The Old-School Kitchen Tool Giada De Laurentiis Swears By

There are plenty of essential kitchen tools that line your drawers and shelves which make cooking easier, but when it comes to Giada De Laurentiis' favorite gadget, she prefers a surprisingly old-school item for its multi-purpose utilities. She shared with Today that the wooden spoon rises to the top of her list of must-haves if you want to make your life easier when you are charting your culinary experience. De Laurentiis stated, "I love tools that can be utilized in more than one way. [Wooden spoons] are great for risottos or stirring anything on the stove, really. Put two together and you also have salad tossers."

Wooden spoons definitely have their merits. To begin with, they are not going to ruin your cookware. If you've invested in some expensive non-stick pots and pans, metal utensils will start to scratch up the bottoms and sides, making them less effective and safe to use. They are also safe to use with those precious cast iron skillets and Dutch ovens that have passed from generation to generation. Additionally, wooden spoons are not good conductors of heat, so if you happen to leave one in that pot of creamy tomato basil soup, you don't have to worry about burning your hand when you remove it. But they also have other uses beyond stirring and sautéing. 

To Giada de Laurentiis' point, these babies have many uses. The handle of a wooden spoon is perfect for poking holes in a poke-and-pour cake or putting dimples or a divot in baked goods. The handle can also be used to measure the temperature of oil in a frying pan. Place it standing up in a frying pan, and if you see bubbles pop up around it, your oil is hot. It can also be placed over a pot and used to dry homemade pasta. 

The cookbook author isn't the only celebrity chef who swears by this kitchen tool. A wooden spoon is Emeril Lagasse's secret weapon for making a perfect roux. That's because when you have to constantly stir the butter and flour to create a smooth consistency, the wooden spoon isn't going to heat up and change the temperature of the ingredients it's interacting with in the same manner that its metal counterpart will. The same is true when choosing a spoon when stirring melted sugar.

Wooden spoons also don't react to acidic ingredients, like tomatoes, lemons, and limes, the way metal spoons can, leaving a metallic taste in your mouth. However, because wooden spoons are made out of wood, they are more likely to have a shorter lifespan due to cracking, splitting, and breaking. They can also retain flavors that get passed along to other dishes.