What Cooking Utensils Do You Bring on Vacation?
Hello and welcome back toWhat’s Cooking? , an open thread where you can share your brilliant thoughts, tips, recipes and opinions on all food related matters. This week I want to talk about summer vacations, rented kitchens, and the things we bring to make it easier to cook in them.
Cooking in someone else’s kitchen is always tricky, but cooking in a beach cottage kitchen with dull knives and a scratched non-stick skillet can seem nearly impossible. It is never a bad idea to take a few essentials with you, and I want to hear what you have. As always, I have a few questions:
- What’s the most ridiculous kitchen appliance you’ve ever taken with you on vacation? I took my Anova immersion circulator with me to Mississippi not once, but twice. My family has never been so impressed, but I love it.
- What would you like to take with you on your last vacation? Cutting board. For some reason, there are always glass cutting boards in the box office, and this is crazy.
- Do you bring your knives? I take my Opinel picnic knife which has a decent blade and a corkscrew.
- How do you mitigate the coffee situation? My dad is known to bring a small coffee pot on vacation, which makes sense because he drinks a whole cup before anyone else even wakes up. I prefer to make a large jug of cold beer.
- Do you bring seasonings? The salt and pepper grinder is a must because I’ll be damned if I’m going to use those sad bags of dried black specks that some call pepper.
- What about pots and pans? I never took a pot or frying pan with me on vacation, but my friends’ mom always brings a large pot of pasta because my family needs pasta.
- Have you ever had to open wine without a bottle opener? How did everything go? One day when I was in Mississippi for Christmas, I decided to have some wine at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother doesn’t drink, and although she has a lot of wine glasses, we couldn’t find bottle openers. It’s worth noting that my grandmother lives in an arid area, so going to the gas station for a bottle opener was not the best option. Anyway. I tried to “crack it” by drilling a hole in the cork and inserting it into the bottle. I must have not drilled enough hole, because I ended up being flooded with Malbec . A couple of weeks later my father sent me an Opinel picnic knife.
As usual, feel free to reply to as many or fewer of the above as you like, or chat about anything remotely related to our topic that comes to your mind. When it comes to kitchens and recreation, I give permission.