Accueil - Cookery & wine - Left-handed cookware
Date : 30 May 2025Categories : Cookery & wineEntertainmentUnusual
When you don’t have left-handed cooking utensils, you soon find yourself like a hen who found a toothbrush…
If there’s one area where we find ourselves as thick as thieves (yes, I love grandma’s expressions), it’s in the kitchen!
When I was a little girl, my dad regularly offered me a left-handed spoon. I’m sure he had a lot to do with the idea of creating Gaucherie…
Our right-handed friends often don’t quite understand why we need someone to understand our needs. Let’s give them a few examples.
The simplest. The can opener. You might say that manufacturers have come to our rescue by putting little “easy-open” tabs on cans. But not all cans! What about the little homemade pâté or the tiny can of tomato paste? So, give a left-handed can opener to a right-handed person and watch, with a wry eye – but not too wry, as you don’t want to put a gun to his head either. It’s not easy, is it? (I’m not talking about the slightly snide eye, but opening a damn can when you don’t have the right tool).
Yes, for the uninitiated, you may need scissors in the kitchen, to cut a string, a chicken, why not, a small bunch of grapes or a pizza for the more daring. The blue-and-yellow Swedish furniture giant that sells scissors in all sorts of colors, never to be found in the right drawer when you need them, hasn’t thought of us!
As soon as there’s an angle, it’s all over for us. This is often the case with metal or silicone spatulas. You’re in trouble if you want to flip your steak or fluffy pancakes that are starting to stick to the bottom of the pan. Ditto for barbecue tools: all biased!
We don’t often think about it, but a graduated glass or electric kettle is only graduated on one side. Fortunately, some manufacturers have thought of doing it in the middle, but not all. And therein lies the tragedy. If you can’t see how many centiliters of water you’ve heated, you end up with rotten rice that sticks to your palate like good old glue.
I inherited my grandmother’s sauce spoon. Thanks, Grandma, but she was right-handed. I hesitated to use that spoon like a cocktail master wielding the jigger, their measuring glass (I never understood why they inflicted this completely twisted gesture on themselves!). I’ve tested it for you: even though my wrists are really tight, it doesn’t work! Ditto for the little saucepan with the pouring spout: the melted caramel can easily end up next to the hotplate.
If you’re a tea lover, forget the yokode Kyushu, those pretty Japanese teapots with handles. Doesn’t that make you feel punished?
Yes, knives are lateralized too. And so are vegetable peelers. You never noticed, did you? As soon as there are teeth, it’s often all over! So don’t be surprised if your bread is cut completely crooked: it’s not you, it’s the knife! If you’re invited to dinner at the Countess de Thingthing’s and there’s fish on the menu, the utensil that looks like a miniature pie server is not your friend. This one doesn’t just have one sharp side: it’s angled too!
Let’s continue with fish and knives. The cutting edge is not the same on both sides of the blade. If you want to lift fillets or make sushi like a professional, you need the right tool.
See the little notch on the left tine of the dessert fork? It’s used to cut the super-sanded pastry you use as a tart base. Admittedly, you don’t use one every day, but once again, at the Countess de Thingthing’s, we find the hen, the toothbrush cf. above.
In the tart family, I call the shovel. I’m sure you didn’t notice at all that it had a sharp edge. And an elbow too, it’s the fish knife’s friend, but not the left-handed one.
I haven’t even mentioned vegetable peelers, cheese knives, corkscrews… the list goes on! But this little world of kitchen utensils is evolving, and it seems that some manufacturers are finally moving in our direction. We probably won’t be able to get our own slicers or pasta sheeters, but at least we’ll be able to lift our nets and perhaps dine at the Countess de Thingthing’s, with our own cutlery slipped into our baise-en-ville!