How To Use Your Kitchen Shears For More Than Just Cutting

Do you own a pair of kitchen shears? If not, you might want to consider making these specialty scissors your next housewares purchase. For under $10, you can purchase a handy gadget that can, well, cut stuff. Yes, you've already got a drawer full of knives — we all do. The thing about using two-bladed shears, though, is that these allow for a degree of control that a knife just can't provide. There's also a certain safety aspect to it, too. Sure, it may seem swashbuckling to whip out a knife and open that hard-to-tear package, but you may be a lot better off using scissors if you want to avoid accidents.

Kitchen shears, unlike a standard pair of scissors, are a tool built for a specific task. They tend to have strong, well-balanced blades, lending them the necessary power to cut through meat and bone. One of the blades may be serrated, too, which makes for better gripping of slippery foodstuffs. Kitchen shears are also typically made from materials like stainless steel that can stand up to a lot of washing. The interesting thing about kitchen shears, though, is that they can do a lot more than just cut through things scissors-style. Even if you've owned a pair for years, there's a good chance you may have been under-utilizing them all this time — I know for sure I have. The following is a list of some of the tricks your kitchen shears can perform if you'll only give them a chance.

About the very first thing I ever did with kitchen shears once I'd acquired a pair was to use them to chop tomatoes inside a can. Why would you need to do this, you might wonder, since canned tomatoes come pre-diced? Okay, so I probably should have bought them in this form, but I guess I got a better deal on the whole kind. It might also be the case, though, that you have a marinara sauce recipe calling for fairly large chunks of tomato, but plopping whole tomatoes in the pan and squishing them there can be messy. If you point your shears down into the can and snip the tomatoes into smaller pieces, the juice won't squirt all over the place. While canned tomatoes are one of the messier examples, this would also work with other types of canned vegetables such as green beans, beets, or artichoke hearts.

Besides chopping stuff inside a can or container, you can also use shears to cut things up after you've added them to a pan. I do this with bacon and sausages all the time, and also with stew meat that turns out to be less bite-sized than I'd hoped. I'll also use it to trim off bits of bone or gristle that I didn't notice before dumping the meat into the dish.

One thing that kitchen shears seem tailor-made for is spatchcocking a chicken. If you're not familiar with this preparation method, it basically involves flattening out the bird into something a little more two-dimensional, which allows the chicken to cook quicker and more evenly. You can also spatchcock other types of poultry such as turkey, so keep this in mind if you'd like to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table earlier next year.

The main step in spatchcocking involves removing the backbone. You can do this by using your shears to cut up along one side of it, beginning at the tailbone or "pope's nose," then cutting along the other side and lifting it out. Once the backbone is no longer holding the bird together, you can turn it over and squish it down flat. (For the crispest chicken, weigh it down with a brick.) Your de-backboned bird is now ready to use in our delicious spatchcocked Hawaiian grilled chicken or numerous other roast chicken recipes.

If you look at your kitchen shears and see two little serrated sections beneath the handles, you may have just discovered a built-in herb stripper. If you take the kind of fresh herbs that have a dry, woody stem and run them across either side of this serrated segment, the leaves should come right off and be ready for cooking. (You needn't discard the leftover herb stems, either, since these can be used to infuse oils or vinegars or to flavor stock or broth.) 

If you're chopping herbs with soft stems, however, you can use the shears to snip off the leaves. Whether or not your kitchen shears have the herb stripper, they are ideal for chopping delicate herbs since they're less likely to bruise the leaves than a knife might do. If you grow your own herbs, you can also use the kitchen shears to snip the leaves right off the plant. I also enjoy the ease of using them to chiffonade rolled-up basil and mint leaves, and they're my preferred tool of choice for cutting green onions, as well. What I really appreciate about using kitchen shears for these tasks is that it allows me to skip the cutting board. Instead, I simply hold the onions or herbs above whatever dish I'm garnishing and chop them in midair.

If you do have that herb stripper thingy on your kitchen shears, there's another trick it can do. Believe it or not, this serrated area can also be used to crack nuts or lobster and crab claws as long as you get the right leverage and the inserted item fits between the handles. It may also come in handy for helping to loosen or remove the lids of small jars, open plastic bottles, and crack open screw-on caps from wine bottles.

Yet another feature that some kitchen shears have is a notch on the side of one blade that can serve as a bottle opener for beer and soda. While not every pair of kitchen shears will feature either or both of these tools, many do, and some specifically advertise these functions. They may not be the number one selling point with any pair of shears, since most of us already have numerous bottle and can openers, but it's a nice little extra that makes us appreciate the versatility of this kitchen essential.

If there's one type of kitchen tool I seem to have an excessive number of, it would be pizza wheels. For some reason, I have half a drawer full, the rest of the drawer being equally unused can coozies. The reason for this excess is that both items seem to be popular giveaways at fairs and festivals, but the thing is, I never use the pizza wheels for their intended purpose (or the coozies at all). After all, why should I? Kitchen shears do a much better and neater job of cutting my pizzas into as many slices as I need, and they don't get stuck when they hit a spot of particularly tough crust.

It's not just pizza crusts that can easily be sliced with kitchen shears. I use them to make homemade tortilla chips or strips since they can cut through a stack at a time. They're also good for slicing pita bread into triangles that can be dunked into hummus or baba ghanouj, and I've even used them to cut up soft slices of bread into cubes intended for croutons.