Tom Douglas Rethinks Kitchen Wares

There are no unitaskers allowed and prices range from low to more-than-reasonable for ingenious restaurant-quality kitchen equipment. Tom Douglas wants everyone to get in the kitchen and cook, and to have a much easier time doing it. He has spent the last 1 ½ years at home and in his restaurant kitchens testing and improving an entire line of housewares with his signature on it, and sold by Amazon.com as their brand line. Pretty much a perfectionist, he was picky picky picky about improving these kitchen wares and making them logical and affordable.

 He’s come up with a

• $15 stainless steel vegetable peeler that doesn’t turn your apples brown (the secret’s in the blade) and which easily removes blemishes from potatoes.
• $15 kitchen shears  that cut everything from fresh mint to chicken and tough crab shells,
• $40 chicken fryer/deep skillet/Dutch oven, shallow skillet/griddle  that’s deep enough to make great fried chicken and corn bread, plus has a special flip lid for ‘chicken under a brick’ recipes.
• $30 large chef’s knife made by Kai, (a line of Shun knives) that is better balanced for slicing (Tom has had lots of kitchen cuts and doesn’t want any more), the stainless steel blade and composite handle are made to go in a dishwasher (a big no no for your expensive knives), and that’s designed to avoid accidents with what Tom calls ‘knuckle clearance. 

I like  the videos on many of the Amazon.com pages, which show Tom explaining why the tool is improved and also how to use it. Turns out there’s not  just a professional way to chop with a knife, there’s a ‘chef way’ to hold a knife and an ‘amateur way’ and the cut results are so-o-o different.

An upcoming line of smart pizza tools will be on the market in late January on amazon.com. I’m looking to buy the jumbo, high heat, clay pizza stone made by Emile Henri and the long professional ‘rocking knife’ pizza cutter that looks like a two foot long Alaskan ulu.