Lawjedi, thanks so much for posting! I've seen that danish dough wisk posted before, but have never heard of it being used for meatloaf or meatballs. I've had mild arthritis in my hands for 10 years or so and mixing the meatloaf my family loves always leaves my hands aching--even after I hold them under warm water for 5 minutes or so when I'm finished mixing. I'm definitely ordering the wisk! Maybe it will spur me on to try making bread (something I've been procrasting on all summer)!

There are two gadgets I have started using recently that I love. The first is the mix and chop from Pampered Chef (link below). It's great for breaking up hamburger for tacos, nachos, and sloppy joes. The second is my cuisinart. It was my mom's but she wasn't using it, so she gave it to me. Love it!

Here is a link that might be useful: PC Mix n chop

I'll bite. :) You know how I've been pie obsessed this holiday season. I've used Rhome410's food processor crust. It's easy as pie! It's a bit more of a short texture, at least the way I've been doing it, than my old pie crust recipe, which was very flaky, but so easy to whip up a bunch of pies, or to make pie after a batch of challah because why not while the baking things are already out.

So... I'm not big on the food processor...but it's a great pie making tool. I have other instructions, I think from Rococogurl or Trailrunner, for using the grating disk on the frozen butter, but I haven't tried that. I haven't tried it with shortening yet either.

Additional good pie tools, which I've mostly acquired for other purposes or since I last made a lot of pies:

• Oversized, thin bladed, flexible spatula that will entice a hot day pie crust that's trying to stick, up and onto the rolling pin.

Silicone mat between pie and stone--doesn't slide around like pastry cloth, and peels off the bottom of said hot day crust. (I don't like rolling pie on bare stone. It always sticks on me, no matter which tricks and wisdoms I use).
Cylinder shaped rolling pin with spacer ends that prevent one from rolling too thin. Mine also has measurements marked on it, but I think it's easier just to compare to the pie plate.
That visit to the sale at the outlet mall last year came in handy. Plenty of pie plates in the drawer for all the pies.

Other tools:
The Chef'n Fresh Force citrus press I got for squeezing wilted vegetables to get the excess water out before putting them in a casserole type recipe did a great job on the humongo lemon from my brother's tree that was too big for any of my juicers or reamers. The inner steel pusher thing makes all the difference between this one and other hand presses.

So, I'm looking up a picture of the next thing I was going to mention and found this awesome looking juicer. I don't know if it works well, but it's ridiculous enough to make anybody happy. :) It's at Solutions.com.

I also have the Trudeau mini-juicer, which is the perfect size for Mexican limes. I mentioned in another thread that reaming Key limes made my hands bleed. This mini is hard to see in the picture, but it has a well with a spout on the bottom, a mini juicer with seed catcher in the middle, and there are ridges in the top so you can use it as a gripper with something larger than a Key lime. Mine is a happy lime green, too. :) I can get most of the juice out of two limes with this, without having to get any on me. I only needed two tablespoonsful the other day. I don't know if I it's powerful enough for a whole pie's worth, in getting every little drop.

"Reheat" button on...

I have a few that I use all the time: my bar board from Pampered chef for chopping small things, my salad spinner, those little square scrapers from Pampered Chef (use those more for cleaning but they are GOLDEN), the gravy whisk from Pampered Chef is also great! I love my citrus squeezers too! I like to make cooking fun and easy!

My onion goggles LOL! (Do they qualify as gadgets?). I am ultra sensitive to onions, yet I use chopped onions all the time in my cooking. OK, I look ridiculous in the onion goggles, but they really work. I can chop onions to my heart's content, as long as I want, and no tears. Some people say swimming goggles would work as well, but I disagree, because I find swimming goggles uncomfortable, pinching, and provide only a small window of vision to see what you are doing.

Here is a link that might be useful: Onion Goggles

Onion goggles - thats awesome!
I need some desperately! I have some paddling goggles that are basically the same thing (larger then swimming goggles) so I'll give them a try

apple wedger/corer, it is great at this time of year in the midwest. I take a small sliver off the bottom of the apple with a knife first to make the wedges easy to pull out.

I hadn't had one of these until about a year ago when my teenager daughter told me how desperately she needed it.

Apple wedger corer!! I knew I left something off my pie list. I agree with Detroit Burb about it's utility with apples, but I also discovered, during a moment of creative insanity, that it's great for cutting frozen butter. When I use a knife, I have a tendency to pop butter all over the kitchen. The funny shapes don't matter to the food processor, and the apple corer/wedger did a great job!

HTracey, onion goggles definitely count as a gadget! A good one. I had to take a half hour break the other day because one of my onions was so powerful.

I use a stainless steel "top hat" looking tea infuser. Amazon carries it at: http://www.amazon.com/Norpro-5543-Decorative-Tea-Infuser/dp/B000I1UUN8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318720212&sr=8-3
It is great for steeping a cup or a full teapot full of loose tea. Recently I've started using it to steep tea in a quart jar. That way all I have to do is put the lid on it and set in the frig if I want ice tea.

Last summer my sister gave me the 2 cup Perfect Teamaker from Teavana. The stainless steel filter is very fine. It's dishwasher safe and it fits on top of a cup to empty into the cup. It is so easy.

The absolute best potato peeler I've ever had is by Messermeister. My niece in Chicago gave it to me 2 yrs ago. When the extended family gets together we make 10 pounds of a yummy mashed potato recipe. That peeler makes it a much quicker task. It works on cukes, carrots, etc.

Flwrs hamburger gadget is wonderful! I have one similar to PC.
Akchicago, those onion goggles would be fantastic. They would make a great stocking stuffer.

I love our apple peeler, corer, spiral slicer all-in-one gadget. I got it for our son for Xmas because he loves apples and hates peeling them. It was an instant hit and shown off at every playdate since. Our apple consumption has more than doubled.

The best way I have found to make taco meat or such is to cook it in the oven on a cookie sheet like a huge rectangular hamburger. Then break it into pieces and put it in the food processor. A few pulses with the seasonings and you have perfect taco meat. In the summer, I cook it directly on the bbq as several large burgers before hitting the food processor to keep the heat and mess out of the kitchen. It adds an extra grilled flavor to it. It is also a great way to use leftover hamburger meat when you have extra after a bbq. I'd never put it back in the fridge raw, so just freeze it in cookedburger form and take it out later.
In any case, I usually make enough for 2 or 3 nights at a time and put the leftovers in a zip lock bag as flat as possible for a quick defrost at a later date. It is also how I store any Costco raw chopped meat. By flattening out the meat in the zip lock bag, it makes defrosting and storing much faster and easier. Storing the meat in a big lump takes longer to defrost. Cooking extra makes dirtying up the food processor more worth since you get a few meal's worth from each clean-up.
Of course, now that dh is trying to eat vegan all of a sudden in order to drop his cholesterol, I may never make it at home again.... We used to have beef taco night once a month and it was a real family favorite.... sigh... He won't even have our other fave, fish tacos, because he isn't even eating fish any more.....

tea4all - which one?

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=messermeister+peeler&tag=googhydr-20&index=aps&hvadid=4573859485&ref=pd_sl_m5mpzyrnl_b

dianalo - i've been wanting one of those! what brand did you get?

tea4all's choices

I haven't even yet tried this which is feeling my love, vicariously as it happens: PIE weights. Each and every year at T-time I haul out the wax paper and pour in the pulses to weight down the crusts and curse myself for not springing for some chained pie weights. So this year I did from Lee Valley during one of many orders. I'd actually forgotten about them until today while moving a drawer.

Maybe, just maybe I should consider PIE rather than applesauce for the surplus of apples (cf apples thread) and lard as something we don't BUY. Except I just don't think there's any way I could ever make a pie crust with that axel grease, just too gross....

Desertsteph I had no idea there were so many Messermeister peelers! This is the only one I've ever had or seen. I think mine is the Pro-Touch Red Serrated Swivel Peeler at http://www.amazon.com/Messermeister-Pro-Touch-Serrated-Swivel-Peeler/dp/B003CT3RZQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318770512&sr=8-3
It is red, swivels, double serrated, and has a point at the top. Mine came with a clear plastic snap-on shield that covers the blade to protect your fingers when it is the drawer. And I guard that little sucker religiously because this thing is sharp!

It used to stress my back to stand and peel 10-15 or more pounds of potatoes at a time. But this little jewel makes it sooooo much easier and quicker.

Great thread, thanks lawjedi!

Must have gadgets for me include:

Immersion blender for sauces and soups.

Adjustable Silicon pie crust shield.

Marble rolling pin that I pop in the fridge before using.

And my all time favorite is my Bron Stainless Steel Mandolin with a mesh cutting glove. My family loves homemade Pommes Frites and this is the bomb for making perfect ftites with boubon mayo.

Not mine, but they look just like the ones we make at home.

Lawjedi, I love my dough whisk, but never thought about using it for meatloaf! I use my hands, because nothing else seems to get the job done, but I'm not fond of that at all.

I have had flaky pie crust using the food processor, but not every time. I still use my wire pastry blender if I want a great crust, guaranteed.

Do a pizza stone and pizza peel count as (large) gadgets? Probably not, but they changed my life!

I can't think of anything much to add to the lists given above. I can note things from those, though, that I might want to add to my kitchen! .

Why, if can't I think of any kitchen gadgets I like, are my drawers full of them?

Onion goggles: I got a cool steampunky pair from RH for Xmas but for now I'm using the same old lime green swimming goggles I've had for years. These used to be of great interest to people who walked by my old condo window, especially when I had my huge chef's knife in hand.

Pie weights: I will speak no more of them. Find my old thread.

Cuisinart: A truly useful appliance. Mine is from the 80s, so it can easily puree rocks and steel. A wretch to clean with all the parts.

Cheap plastic mandoline, bought at a kitchen show: Works way better than the hugely expensive one I bought at Williams Sonoma. I always count my fingers afterwards.

Garlic peeler: That rubbery tube thingie. Only for quantities.

For reasons that surpass understanding, I have a gargantuan crock of wooden spoons, wooden forks, plastic spatulas, metal Chinese spatulas, Chinese wire strainers, metal spoons, metal slotted spoons and two different kinds of tongs next to my cooktop, and yet I can still never find anything to pick up or stir with.

Oh, one more thing--I use that rasp grater thing very frequently. Good for lemon zest, hard cheese, garlic, all sorts of things.

My immersion blender is so frequently used I can't even think of it as a gadget, love that thing. Two other gadgets I'd be hard pressed to function without are my Italian tomato press and my Lee Valley zester. The tomato press is indispensable for large quantities of sauce, and also perfect for other fruit projects, like applesauce, grapes, or seeding berries. I roast the tomatoes and for applesauce, just quarter the apples and cook a bit to soften, then the press removes the skins and seeds.

The zester is a microplane from Lee Valley, but the ingenious thing is the stainless box that securely attaches and catches the zest. It is also wonderful for nutmeg or hard cheeses, etc.

For apples or quantities of potatoes I use a peeler like Dianalo mentioned, love that thing! I make a lot more apple pie than I used too... so maybe it's not such a good thing?

Ad like Rhome, I love my pizza stone -- I also find it really improves the bottom crust of a pie, crisping it nicely when I use it with my Pyrex pie plates. Rather than a stone, though, I use unglazed quarry tiles from HDepot, they are inexpensive, virtually unbreakable, can be left in during the self-cleaning cycle, and work just like my old now broken stone. Cost just 6 bucks and I had them cut to make a larger area.

Love these gadget threads, I may need to try that dough whisk!