I could be wrong about this but I don't remember there ever being tongs in my mother's kitchen. Now, she never was much of a gadget freak (or cook, for that matter) but she seemed to have the basics on hand.
Working in restaurants, I quickly learned that chefs love them. Your standard professional kitchen will have hundreds of pairs on hand because they get used A LOT. I have a couple myself and they are very good to have around; they earn their place in the utensil crock quite easily.
Now, a trip to BB&B will quickly reveal that there are many variations on the above image. Longer tongs for the grill (great), tongs with silicon tips (handy) and tongs that lock shut (seemed like a good idea at the time but I regret buying them). All reasonable variants.
However, it turns out that there are many specialty tongs with very specific function and I'm not too excited about all of them.
I will admit that I own a pair of jar lifting tongs:
Having recently gotten into canning I did live without them for a while. Trying to get the little jars of jam and jelly out of the big steaming pot of water wasn't too hard without the curvy jar tongs but getting a big jar of pickles or beets out with regular tongs? The anxiety is palpable.
It's on me to make sure I stick with the canning to get full value from these tongs. Good thing I like pickles!
Here's a tong that I am dubious of - the toast tong:
I know, not everyone has calloused fingertips like me and sometimes pulling a hot bagel out of the toaster can be somewhat painful. I guess if you're toasting everyday then toast tongs might be for you. Tong tongs would also work.
Do you eat escargot everyday? If so, you should definitely own not only this:
but also these:
No, you didn't see these at the gynecologists office. They're for eating snails.
Not having participated in either before I cannot comment on which might be worse but they both seem pretty bad.
Then we come to the asparagus tongs. Asparagus is just the vegetable that keeps on giving - not only do you need the specialized peeler to prep the veg for cooking (not really: http://lettuceknife.blogspot.com/2008/11/id-buy-this-if-it-could-get-rid-of-that.html ) but apparently you need a special vessel in which to steam it (again, not really) and then you need a special utensil with which to eat the asparagus! (Not really.)
These are the "dainty feel" asparagus tongs. There are little brass knuckle-looking things that you slip your fingers into so that you might better grip the asparagus. Pretty stupid but if you're feeling pretentious, they're quite a deal at only $6/per.
If you laugh in the face of recessions, depressions and common sense, you can upgrade to these lovelies for $179/per.
Of course, these are nothing if you're old money. You wouldn't eat your asparagus for anything less than the $300 version.
The above link is to Paul Krugman's (now the Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman's) op-ed from Oct. 22. 2007 regarding the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife. In it he links to a Washington Post article (how meta, a link to a link) with much more salacious detail.
For our purposes, the money quote is here:
"Defendant has and continues to unlawfully hold in his possession six pairs of asparagus tongs manufactured by Mappin & Webb, Birmingham, 1926 weighing 10 ounces total," reads one of dozens of paragraphs. "The last-known location for these items was at 'Vallamont,' 132 Pheasant Circle, Ligonier, Pa. 15658. The estimated cost for these items is $1,800."
The moral of the story? Always get a pre-nup when asparagus tongs are involved!
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