Let's start a campaign to re-brand the fish spatula. Not only is the name "fish spatula" decidedly unsexy—so are its other monikers, fish turner and slotted spatula—but the term doesn't reflect all of the diverse functions this little kitchen tool is able to do.
In addition to turning delicate, flaky fish, a fish turner's also excellent for flipping, transferring, and scraping off various foods. Seek out a version that's long, flat, and sturdy, yet exceedingly thin and manipulable, with wide slots for draining off liquids like oil. If you don't own one yet, my personal favorite is the All-Clad Stainless Steel Professional Flexible Slotted Spatula. It has the right amount of bendability, yet it's well-built, and hasn't warped one bit over the years. It's also dishwasher-safe, and easy to keep clean; the design somehow seems resistant to food or grease buildup. And while a price tag of $24 might seem like a lot to pay for a kitchen tool, I'd argue it's every bit worth the price, considering its long-term cost per use. For all you left-handers out there, some brands, like LamsonSharp and Wusthof, even make left-handed versions.
Use a slotted turner as an all-purpose breakfast tool to flip pancakes, crusty hash browns, oversized crepes, and delicate over-easy eggs. They're also great for Mexican meals: turn a quesadilla over to brown it on the other side, then use the spatula to do double duty serving messy baked dishes like enchiladas. I also use them when browning chicken cutlets, to gently apply a light amount of pressure to a piece of piece of steak as it cooks, melting the buttered side of a grilled cheese, lifting out casserole dishes, like lasagna or manicotti, and extracting sticky vegetables or parmesan cheese fricos from a baking sheet. If you're pan-frying something like fritters, simply lift up the item from your sauté pan, let the oil drain out from underneath it, and dab it with something absorbent before transferring it to serving plate. Just make sure you wash yours before dessert; you'll need it to get cookies off that sheet pan, and it comes in really handy when you're serving tiramisu at a dinner party.
With all that in mind, I vote to re-brand the fish turner to the flippin' awesome spatula. Who's with me?
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