Michael Symon Says These 4 Kitchen Tools Equal Cooking Success Every Time

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Browsing the stores for the newest kitchen gadgets can be loads of fun, but according to Michael Symon, you really don't need most of them. Tasting Table spoke to the chef in an exclusive interview where he admitted to being a simpleton in the kitchen, revealing that his four must-have tools are only a chef knife, a bench scraper, a rasp, and a spoon. "There's nothing that you can't make with those things," he said.

Symon noted, "We're living in an era of chefs where there's so many fancy toys." Most of us use each tool for one single thing, while Symon's approach advocates for giving one tool multiple different purposes. If you only have a rasp, Symon says, "You could zest with it, you could grate spices with it, and you could grate cheese with it. You don't need a cheese grater." The versatility of the rasp is precisely the reason why it's Ina Garten's favorite tool, too.

Learning how to make meals with fewer tools will create a simpler, more seamless cooking process. Fewer utensils translates into fewer dirty dishes. If you love to cook on vacation, it also means that you can easily pack your chosen four tools and bring them along. Another reason to avoid over-purchasing a multitude of gadgets is being aware of how much space you have. Symon told us, "In our restaurants, especially our first couple of restaurants, the kitchens were teeny tiny, very small. We didn't have space to put a juicer and this and that."

Having fewer tools in your kitchen allows you to invest in the ones you do have, ensuring that they're of good quality. The quality of your knives, for one, is very important. "Spend the money on a great chef knife, instead of spending the money on a block of knives, where you only are going to use one or two of them," Symon advises. One of the pricier brands he recommends is Middleton Made Knives, while his more affordable recommendation are the Wüsthof knives. For example, a Wüsthof Santoku Five-Inch Knife is going for $50 on Amazon, while the brand's Eight-Inch Chef's Knife is going for $100. Because there's a difference between a santoku and a chef's knife, the pricing is different as well.

But not every utensil needs to be an investment. For the spoon, you could easily use any spoon of choice, though Symon admits to being a fan of Chef Kunz Spoons because they are bigger than your regular spoons and make stirring a bit easier. And when it comes to the bench scraper, "I get the plastic cheap bench scrapers," Symon told us. The Surdoca Bench Scrapers are currently a bestseller in Amazon's Dessert & Candy Sculpting Tools category, and you can get a pack of three for just $7.