Slotted Spoons & Spoon Sets

Slotted Spoons Help Serve Up Delicious Meals

If you've got kitchen utensils such as a turner, flipper, wooden spoon and the like, you might feel like something's missing. Enter the slotted spoon. Similar to a sieve, strainer or colander, but on a much smaller scale, a slotted spoon is a coveted kitchen tool. Read on to discover the uses and benefits for this much-overlooked kitchen utensil.

What Are Slotted Spoons Used For?

• Fetching and draining. One of the main uses for slotted spoons is to retrieve food items like meat or vegetables, dumplings or tortellini from a cooking pot such as a Dutch oven while preserving the liquid.
• Testing. They're also ideal for taste-testing pasta to see if it's done without the risk of burning your fingers.
• Serving and transferring. Dish up eggs Benedict next Sunday with a slotted spoon. Simply slide poached eggs without all the debris onto a plated muffin or toast and serve.

Styles of Slotted Spoons

The styles of these handy spoons go beyond what your grandmother used when you were a kid. These days, many slotted spoon designs come with ergonomically friendly handles and non-stick material that makes cooking, stirring, transferring and serving meals easy and non-disruptive. Many of our spoons are made with stainless steel, copper, nylon heads, beech wood and Mediterranean olivewood, just to name a few.

Depending on what you primarily use the spoon for, we've got options for every kind of cooking method. Here's a sneak peek of what we have to offer at Williams Sonoma:

• Slitted. Serve up the perfect poached egg with this classic slotted spoon style. It's also great for cleanup, allowing the egg debris to hit the compost bin rather than going down the drain.
• Perforated. Several small holes instead of slits make this spoon ideal for dishes that contain small vegetables or pieces of meat that could potentially fall through the holes while serving. The liquid easily drains without spills or fuss.
• Deep and rounded. Shaped more like a ladle than a spoon, our rounded selections of slotted spoons have a deep bowl that allows for scooping up larger food items, such as meatballs or dumplings. Perfect for serving up food as well as cooking and stirring during the creation process.
• Corner. We've even got ones shaped at an angle that's optimal for those stubborn bits of food that tend to stick to the corners of the pan. It's also useful for scraping off leftovers.

Invest in a Set

If you need more than just a slotted spoon to add to your kitchen essentials collection, consider a spoon set from Williams Sonoma, which includes a 12" spoon, 14" spoon, 12" blunt-end spoon and 12" slotted spoon. Or if you're just starting from scratch and need everything, go bigger with Giada de Laurentiis' 7-piece ultimate utensils set, comprised of a cooks' spoon, turner, ladle, pasta fork, small and large wooden spoon and a slotted wooden spoon. These sets also make great gifts for a first-time homeowner, a new graduate, or the budding chef in the family. Happy cooking!