A kitchen, by default, is a pretty dangerous place, and the Bon Appétit test kitchen is no exception. The atmosphere may not be quite as intense as a professional restaurant one, but there’s still fire and knives everywhere you look. And let’s not forget about the pointy corners and hard surfaces. Things can be pretty touch-and-go at times, especially for cookware. These five kitchen tools, however, have nothing to worry about.
Our editors have tried many forms of culinary abuse on these five tools—applying triple-digit temperatures, dropping them, burning foods in them—but they’ve managed to survive intact. They’re definitely a little banged up and scorched-looking or whatever, but they still work, which is all we really care about anyway.
1. Pyrex Measuring Cups
(worldkitchen.com)
Senior food editor Dawn Perry had one fall from her cabinet and actually bounce on the ground without shattering. Is Pyrex secretly lacing its glass with crushed diamonds? Uh, no. But for now relish in the fact that you won't have to buy new ones over and over again if you're a klutz in the kitchen.
2. Le Creuset cast iron cookware
(Le Creuset, Williams Sonoma)
The enamel coating on Le Creuset's cast iron pots and pans may be relatively brittle, but underneath that colorful paint job lies an indestructible and potentially magical piece of space metal with some serious history. Here's what we mean: In its purest form, iron is extraterrestrial. Did you know all of Earth's pure iron got here by piggybacking on meteorites (yes, from space!)? But let's get back to cast iron. This product of molten, molded iron alloy has withstood the test of time; it was used to forge weapons back in ancient China, and later on to construct buildings during the Industrial Revolution.
Le Creuset cookware is also likely to have supernatural properties. The name translates to "the Cauldron," and if we were to make an etymological connection, we'd say that cauldrons remind us of witches, sorcery, and other magical things that don't break. From a culinary standpoint, it does somehow manage to distribute heat super evenly while easily transitioning from stove to oven—something we'll admit is pretty bewitching to watch.
3. All-Clad stainless steel pans
(All-Clad, Williams Sonoma)
To quote Dawn Perry, "You can burn the shit out of an All-Clad pan, but it won't break." If you really wanted to try, though, you could perhaps throw it from the top of the world's tallest building, the 2,722-foot-high Burj Khalifa, and seeing what happens. But you might hit someone on the head if you do, which isn't good, so it's probably smarter to just cook with it.
4. Silicone spatula
(Tovolo)
People of science developed very bendy, funny-smelling silicone to be a substance that is durable above all else. It's kind of plastic, kind of rubber, and in some circumstances can even be self-healing. In addition to making spatulas, silicone rubber is put in products that do things like seal cracks in houses.
Generally they are just really resistant to anything that might be destructive, like extreme heat or pressure. And if you really, really want a silicone spatula destroyed, you have to seriously commit: Try throwing it into the fires of Mount Doom or shooting it with the Death Star's superlaser.
5. Meat tenderizer
(Norpro)
The Giant Hunk of Metal theory applies here, which says that things made from one big piece of metal are generally pretty impossible to break. So unless the head and handle of your tenderizer aren't one solid piece (because then at least you could unscrew it, though technically it still wouldn't be broken), your time would be better spent using it as, say, a replacement for a missing hammer. It'd probably even be more useful to consider how you'd use it as a melee weapon if a zombie apocalypse were to spontaneously occur. You know, just in case.
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