Everything Needs Peeling: 10 Nordic Tools for Root Season
October fills the vegetable drawer with things that grew in the dark. Ten Nordic kitchen tools for scrubbing, peeling, grating and mashing them.
Read More →The Last Pinch: 10 Nordic Mills, Mortars and Butter Dishes
The cooking has changed. Salad weather ended somewhere in September, and what comes out of the oven now has been in there for an hour: roots, cabbage, barley, a shoulder of something cheap. Food like that does not arrive seasoned. It is built over a long heat and then decided in the last thirty seconds, with salt between the fingers, pepper ground coarse over the top, a slice of butter, a thread of oil.
Which puts a handful of small objects in charge of the meal. They sit within arm's reach of the hob or stay out on the table all winter, so they are worth choosing properly. What follows is ten of them from Nordic makers: four mills, a salt cellar, a mortar, a grinder cut from oak, a bottle for oil and two dishes for butter. All ten are in stock in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, so it is worth comparing prices on ScandiDeals before buying.
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1. Rosendahl Grand Cru Salt and Pepper Mill – Glass That Shows The Level
Grand Cru is Rosendahl's long-running kitchen series, and the mill is the plainest thing in it: a tapered column of clear glass, a steel collar and a matte black cap, standing 20.5 centimetres. The glass is the useful part: the Grand Cru mill shows at a glance how much is left, which matters on the evening a stew needs salt and the mill turns out to be empty. Two of them stood together look deliberate without matching anything else you own.
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2. Broste Copenhagen Oak Salt and Pepper Mill – Plain Oak, One Seam
Sixteen centimetres of pale oak, a single seam around the middle where it opens, a flat top. No branding, no shaping, nothing to dust around. The Oak mill is the sort of object that disappears into a kitchen and then quietly improves it, because a wooden cylinder next to a wooden board reads as one idea. Oak darkens where hands hold it, so within a year this one will show you exactly how often it gets used.
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3. Normann Copenhagen Craft Pepper Mill – Oak Below, Marble Above
The Craft mill splits the work between two materials: a tapered body in light oak that your hand wraps around, and a rounded cap of black marble that your other hand turns. The weight sits high, so it spins with very little effort, and the cold of the stone against the warmth of the wood is the whole design. The small Craft mill is the table size, meant to be passed around rather than left by the cooker.
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4. Rosendahl Rå Salt Cellar With Lid – Salt You Can Grab
A mill is wrong for the final seasoning. Flaked salt wants to be taken between finger and thumb, so you can feel the amount, and that needs an open bowl. The Rå salt cellar holds 15 centilitres in a matte black, slightly faceted body, with a wooden lid that sits over the top like a hat. The lid earns its keep in a steamy winter kitchen, where open salt turns to a solid block by Christmas.
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5. House Doctor Arb Mortar With Pestle – Deep Green, Pleasantly Heavy
Ten centimetres across, deep green and mottled like stone, with a pestle cut to match. A mortar does the one thing a mill cannot: it bruises rather than cuts, which is what dried juniper for a game stew, caraway for cabbage or a few peppercorns for a crust actually need. The Arb mortar is heavy enough to stay put while you lean on it, small enough to live on the worktop rather than in a cupboard.
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6. Scandi Living Hollow Pepper Mill – Acacia, Honey And Brown
The same honest cylinder as the Broste mill, in a warmer wood. Acacia runs from honey to dark brown in bands, so each one is marked differently, and at 16 centimetres it is tall enough to grip properly but short enough to leave out. The Hollow mill is the sensible second mill for a kitchen that keeps one by the hob and one on the table, and the least expensive piece on this list.
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7. Applicata Twist Spice Grinder And Salt Bowl – A Sphere You Turn
Two blocks of oak: a square column with a wooden ball resting on top that you twist to grind, and a second block hollowed into a small open bowl for flaked salt. Nothing about the Twist looks like kitchen equipment. Left on a windowsill or at the end of a dining table it reads as two pieces of geometry, which is the point of buying one rather than hiding a plastic grinder in a drawer.
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8. Ferm Living Ripple Oil Bottle – Fluted Glass, Good Oil
Ferm Living's Ripple glass is ribbed from top to bottom, and the 30-centilitre bottle carries the ridges the whole height, which catches lamplight the way a plain bottle does not. Keep the good oil in the Ripple bottle and the cooking oil in its tin: this one is for the last pour over a bowl of soup, a plate of roast roots or bread torn at the table. A narrow neck keeps that pour slow.
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9. HAY Barro Butter Dish – Butter At Spreading Temperature
Barro is HAY's rough-surfaced ceramic, glazed inside and left matte outside, and the butter dish is a low off-white rectangle with a lid and a small square knob. Butter kept cold tears bread; butter left under the Barro dish sits at the temperature where it spreads. From late October a Nordic kitchen is cool enough that a block can live on the counter for a week without trouble, which is why these dishes exist at all.
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10. RIG-TIG BOX-IT Butter Dish – The Lid Is A Board
RIG-TIG is Stelton's kitchen line, and the BOX-IT butter dish is a warm grey box with a bamboo lid that you are supposed to turn over: upside down it becomes the board you cut on and carry to the table. The box closes properly, so the BOX-IT dish goes in the fridge in August and stays on the worktop from now until spring, holding a standard block without trimming it.
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Final Thoughts
Seasoning equipment is bought badly more often than almost anything else in a kitchen. The mill that came free with a set of knives grinds dust, the plastic grinder is thrown out within two years, and the salt lives in the box it was sold in. One wooden mill that can be refilled, one open bowl of flaked salt and one mortar will outlast a drawer full of gadgets, and all three are quicker to use, which is the part that actually changes how you cook.
Buy for the way your hand works rather than for the shelf. A mill should turn without a fight, a salt cellar should be wide enough for two fingers, a butter dish should hold the block your shop sells. These ten are stocked in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, and the asking price moves between shops and across borders, so compare them on ScandiDeals before the next long Sunday in the oven.
