So, in total seriousness: I'm an amateur baker, I own six spatulas, and only one of them is very good. My second favorite was doing great until I was making a double batch of muffins and the wooden handle came out of the silicone head, and then some muffin batter got into the slot where the handle used to be, and it was obvious that I was never going to get it clean again so I had to throw it away.
(Funny thing about this is I vaguely remember Alton Brown predicting this in his own review of spatulas. And then it happened just like he said.)
The good one is from Zyliss and is a silicone spatula firmly fused to its plastic handle. I have stirred some pretty viscous tubs of stuff with this spatula and it holds up, plus it's flexible enough to scrape well. My only problem with it is that it's wearing out after a few years; silicone isn't permanent and it develops nicks on the edge. I should go order three more while I'm thinking about it.
So I don't think reading ladle reviews is that farfetched at all. (Though for ladles, as for many things, I'd start at the local restaurant supply store. Those stores are big on utility and not as big on hype and markup. And, truthfully, ladles are not a hard thing to get right. Now dishers, on the other hand...)
(For some reason I am now having fond memories of Weird Al Yankovic's movie UHF. Fans will know why. ;)
I have a Zyliss spatula. I'm surprised at how durable the edge has proven to be, so far.
I wouldn't have thought as much of choosing a spatula, until I happened by chance into the Zyliss.
Just recently, I happened upon a sub-Reddit named BIFL (Buy It For Life). I don't know yet whether it's a good sub-Reddit, but I like the idea.
I inherited some old cookware (including a couple of ladles) from the wrapping up of a few family estates (in the small sense, not the Vanderbilt sense). The quality of the "everyday" items is unmatched by much of U.S. contemporary "everyday" kitchenware. I could go to Williams Sonoma and spend $40, $80, or whatever, to get something comparable. But for a reasonable amount of money, one is kind of SOoL with respect to the contemporary marketplace. There are some good items out there, but often they are obscured, drowning in a sea of crap. Corresponding to this, the crap outweighs and often displaces them on the store shelves, so that you can't even find them in a bricks and mortar environment.
Reviews are one way of getting past the crap. And, to some extent, I'm not spending copious amounts of time for a $4 ladle. I'm spending it on the $4 ladle that performs like the $40 ladle at Williams Sonoma.
They get more stuff out of more things better than anything else I've used, conform to more weird shapes so they scrape better (a huge amount of that is flexible), a different handle/scraper setup that hasn't even remotely started to separate, all that good stuff. My only complaint is that the tip of one has cracked after a year or two or so of use.
Why not just dunk the spatula head and handle in a 5% bleach solution?
We do a fair bit of sausage and charcuterie stuff here; there's usually a bowl of bleach solution somewhere in my kitchen with something disinfecting in it.
Well, I suppose I could have done so, then reinserted the handle. Then there'd be thoroughly disinfected organic material somewhere inside of the head of my spatula. ;) This would probably not be fatal, but it was distasteful.
Or I could have attacked the problem with Q-tips and patience.
But another, different problem is that I anticipated the spatula coming apart again. I do a lot of stirring of dough with spatulas, and it's annoying when you have to constantly guard against pulling them apart. I guess I could have gotten into the whole "which glue holds wood to silicone?" materials science problem but it was easier to just switch to Zyliss.
(Funny thing about this is I vaguely remember Alton Brown predicting this in his own review of spatulas. And then it happened just like he said.)
The good one is from Zyliss and is a silicone spatula firmly fused to its plastic handle. I have stirred some pretty viscous tubs of stuff with this spatula and it holds up, plus it's flexible enough to scrape well. My only problem with it is that it's wearing out after a few years; silicone isn't permanent and it develops nicks on the edge. I should go order three more while I'm thinking about it.
So I don't think reading ladle reviews is that farfetched at all. (Though for ladles, as for many things, I'd start at the local restaurant supply store. Those stores are big on utility and not as big on hype and markup. And, truthfully, ladles are not a hard thing to get right. Now dishers, on the other hand...)
(For some reason I am now having fond memories of Weird Al Yankovic's movie UHF. Fans will know why. ;)