain out the stuff you don't want when juicing by hand. In short, not worth the space or money.
Eric uses peelers and zesters so often, he keeps a bain marie pot of them on his counter at all times. "A Y-peeler is so easy to use and inexpensive — you can get a great one for under $10," he says. "And on the side it has an indentation you can use to poke the eyes out of a potato."
Bakers often use offset spatulas for icing cakes — the angled design makes it easy to smooth things out without their hands getting in the way. But Eric says the tool is even more versatile.
"My offset spatula is like an extension of my hands," he explains. "It helps me flip things, give them a quick whisk as I am cooking, get around the edges of my omelettes and more."
Kitchen shears can do so much, Eric says. You can use them to snip herbs, open packaging, even break down poultry.
When Eric wants to quickly brighten up the flavor of a dish, he turns to his juicer. "I love fresh grapefruit or lime juice," he says. "Using a juicer gives me that immediate punch of acid."
The reviews quoted above reflect the most recent versions at the time of publication.