Meat & Poultry Tools

Meat Tenderisers, Burger Presses and More

If meat is a regular part of your diet, there are a few key tools that can help ensure that your steak is tender, your burger juicy and your chicken perfectly roasted. Whether you prefer to grill, sear or bake your meat and poultry, you'll find that Williams Sonoma has a range of kitchen tools, and even rubs and other seasoning blends, that will help you perfect your meat-cooking game. After all, meat tenderisers, burger presses and digital instant-read thermometers can make the difference between a good meal and a great one.

The Details

One of the key tools in your meat-cooking arsenal is the meat tenderiser. This is a weighted mallet or hammer-type tool that often features rounded-off spikes on one side. The flat side allows you to pound cutlets of chicken or veal into a uniform thickness for even cooking. The textured side breaks down the tough muscle fibres in certain cuts of meat, resulting in a more tender and succulent finished product. Given their weight, meat tenderisers can also be used to crush nuts, garlic or candy. Here's just one of the options available at Williams Sonoma:

• Reversible Meat Tenderiser - At 850 grams, this tenderizer feels impressively weighty in the hand. Featuring a triple-plated chrome construction, this dishwasher-safe tool gets its heft from its zinc core. The reversible disc on the end of the ergonomic handle allows you to easily switch between the smooth side for pounding and the textured side for tenderising.

If burgers are your go-to item for barbecuing, a burger press is something you're going to want to add to your collection of grilling tools. While you can, of course, form your burger patties by hand, a burger press produces far superior results with much less effort. When you use a burger press, you can create uniform patties of exactly the right size every single time. This is especially crucial when grilling for a crowd since it's a lot easier to monitor the progress of multiple burgers when they are cooking at the same rate because they are all the exact same size and shape. Burger presses offer the additional benefit of preventing the meat from becoming warmed and overworked in your hands. Read on for more about Williams Sonoma's burger press.

• Adjustable Nonstick Burger Press - This professional cast aluminium press moulds perfectly uniform patties, which makes it much easier to ensure even cooking and tender, juicy results. Markings on the handle allow you to adjust patty weight; simply choose a setting from 1.5-cm to 4-cm thick. The nonstick finish makes clean-up quick and easy.

No matter what your favourite meat is or how you prefer to prepare it, you need to have an instant-read thermometer on hand. First and foremost, a digital thermometer will help ensure that your meat or poultry has reached a safe temperature for eating. With a good meat thermometer, you'll never again cut into a chicken breast to find it still pink in the middle. Additionally, a digital thermometer allows you to cook your steak to your preferred level of doneness every time. Here's one of the high-tech options available at Williams Sonoma:

• Bluetooth Thermometer - A dream come true for any home cook, this remarkable device allows you to remotely track the internal temperature of up to four different dishes. The Bluetooth thermometer base connects to as many as four temperature probes (two included), which transmit moment-by-moment temperature readings to the base and your mobile device.