The Must-Have Tool For Perfectly Smooth Pasta Sauce

The texture of a pasta sauce is crucial to the dish. While it's true that rustic, chunky sauce has its place piled high on a plate of spaghetti, sometimes, depending on the pasta shape, the occasion often calls for something a little more silky and refined. The problem is, making smooth pasta sauce normally requires a blender or a food mill to work out all the lumps and bumps. There is a very handy tool, however, that makes quick work of tomato chunks: a flat whisk. This must-have gadget can create perfectly smooth pasta sauce without it ever leaving the pan.

If you're not hip to flat whisks, the kitchen tool is just what it sounds like: a metal whisk with a few flat loops. They're shaped kind of like a spatula, except they're made for stirring saucy foods in a flat-bottomed pan instead of flipping. The secret to the flat spatula's success is that it can reach everywhere inside of a pan, which neither a standard balloon or French whisk can do.

If smooth pasta sauce is a priority in your household, there is almost zero technique needed to use a flat whisk. All you have to do is smush it around in the saucepan until the lumps are gone. The loops are thin enough that they'll slice right through stubborn chunks of tomato. Even better, you can test the finished product by swishing the whisk around and lifting it up from time to time; if the loops pick up any chunks, keep mashing until the tool comes out clean.

Smoothing out a basic tomato sauce isn't the only trick you can pull off with a flat whisk, either. It's a whiz at mixing roux and milk for béchamel sauce, and can pull a pan sauce together in seconds. You can also use it like a spatula to lift saucy foods out of a pan, like raviolis or delicate fish, and then double back to the pot to stir the sauce, and it's stellar for making scrambled eggs. So don't worry about a flat whisk taking up space in your kitchen drawers as a one-use gadget; not only will it up your pasta sauce game, you'll reach for it more often than you think.