Spring is here, and so are spring ingredients. Hooray for food that’s never seen the inside of a can! Hooray for fresh green stuff on our plates! We shopped around Charlottesville for the best gadgets to help you cook up all that delicious, vitamin-packed produce.
HIC Fante’s Double Mezzaluna
$19.99 at The Happy Cook
The Happy Cook’s Monique Moshier recommends the mezzaluna knife for quickly chopping up spring herbs (say, for an herbed frittata or quiche), and it can also be handy when you want to prepare greens for a chopped salad.
Coconut fiber vegetable brush
$2.50 at Be Just
We’ll be eagle-eyed for the first root veggies of spring at the farmer’s
markets. Get the mud off those fresh beets, turnips, and carrots with
this all-natural tool. Hello, iron and Vitamin A!
OXO Salad Spinner
$32.95 at The Happy Cook
“Not only is it good for doing salads, but for bulk herbs, the best way to clean and preserve is by spinning,” says Moshier. Translation: The salad spinner will stay useful through the summer and beyond.
Chef’n Looseleaf Plus Greens Stripper
$9.95 at The Happy Cook
Never heard of this clever stainless-steel gadget? It’ll save you oodles of time that you’d otherwise spend slicing the ribs out from kale and collards, and it works on herbs, too. We can’t wait to try it on a bunch of fresh local parsley.