Precise, versatile, and elegant, kitchen tweezers are ready for their close-up
I, perhaps like you, used to be a real tong freak. The phrase “I love tongs” came up in my life with surprising frequency. I had favorites (mine are, I regret to report, an unbranded pair I got over a decade ago). I felt tempted by the mini tongs every time I saw them at Home Goods. And of course I did the clicky-clacky move whenever I used them — that’s half the point of owning tongs.
I still use tongs, sure. But we’re more like high school friends who’ve drifted and DM every few months with a highly specific meme than we are besties who are hyper-involved in each other’s daily business. I reach for them when I need to scoop salad or artfully plate spaghetti. I grab them when I require something from a high shelf or need to move a hot pan in the oven. But I’m no longer enamored in the way I once was. I realize now that I had settled, not knowing any better. I’ve since moved on — to the kitchen tweezer, specifically.
The tips of tongs are big and clunky, like molars; the tips of tweezers are precise, like canines. The smaller size of the tweezer’s tips is their most obvious advantage over tongs. For one thing, they fit into the narrow neck of a caper bottle and they can easily maneuver a single anchovy out of a tin, without messing up the ones next to it. (I’ve also been told that they’re great for getting medication and gummy vitamins out of the bottom of a big container.) Tongs struggle here because they need a lot of surface to grip onto.
This also means that kitchen tweezers are less likely to disturb whatever it is that I’m grabbing. So where tongs can sometimes break the breading off fried foods, tweezers offer a lighter touch that leaves dredge undisturbed, resulting in a much prettier cutlet. They move fish gently and don’t apply too much pressure while flipping a single shrimp.
Of course, as their reputation goes, they’re also better for plating, putting less pressure on delicate garnishes and allowing more precise placement of small pieces of herbs.
Kitchen tweezers exist in many forms. There are the little ones usually used for plating that have gotten many chefs a lot of flack, synonymous with “the anal-retentive urge to arrange individual micro-cilantro leaves and nasturtium flowers on a plate,” as Esquire once put it. Some are offset, some are straight. Many of them are nearly indistinguishable from medical forceps, which, I’ll admit, rightfully seems to put some people off. That said, there are fancy ones made out of titanium, flashy ones made of gold, and pretty ones made in Japan.
The ones I like and now use on basically a daily basis are long and angled downward at the tip. The locking mechanism and material of the tips can really make or break a pair of tongs for me — I hate tongs with hard plastic at the ends — so I appreciate that these tweezers are just metal and completely sleek. Though they don’t have a locking mechanism, as most kitchen tweezers don’t, they are narrow even at their widest and therefore nestle neatly into my tool caddy. The tips are blunt, unlike many medical forceps, and have ridges that give them a secure grip onto any food so slipping is never an issue, even with little, wet things like olives and capers.
Tweezers feel more like an extension of my hand than tongs, which always feel like an implement.
Unfortunately, however, they don’t click-clack quite as nicely.
