The Tamis Is the Underrated Kitchen Tool I Can't Stop Thinking About
I feel intimately connected to every item in my kitchen. There’s the bowl I love to eat my oatmeal out of, the mug I only use for morning coffee, my favorite fork, the whisk I bought in college, my light green mandoline. I carry my favorites with me from apartment to apartment, sometimes even city to city. Some items—the hard-boiled-egg slicer—don’t stand the test of time. But the tried-and-true are here to stay.
That’s why, when I uncover a new, must-have kitchen tool, it feels like a revelation. Enter the tamis. What is a tamis? It looks like a springform pan, but with a flat metal sieve across the bottom. In Indian cooking, a chalni accomplishes a similar purpose. Others may know the tamis as a fine mesh strainer or a drum sieve (named for its shape).