Thursday, May 23, 2013

Gadgets: Microplane 3-in-1 Citrus Bar Tool

Do you make a lot of fancy drinks with fresh citrus? Do you have a bar that's more than just a shelf in your kitchen? Do you like gadgets that preform multiple functions? Are you short on storage space?

Then maybe the Microplane 3-in-1 Bar Zester Citrus Bar Tool ($19.95) is for you. It's got a grating surface for zesting citrus, a cutting blade for making citrus curls, and a bottle opener, all in one compact tool.

Like every other Microplane zester I've used, it does a great job grating citrus zest. It's not as efficient as a larger zester if you need to zest dozens of lemons, but it's fine for the little bit of zest you might need for a drink at a time.

The citrus curler makes nice curls from the peel. That's not something I need often enough to warrant a separate tool, but as an add-on to the zester, it makes sense.

And the bottle opener is, well, a bottle opener.

If you already have a zester and you don't have a separate bar area, you probably don't need a tool like this.

But if you've got a bar and you want to outfit it with the tools you need rather than moving things back and forth from the kitchen, this would be handy. Or, if you've got a small kitchen and not much storage space, this won't take up as much room as a full-size zester.

The manufacturer provided this product for the purpose of a review on Serious Eats.
Yum