My Favorite Cooking Tools

After about 10 years of cooking, I've realized that the tools that I use play as a big of a role as the ingredients, the recipes, and my skills.  Here are the ones that I rely on the most, which I used today to make my favorite beef stew recipe:

• A good Santoku knife.  It's great for chopping a large amount of ingredients, and the indentations on the blade help to prevent food from sticking to it.  
• A good bench scraper.  This is used to scoop up ingredients (like the onions and carrots in the picture.)  It's also useful for divying up portions of dough.                                                                                                                           

• A Y-shaped peeler.  This may be just my personal preference, but I think it's a lot easier to peel vegetables with this kind of peeler.                                             
• A garlic press.  If I have to chop 1 clove of garlic, I'll use a knife, but for 12 cloves, I'll break out the press.  I got mine from The Pampered Chef, and it's easy to use and clean.  
• Long tongs...mine are 12 inches long which are great when turning meat in hot oil.
• A flat wooden/bamboo scraper which is ideal for getting all those good flavor bits off the bottom of the pan.