grater | Beyond The Kitchen Sink

Grate and slice with a mandoline

Kitchen gadgets are easy to accumulate: they are fun, encourage you to cook and make excellent gifts. One measure as to the usefulness of any kitchen gadget is how many degrees separate it from being a unitasker. Any device meant to do one thing is just going to end up cluttering up the junk drawer. If a gizmo can do two things, great. Three things, even better. But four? Hey. Iâ€™m on board.

Okay, this Zyliss 4-In-1 Multi Slicer/Grater might be pushing it, as almost any grater will at least offer the choice between fine and course, but not as many can handle slicing too. If you got a mandoline hanging out in your kitchen, thereâ€™s a good chance it doesnâ€™t do any grating (although many do). Likewise for your grater, the slicer portion can be woefully inadequate. With the added bonus of a finger guard, this grater-meets-mandoline makes for a fine addition into the collection of kitchen gadgets designed to do more than one thing.

Fingers rejoice: Mario Batali to the rescue!

Cheese graters come in many different shapes and sizes, but no matter which style you prefer it takes a certain nimbleness to navigate the end of a block of cheese. A shredded pile of deliciousness may be staring you in the face, but the question always remains what to do with the piece of cheese left in your hand. Too small to properly grasp, and too large to consider as shredded, more often than not, this little kitchen scrap gets nibbled on or thrown away. Sometimes to the dismay of our fingers, we throw caution to the wind, and try to shred out every last scrap of cheese in the block.

No longer must cooks suffer the humility of grated knuckles simply to utilize the whole block of cheese. The Mario Batali Cheese Grater features an ingenious design that incorporates a cheese grip right into the handle. While shredding, simply press down on the cheese with the easy-to-grip handle, and your fingers will be protected. Cheese is delivered right into the measuring vessel, and there is even a lid so you can save any unused cheese. Saving fingers and cheese, Mario Batali might be the next superhero. Now if he can only figure out what to do with that pesky economy.

Slice by Karim — ceramic kitchen tools for cutting, grating and peeling

Jazz up your kitchen gadget collection with the set of everyday tools from Slice. Designed by Karim Rashid, the set includes (from left to right), precision cutter, a grater, a vegetable peeler and a y-peeler.

Beyond the classy styling, these tools all utilize ceramic technology as opposed to traditional stainless steel. The ceramic blades used in the peelers and precision cutter stay sharp and have the added bonus of never rusting. The grater uses rows of ceramic teeth as opposed to stainless steel holes, so unlike a traditional microplane or grater, food particles will not get stuck in hard to clean places.

The entire collection is dishwasher safe and affordable at $14.99 for the grater and peelers, and $6.99 for the precision cutter.

UPDATE 7/6/12: Looks like the link above no longer works, but you can still check out the Slice by Karim kitchen tools collection. (Beware though, they seem to be getting low ratings!)

UPDATE 10/21/24: Looks like the Slice collection got cut. Check out the Karim Rashid wiki page here.