The one cheap kitchen tool worth packing for every rental or Airbnb

The useful part

Pamela Vachon/CNET You don't need chef training to be picky about the tools you use in the kitchen. That goes doubly for when you might be called to someone else's kitchen, whether that's a family holiday situation or a rental property. If you're cooking for the group — by coercion or self-nomination — you have every right to want to use whatever tools and gadgets make you most confident about the outcome.

How it works

• If you're now puzzling over how a handheld zester of all things is that important a tool, well, some of you have never enjoyed scraped-together key lime pie for breakfast at the beach, and it shows.
• The microplane can do that work for you, and basically rinses clean afterward.
• Functionally, it works just like the Microplane, but is made in China for those keeping score.
• Connect Images/Getty There is only one tool, however, whose utility is so singular that it can't be substituted, that, in my experience, is the key between a good dinner and a great dinner (and dessert) and...
• I'm known to travel with cooking supplies and have even taken my cake pans across the Atlantic.

What to take from it

If you're convinced, I am partial to the Microplane brand here, whose handles are especially comfortable and which includes a protective sleeve for storage. In my defense, I was A) making a multi-tiered birthday cake and B) making it for my future siblings-in-law, whom I was meeting for the first time. I used to travel to summer beach rentals with all manner of basic tools: tongs, a whisk, a rubber spatula, you name it, plus a fleet of knives, a good bottle of olive oil and bagged-up samples of my entire spice rack.

Example or evidence

• I might stash a chef's knife, just in case, but more often than not, even that would stay tucked in my bag.
• My Microplane, myself The Microplane is an essential tool I can't count on finding in the drawers of an Airbnb.
• There is no other tool that does what a Microplane does to the same degree.
• Using a paring knife to gingerly cut the rind off citrus fruits without taking the pith with you and then mincing that up?

Details worth keeping

If you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. There are some kitchen tools a gal can't live without. My then-boyfriend, now-husband, is a great cook, it must be said, but cake wasn't a regular part of his repertoire, and I didn't want to take my chances with whatever might have been lurking in the darkest corners of his kitchen cabinets.

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