which spoon do you use most in the kitchen
- Thread starter robin wood
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Thats a nice spatula design John - just needs to be a little flatter with a slightly narrower blade (and stained with soy and garlic for a few years 
)
Red
)Red
My spatulas are mainly used for flipping bannock/ eggs bacon etc - if you felt the weight of my bannock you would see why it is so wide! It makes seving fried eggs/patties easier as well.
My diet is sooooo healthy!
The pickies were taken when the spats were new - the Hazel ones are well stained now!
I am thinking of making a pallet knife type kitchen tool but am finding the choice of wood difficult - strength/flexibility wise - but Toddys stick looks interesting, as does Robbins spoontula....
My diet is sooooo healthy!
The pickies were taken when the spats were new - the Hazel ones are well stained now!
I am thinking of making a pallet knife type kitchen tool but am finding the choice of wood difficult - strength/flexibility wise - but Toddys stick looks interesting, as does Robbins spoontula....
I do like the spoontula for cooking I must admit - a very handy thing indeed.
I think I have one of Toddy's things. We use it for planting bulbs
Red
I think I have one of Toddy's things. We use it for planting bulbs
Red
But why are the fish people always such CRAP drivers? Punishable by death (or worse) seems about right to me.
Burnt Ash
I think I have one of Toddy's things. We use it for planting bulbs
Seriously though, a spurtle is great for stirring liquids without splashing. When the kids were little and liked to stand at the stove and 'help' I'd always give them a spurtle to stir with so they could be as vigourous as they liked without endangering themselves or me!
Thanks for the responses and particularly thanks for posting pics.
Red I like your Weaver spoon and love the ripple grain. I have been working some similar wood myself recently.
In our home we have a lot of very nice spoons that I admire from rough country made spoons from Romania, Morocco and Turkey to fine designs from Sweden, Hungary and Holland. We have a lot of very nice serving spoons and like Red we like cooking with spatulas or the Romanian spoon. problem is that makes 2 to wash up. I think we often use the "spoontula" because it is a very good cooking spoon but will also just about pass as a serving spoon too.
I don't think there is a perfect fit all spoon no more than there is a perfect knife...depends what you cook, how you cook it, and the pans you use.
"Actualy Robin my problem is always spatulas (or rather Bushbaby's is). We cook a lot (and I do mean a ot) of "from scratch" Chinese, Mexican and Indian food and a good spatula is worth its weight in gold! (Just ask those who have had BB's lemon chicken and pilau rice cooked over a fire at a small meet what proper cooking is worth"
So Red is BB cooking in a wok? or deep pan? If you wanted to sketch or describe your perfect spatula I would be happy to try to make it. Or after the weekend (logging tomorrow and walking on Kinder Scout Sunday) I could post pictures of a range of spatulas and we could talk through features that may suit BB and your food and pans.
Red I like your Weaver spoon and love the ripple grain. I have been working some similar wood myself recently.
In our home we have a lot of very nice spoons that I admire from rough country made spoons from Romania, Morocco and Turkey to fine designs from Sweden, Hungary and Holland. We have a lot of very nice serving spoons and like Red we like cooking with spatulas or the Romanian spoon. problem is that makes 2 to wash up. I think we often use the "spoontula" because it is a very good cooking spoon but will also just about pass as a serving spoon too.
I don't think there is a perfect fit all spoon no more than there is a perfect knife...depends what you cook, how you cook it, and the pans you use.
"Actualy Robin my problem is always spatulas (or rather Bushbaby's is). We cook a lot (and I do mean a ot) of "from scratch" Chinese, Mexican and Indian food and a good spatula is worth its weight in gold! (Just ask those who have had BB's lemon chicken and pilau rice cooked over a fire at a small meet what proper cooking is worth"
So Red is BB cooking in a wok? or deep pan? If you wanted to sketch or describe your perfect spatula I would be happy to try to make it. Or after the weekend (logging tomorrow and walking on Kinder Scout Sunday) I could post pictures of a range of spatulas and we could talk through features that may suit BB and your food and pans.
That would be grand! I confess I was going to try to chat up Weaver for one or two since we do wear them out but I'm always embarassed to impose on the man since its such a long way to post things! I had to try to find an old picture of my spoon since the bowl is much darker now that its stirred so many stews and coffee pots
I'd love to see what you do as standard and will ask BB for her feedback - its generally a combination of thinks although a Wok is the most frequent pan - but also a dutch oven, billy and conventional frying pans!
Red
I'd love to see what you do as standard and will ask BB for her feedback - its generally a combination of thinks although a Wok is the most frequent pan - but also a dutch oven, billy and conventional frying pans!
Red
I don't think they are worse than other drivers, at least I haven't noticed them to be so and I was a white van man in London so I've seen the worst of British driving. Maybe they drive too slow for you.
Now BMW drivers, motorbike couriers, boy racers and London cab drivers, they're bad.
You havent come across the grandad racersthen john?
Interesting thread. I for one love carving spoons and ladle's I've done about 12 or 13 so far these last few weeks, I was inspired by the welsh designs on the ceredigion web site, cawl spoon's, ladle's, dairy bowl's etc. A spoon is a complex form and its difficult to do one that A/ looks good and B/ works well. Its easy to mess up what was starting off as a promising form, especially the blending of handle and bowl. Doing them is a good way to learn how to read wood structure and use the axe/knife's etc to succesfully define a decent form within that strucure. I find the classic 1/2 egg shaped bowl with a slightly curved handle at an angle of about 7 to 10 degree's to the bowl works good.
Heres my latest version's, the largest one's bowl is about 4 inche's long, the smallest is about 1 1/2 inche's, most of these are are poor, the small one is not too bad, but the tip of the bowl should of been lower and a nicer bend in the handle. They are at various stages of finish, the ladles I hogged out with my new roselli baby its superb axe, and used a spoon gouge and mallet for sake of speed, the hook would do it but too slow on a big bowl. I ordered another mora hook (shallower sweep) and a 2 inch fixed blade for carving, the gerber is ok but being a folder, the blade wobbles and irittate's me to no end. I have the opinel ground like a plane iron (single bevvell) excelent for light finishing cut's. I tried the roselli on a hewn bowl today SO good at cutting cross grain and popping those cip's away.
PS John I noticed you carve hazel as well (what did the poor girl do to deserve that?) Do you split the pole's in 2 or just work the form out of the round? I found the hazel nice and even and easy to carve except its very fussy when you change direction, unforgiving if you go against the grain inside a curve or something it wants to split whereas EG beech is more easy going. The bloke as supplied me with ash and beech has chestnut, sycamore cherry, moore good ash. I'm due to cut some more hazel coppice in a few days time, I'll be looking out for any weird bases with bend's in them
Interesting thread. I for one love carving spoons and ladle's I've done about 12 or 13 so far these last few weeks, I was inspired by the welsh designs on the ceredigion web site, cawl spoon's, ladle's, dairy bowl's etc. A spoon is a complex form and its difficult to do one that A/ looks good and B/ works well. Its easy to mess up what was starting off as a promising form, especially the blending of handle and bowl. Doing them is a good way to learn how to read wood structure and use the axe/knife's etc to succesfully define a decent form within that strucure. I find the classic 1/2 egg shaped bowl with a slightly curved handle at an angle of about 7 to 10 degree's to the bowl works good.
Heres my latest version's, the largest one's bowl is about 4 inche's long, the smallest is about 1 1/2 inche's, most of these are are poor, the small one is not too bad, but the tip of the bowl should of been lower and a nicer bend in the handle. They are at various stages of finish, the ladles I hogged out with my new roselli baby its superb axe, and used a spoon gouge and mallet for sake of speed, the hook would do it but too slow on a big bowl. I ordered another mora hook (shallower sweep) and a 2 inch fixed blade for carving, the gerber is ok but being a folder, the blade wobbles and irittate's me to no end. I have the opinel ground like a plane iron (single bevvell) excelent for light finishing cut's. I tried the roselli on a hewn bowl today SO good at cutting cross grain and popping those cip's away.
PS John I noticed you carve hazel as well (what did the poor girl do to deserve that?)
Do you split the pole's in 2 or just work the form out of the round? I found the hazel nice and even and easy to carve except its very fussy when you change direction, unforgiving if you go against the grain inside a curve or something it wants to split whereas EG beech is more easy going. The bloke as supplied me with ash and beech has chestnut, sycamore cherry, moore good ash. I'm due to cut some more hazel coppice in a few days time, I'll be looking out for any weird bases with bend's in them 
I find that a metal spoon in a metal pot leaves a horrible mettalic taste in the food which make my teeth itch! If I get a takeaway and sombody scrapes the rice out of the tin dish with a metal spoon, I cannot eat that rice as all I taste is the mettalic taste. Plastic or wood for me in a metal pot. Whisks don't tend to leave that metallic taste though. Funny that.
The woods I use either come green from my garden )willow, hazel, ash, sycamore) and are of fairly small dimention or are basically skip wood and are seasoned hard (oak, walnut, box etc).
I tend to split the greenwoods down if there is enough wood to do so. - the seasoned woods I get wot I get!
I tend to split the greenwoods down if there is enough wood to do so. - the seasoned woods I get wot I get!
Nice spoons Mr Dazzler and SOAR. I love those Welsh spoon designs, they are so much nicer than the tacky love spoons that you see in every gift shop and not enough people carve them. I particularly like the slight crank in the handle which makes them so much easier to use.
SOAR what's your spoon on the log? looks like Hawthorn or a fruitwood perhaps? Like the handle designs.
SOAR what's your spoon on the log? looks like Hawthorn or a fruitwood perhaps? Like the handle designs.
Thanks Robin, I'm a great fan of your work, nice web site by the way, the spoon on the log is London Plane, not a wood I have used before its very stringy and quite tough. The handle is a design the wood dictated to me as no matter how I tried to carve it straight it just wanted to curve, a good piece to work with.
Simon.
Simon.
As regard's the "luvv spoons" I think probably its like everything else, theres the genuine and the cheapo clone copies. I think some of the genuine old love spoons are real nice. I expect some cheap copies are made in china now adays and I agree they are tackie. Doing those must of been an impressive way to show off your level of manual skill though
Doing those must of been an impressive way to show off your level of manual skill though
OK following Reds spatula design thoughts up here are some pictures as a basis for discussion.
The first 3 pictures are of the standard cooking spatula we teach as a first project on courses. It is designed as a good project for practising knife work but also works well as a general pot stirrer. It is strong with no short grain at the end so it can be used for vigourously scraping stuck stuff off the base of a pan without damage, the angle at the end makes it more comfortable to use than one cut straight across.
This spoontula is designed by a Swedish carver who we greatly admire. It is out of straight grained wood and has slightly weak grain on the leading edge so no vigorous scraping with this one but it works well for flipping roasting veg or roast tatties in a shallow pan, great server too.
This one I bought for 50p in a charity shop years ago. i like the chunky handle and thin blade much more generous wood use than most commercially produced stuff. We don't use it much because it is just too straight and upright, no crank to the handle and no chamfered end. It is the business for scrambled eggs though that wide flat blade covers the whole base of the pan in seconds.
Next a cheap but good olive spatula from David Mellors cookware shop. A good design, I expect this would work very well in a wok though the handle is a bit flat in the hand, i suspect steam bent and not sure how it would fair when subjected to heat and steam.
These last two are a big spoontula which we use a lot and also teach folk to do on courses. It will work as a cooking spoon but is also great as a server. It is from straight grained wood so the leading edge has a bit of short grain so not for tough scraping again. I find this kind of shape is great for working in a big pan it works like a shovel and is great for flinging lots of veg about quickly.
I would be interested in what folk think of these and interested to see anyone else's pictures of spoons from the kitchen, as you can see I am no snob if it works for your cooking I am interested in it.
The first 3 pictures are of the standard cooking spatula we teach as a first project on courses. It is designed as a good project for practising knife work but also works well as a general pot stirrer. It is strong with no short grain at the end so it can be used for vigourously scraping stuck stuff off the base of a pan without damage, the angle at the end makes it more comfortable to use than one cut straight across.
This spoontula is designed by a Swedish carver who we greatly admire. It is out of straight grained wood and has slightly weak grain on the leading edge so no vigorous scraping with this one but it works well for flipping roasting veg or roast tatties in a shallow pan, great server too.
This one I bought for 50p in a charity shop years ago. i like the chunky handle and thin blade much more generous wood use than most commercially produced stuff. We don't use it much because it is just too straight and upright, no crank to the handle and no chamfered end. It is the business for scrambled eggs though that wide flat blade covers the whole base of the pan in seconds.
Next a cheap but good olive spatula from David Mellors cookware shop. A good design, I expect this would work very well in a wok though the handle is a bit flat in the hand, i suspect steam bent and not sure how it would fair when subjected to heat and steam.
These last two are a big spoontula which we use a lot and also teach folk to do on courses. It will work as a cooking spoon but is also great as a server. It is from straight grained wood so the leading edge has a bit of short grain so not for tough scraping again. I find this kind of shape is great for working in a big pan it works like a shovel and is great for flinging lots of veg about quickly.
I would be interested in what folk think of these and interested to see anyone else's pictures of spoons from the kitchen, as you can see I am no snob if it works for your cooking I am interested in it.
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