How To Get The Most Out Of Your Kitchen Shears

While we won't argue with the thrill that comes from walking up and down the aisles of a kitchen store and picking out a new shiny tool to add to your personal collection of beloved cooking gadgets, we will say that there is a certain satisfaction that comes from finding additional uses for a tool you already own. If you happen to be the owner of a pair of kitchen shears that have been acquiring their fair share of dust, it may finally be time to rinse them off. Luckily, these oft-overlooked tools have quite an impressive number of uses.

If you're an old hand in the kitchen, then you probably already know shears can be used to spatchcock a chicken. According to Today, kitchen shears make easy work of cutting down the side of the backbone required to split a raw chicken before flattening it. But, if tearing down whole birds isn't actually in your cooking repertoire, there are still a number of other uses for cooking shears that may be of interest. After all, according to Giada De Laurentiis, cooking shears may not be getting the credit they deserve.

In addition to being helpful in navigating raw chicken, keeping kitchen shears handy can help when preparing other raw meats. Today points out that kitchen shears can also be used to cut raw, slippery bacon and to portion raw meats like beef and pork for recipes requiring smaller meat chunks like stir-fries. Kitchen shears can even be used to split open shrimp and remove the veins more easily, according to Today.

Everyone loves a photo of a good cheese pull, but what about if you're just trying to eat your dinner? According to Southern Living, cheesy food items like pizza, quesadillas, and cheese-stuffed pitas can be challenging to separate, but kitchen shears can do the trick. The publication also points out a number of vegetable hacks involving shears, including using kitchen shears to cut broccoli and cauliflower florets into smaller pieces and saving yourself the time of cleaning a cutting board by just cutting off the ends of asparagus and green beans with kitchen shears while holding the veggies in your hand.

Hopefully, your mind is thinking of all the shear possibilities for putting this kitchen tool to use, but, don't take it from us how important shears can be to kitchen work, Alton Brown went so far as to tweet, "A good pair of kitchen shears is worth 7.3 knives."