Slotted spoon facts for kids

A slotted spoon is a type of spoon used when you're cooking or serving food. It has special holes or slots in its bowl. These openings let liquids drain away, but they keep the solid food on the spoon.

Imagine you're trying to take cooked pasta out of boiling water. A regular spoon would bring a lot of water with it. But a slotted spoon lets the water drip back into the pot, leaving just the pasta.

What is a Slotted Spoon?

A slotted spoon is a kitchen tool that looks like a regular spoon but has small openings. These openings can be slots, holes, or other shapes. Their main job is to separate liquids from solid foods.

How Slotted Spoons Work

The design of a slotted spoon is very clever. When you scoop up food that's in a liquid, the liquid passes through the holes. This leaves the solid food behind on the spoon. It works a bit like a sieve, which is a tool with a mesh screen used for straining.

Different Sizes and Uses

Slotted spoons come in different sizes for different jobs:

• Large Slotted Spoons: These are often called "ladle-sized." Cooks use them to take food out of cooking liquids. For example, you might use one to lift boiled potatoes from a pot of water. This keeps the water in the pot for other uses.
• Smaller Slotted Spoons: These are more like regular table spoons. People use them to serve foods that come in juice or syrup. Think about serving canned fruit like peaches or vegetables like peas. The spoon lets the juice stay in the can or serving dish.

Special Slotted Spoons

Some slotted spoons are made for very specific purposes. One interesting example is a special spoon used in a traditional way to prepare a drink called absinthe.

Absinthe Spoons

These spoons are quite unique. They often have fancy designs and are mostly flat. They are balanced on the edge of a glass. A sugar cube is placed on the spoon. Then, ice water is slowly poured over the sugar cube and through the spoon's slots.

• The slots make sure that only the sugar that has fully dissolved in the water reaches the drink.
• This slow drip of water also helps create a cloudy effect in the drink, which is part of the tradition.

Three examples of typical stainless steel slotted spoons

Special slotted spoons used to prepare absinthe