Milk Street Precision Peeler
Most peelers do a lousy job. The blades are made of inferior steel so they do not peel easily and the peel itself is often too thick. The blades dull over time so you have to throw it out. Many designs have uncomfortable handles or the handles are awkward since they are not aligned properly with the blade. And when it comes to thick, tough skins such as butternut squash, you might as well give up before you start. That is why we just redesigned the peeler, using top-grade 420 stainless steel for the replaceable blade (why don’t all peelers have replaceable blades?) and a handle that is big enough for a firm, easy grip. Try it just once and you will find that it peels like cutting through butter. It’s that good!
Masseria Mirogallo Hand-Peeled Tomatoes
Produced by the Belfiore family in the province of Matera (one of Italy’s oldest towns), these hand-peeled tomatoes are stunningly packaged and taste terrific—sweet, fruity, bright and bold.
Shibanuma Yakiniku BBQ Sauce
Translating to “grilled meat” in Japanese, yakiniku is a social style of cooking and eating around a communal grill. Popular throughout Japan, family and friends gather around a tabletop grill to cook meat, vegetables and fish together before dipping them into a several kinds of yakiniku sauces. Shibanuma’s Yakiniku BBQ Sauce is inspired by this concept. Crafted by a 330-year-old esteemed Japanese soy sauce maker, it is no surprise that the first ingredient in this sauce is an umami-rich soy sauce, which is brewed and aged in wooden barrels. The soy is then combined with onion, fruity apple and zingy sansho pepper—a fragrant and floral Japanese peppercorn—to cut through the richness and balance out the flavors. The result? A complex grilling sauce that works just as well as a marinade as it does drizzled over rice.
Milk Street Wok Spatula & Wok Skimmer Set
When using a wok, mise en place isn’t just about your ingredients—it’s about your tools, too. The right tools can make all the difference in how your dinner turns out.
The Milk Street Wok Spatula is the right tool for the job. Designed to function flawlessly with the Milk Street Hammered Wok, this heavy-duty stainless steel spatula features a thin, rounded edge that perfectly mirrors the curved sides of the wok, making scooping, stirring and scraping a smooth and effortless task. The spatula’s non-slip textured handle provides the perfect grip for precise control in all conditions, no matter how wet or greasy things get. And it’s light enough to maneuver, allowing you to stay nimble while eliminating hand fatigue. It works well beyond the wok, too—sautéing, stirring pasta, even on the grill.
Milk Street’s Wok Skimmer is custom-designed to work seamlessly with the Milk Street Hammered Wok. This well-built, stainless steel tool features the right handle length and bowl size for nimble and efficient use, unlike flimsy, poorly made tools that aren’t big or wide enough to be effective in a wok. It scoops, strains and drains effortlessly—and excels when used in tandem with the Milk Street Wok Spatula. The satin-finished steel is dishwasher-safe, rust-proof and nearly impervious to wear. And despite its name, the Milk Street Wok Skimmer is terrific beyond the wok. Its uniquely perforated head makes it an ideal tool for lifting blanched vegetables or deep-fried foods out of hot water and red-hot oil. Or use it to strain delicate stuffed pastas, like tortellini or spaetzle, out of a simmering pot to avoid breaking them. It’s even great for skimming broths and stocks.
Villa Jerada Harissa
Villa Jerada’s Harissa No. 1 is our favorite version of this North African red pepper paste for its bright, complex flavor. While many store-bought varieties have a one-dimensional spicy flavor, this harissa layers acidity and fruitiness with preserved lemons, a touch of vinegar and tomato paste for a lively, tangy condiment. Villa Jerada uses just enough high-quality Moroccan olive oil to make the harissa spreadable and smooth without diluting its flavor, as opposed to conventional brands that contain a high proportion of water and vegetable oil.
Milk Street Közmatik
When a recipe calls for charring vegetables, what do you do? Well, you can fire up the grill but that is a lot of work for just one eggplant or two bell peppers. In Turkey, however, they have a better solution called the Közmatik, a metal disk that fits perfectly over the burner of a gas stove. Evenly spaced holes allow heat to circulate around the vegetables, so you are truly roasting, rather than searing as you would on a skillet. The holes are close enough to hold even small veggies, like slender spring onions, and the disk is large enough to keep several bulbous eggplants from rolling off. It’s also less messy than charring directly on the burner: The Közmatik catches nearly all of the bits of charred vegetable skin and juices that would leak onto the surface of the stove. And, once cooled, it can be thrown in the dishwasher for easy cleanup.
Vain Vanilla Original Baker's Blend Pure Vanilla Extract
This small-batch vanilla extract from Kansas-based Vain Vanilla is prepared completely by hand using only the best ingredients. The Original Baker's Blend is made with top-shelf rum that emphasizes vanilla's sweet characteristics and adds its own cane-sugar dimension. We especially love that Vain Vanilla leaves its vanilla pods in the bottle, which has two benefits. First, over time the extract will continue to deepen in color and become more complex as the pods release more flavor compounds. Second, when you're done with the vanilla extract, you can still slice open the pods and use the beans themselves in your desserts.
Yokofuku Japanese Garlic Paste with Shio Koji
Crafted from Japanese-grown garlic, this velvety, creamy paste is a game-changing flavor booster—every jar contains two whole heads of garlic, finished with a hint of fermented funk from shio koji. Its texture resembles garlic butter—the garlic is raw when pureed into paste. The paste is ready to use out of the jar, bringing garlic, salt and umami to dishes without making a sticky, pungent mess of your hands or cutting board.
The first note is a bold hit of sweet garlic, with zero pungency or bite to follow up. The koji provides an earthy, rounded sweetness like other fermented ingredients—like gochujang or miso—and is our secret to perfect marinades. Shio koji’s enzymes break down proteins, for juicy, tender meat and fish. Mix it into marinades or brines (the fast-working shio koji save tenderizing time), toss with stir-fries or pastas, stir into soup or rub as is on to steak or chicken legs. We also like it as a condiment—slather it on toasted bread, serve on a charcuterie board or with antipasti, dish some up alongside grilled vegetables or fried chicken. This premium seasoning is made with zero artificial additives.
Super Sarap Sauce
Sarap is the Tagalog word for “delicious” or “tasty,” and Super Sarap Sauce, small-batch Filipino condiment made in San Francisco, certainly lives up to the name. Savory, tangy, sweet, citrusy and a little peppery, this powerhouse sauce is unlike anything we’ve ever tasted. The pairing of calamansi, a tart citrus that combines lemon, lime and orange flavors, with mushroom, tamari and sugar adds salt, acid, umami and brightness to any dish. If we were to liken it to anything else on the market, it’s closest to a mixture of ponzu and Worcestershire sauces—but the comparison doesn’t do it justice. And with a relatively thin consistency, it’s easy to mix into sauces, dressings, use as a marinade, coat noodles, tacos, eggs or french fries.
moHA! Ginger Grater
The moHA! ginger grater has blades that are arranged in all directions for steady grating, as opposed to a one-directional rasp grater. But like with a wand-style rasp grater, moHA!'s cutting surface is made of sharp and durable precision-cut stainless steel. When you rotate the device, an integrated cleaning arm sweeps in a circular motion to scrape shavings off the blade, so all of the grated food ends up in your recipe, not stuck in crevices. A small compartment catches food shavings, for less mess and easier measuring; plus, the concave sides are comfortable to hold and allow you to keep a firm grip on the grater during use. The moHA! Ginger Grater has pieces that detach easily for cleaning, but the device stays together during use. When you're done using it, simply disassemble and toss it in the dishwasher.
Milk Street Garlic Confit
The worst recipe ingredient is, “4 cloves garlic, minced.” You know that it is going to be hard to do, it will make a mess, and you will end up with garlic all over your cutting board and knife. Jarred supermarket garlics are, well, awful! They often taste bitter and harsh or lack flavor altogether. Our solution to this problem is to create a garlic confit—mellow but full-flavored and enhanced with a few nice touches, including bay leaves, Aleppo pepper, ghee, olive oil and a hint of lemon. You will never have to mince garlic again with Milk Street Premium Essentials Garlic Confit!
Il Colle Del Gusto Arachidella Peanut Spread
Not to be confused with your run-of-the-mill peanut butter, Il Colle del Gusto’s Arachidella Peanut Spread is decadently sweet—elevating the beloved taste of the childhood favorite with the molasses-y depth of caramelized brown sugar. Petite flecks of candied peanut add a toffee-like crunch to every spoonful, while a silken base of extra-virgin olive oil yields a luscious, caramel-like texture. And as we learned from the ever-popular “Nutella,” the Italian suffix “ella” is tacked onto a word to show affection, so there’s no question why it’s used in the name of this divine spread.
Marukin Koikuchi 40% Reduced Salt Soy Sauce
Most low-sodium soy sauces lack flavor or complexity, but this premium product from Marukin packs a ton of rich umami flavor with half the salt. Established in 1907, Marukin is one of only 1% of Japanese soy sauce producers that maintain traditional production methods from the past century. Their low-sodium sauce is made from the same ingredients as regular soy sauce and is fermented in cedar barrels over a hundred years old; the natural bacteria and yeast that live on the barrels and in the air slowly ferment the soybeans into this naturally sweet, malty and complex sauce. It's the perfect substitute for regular soy sauce for anyone who is looking to reduce their sodium intake without sacrificing flavor. Add this reduced sodium soy sauce to any number of dishes, marinades and sauces.
Ash Creek Oregon Milk Chocolate Hazelnuts
These decadent, chocolate-cloaked morsels showcase the hazelnut’s rich flavor with a sweet and luxurious twist. The producer cultivates the Jefferson varietal of hazelnut—known for its extra-buttery, bold, warm taste and generous size—in the fertile soil of the Willamette Valley. After growing them using sustainable methods on their family farm, Ash Creek harvests the nuts during the final week of October before cleaning them and double-dipping them in premium milk chocolate in small batches.
Work Sharp Rolling Knife Sharpener
Based on a style of manual sharpeners used widely in Europe, Work Sharp, our preferred sharpening partners, have released the first American-made Rolling Knife Sharpener in the U.S. market. Unlike a complicated whetstone or electric sharpener, which require skill or planning to use (no need to soak a whetstone here!), the Work Sharp uses a magnetic angle block and rotating abrasives to bring blades back to razor sharpness. The block comes with four different sharpening angles—15°, 17°, 20° and 25°—to sharpen a wide style of knives. And the three abrasive wheels come in three levels of coarseness: coarse 320 Grit diamond, fine 600 Grit diamond and fine ceramic hone. To use, simply line your knife up against the block on one of the angles, then roll each abrasive along the cutting edge to sharpen, going from most coarse to most fine. We were impressed with the sharpener’s precision performance—dull test knives were returned to out-of-the-box sharpness. And when you’re done, it stores away easily in your drawer.
Milk Street Season 7 Cookbook
The new edition of the Milk Street Cookbook contains over 600 recipes, 300 photos and 730 pages of recipes that deliver big, bold flavors with less work and less time, every recipe from each one of our 167 episodes is included.
In a southeastern Asian restaurant in Paris, we came across garlicky lemon-grass chicken wings and the crispest, easiest crispy pork belly to top rice bowls. In Rome, there are so many simple pasta dishes that we do not make here but should, including Pasta with Ricotta, Tomatoes and Herbs. Everybody loves meatballs but in Morocco, they simmer them in a spiced sauce and add olives. If you love banana bread, our recipe for Banana Hazelnut Bread, which we discovered in a small bakery in Berlin. We traveled to Venice to rethink a simple Spaghetti with Clams recipe—fast and briny. And fried chicken from Bangkok is ramped up with ginger, garlic and fermented chili paste.
Want to change the way you cook to become the best cook you know? Get your copy of the Milk Street Television Cookbook today. Join us on our culinary quest to transform the way America cooks—and eats.
Milk Street COOKish
Artelegno Large Magnetic Knife Block 07
Italian design firm Artelegno uses sustainably sourced wood to make these beautiful, individually crafted knife blocks, which combine the safety of magnetic knife bars with the attractiveness of wooden knife blocks. Store, protect and display your kitchen knives in style: Hidden, built-in magnets that firmly hold blades in place without making them difficult to remove, Artelegno's open design gives it a contemporary, sculptural look. The design also allows you to see the entire knife, not just its handle, making it much easier to differentiate between knives with similar handles. Plus, the relatively wide space between panels is great for showing off design details on your knives such as etched or hammered blade finishes. There's also an extra convenience factor: Rather than different sized slots for different knives, any knife can be placed in any magnetized position—so long as the blade is not longer than the length of the holder.