Friday, June 4th, 2010
Last week I introduced the
daikon grater as one my essential cooking tools since it’s sort of an all-in-one type of grater and it’s large enough to grate almost anything. This week, I want to introduce my mini grater that I also can’t live without. Although you can use your daikon grater to grate garlic and ginger, it’s so much easier to have one of these mini ones if you just want to grate a clove of garlic or a small piece of ginger. I have a ceramic one and a plastic one, although I seem to have misplaced the plastic one. I got the plastic one from a
100 yen (dollar store). These mini graters are great when you just want to grate just a little bit of carrot or daikon for a sauce or garnish.
The reason why I love these graters is because grating releases the juices and oils more than when minced. I also use it when I don’t want chunks of garlic or ginger in my dish and I just want it to perfume the food. Also, ginger is very fibrous and grating helps to break it up and separate the fiber from the ginger.
So far, I’ve used this grater in my
Tofu Burger and
Shogayaki.
Ceramic mini grater.
Grating a clove of garlic. Hold onto the root end and grate.
Grated garlic looks like this. Discard the root end.
Raking the garlic into a bowl. This mini rake gets into the crevices of the grater. GREAT invention!
