The New Kitchen Must Have The Egg Spoon

Every year , or more like every few months there's some kitchen gadget or device that capture the cooking community's eye. This time around it's the egg spoon.. This simple fusing of metal is causing quite a stir , both with professional and home chefs. Is this new addition worth it?

That's the question regular contributor, Kim, Severson, wrote yesterday in The New York Times Food section. What is it exactly? Imagine a mini frying pan with a long handle that allows  you to hold  it over a campfire or hearth fire,It has a primitive  look, like what our ancestors cooked with two hundred years ago, The egg spoon is sort of reminiscent of  the scoop Mel Gibson's character in  2000 movie  "The Patriot" used when melting his son's tin soldiers into musket balls. Alice Waters,the famed chef, and Slow Food innovator had the first one,specifically made for her by Angelo Garro., after she saw one in  William Rubels' The Magic Of Fire: Hearth Cooking :One Hundred Recipes For The Fireplace or Campfire. A female blacksmith. Ms. Lovell now forges them for Ms. Waters" daughter, Fanny Singer for her website Permanent Collection. The price is a whopping $250 which is part of the backlash against it.Yet it is selling out, probably due to the fact that Ms. Singer is the only one selling it.Not even Etsy, the purveyor of all things unique has it . Neither does Amazon which sells all sorts of kitchen gadgets.

This rare culinary bird has caused quite a lot of controversy. Many see it as the height of indulgence and privilege., especially with the price. However those against should take into consideration that it is hand wrought and made of a sturdy iron.The price could drop if other companies such as Williams-Sonoma, make one of their own. Samin Nosrat, who contributes regularly to the  food section of New York Times Sunday magazine , says that a $300 sous vide is more elite than cooking an egg over an open fire. Also five percent of the profits go to Waters' own charity, The Edible Schoolyard Project, which provides schools with gardens and the know how of caring for them. Despite all this, the egg spoon still can rile . Ms. Waters used six cords of wood to cook one egg for Leslie Stahl in a 2009 Sixty Minutes piece. People saw that as a waste of wood. It also has sparked a feminist debate, fueled by the current MeToo movement. Some feel that if a man had promoted it , it would have been received better, but because a woman introduced it, received criticism. Even Anthony Bourdain, who first fueled the egg spoon war concedes that there is a bit of sexism, but make chefs have created much sillier and worse.

What is the fate of the egg spoon.? A good one, if the price goes down. If not, then it' will just be another expensive cooking gewgaw only chefs can afford.