The fish spatula has been unfairly typecast. It’s all in the name. Because this kitchen tool is called a fish spatula, you wouldn’t be blamed for thinking it exists for a singular purpose: flipping fish.
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But use your fish spatula to smoothly flip an egg, and suddenly you’ll realize that its thin edge maneuvers under the white’s delicate, lacy edges better than any other tool in your kitchen crock. Use it to peel a cookie off of a baking sheet that you forgot to grease, and you’ll realize that the same sharp edge can pry things as precisely as a knife.
At a glance
$31 at Victorinox
Basically, the fish spatula is good for so much more than fish. I spent years testing kitchen gear as an editor at Epicurious and Bon Appétit, and through my countless hours of cooking both personally and professionally, the fish spatula has become my favorite tool for doing everything I want a spatula to do, just better. And many things that a regular spatula could never do – such as whisking a pan sauce or cutting brownies. (More on that below.)
At my past job, I was known as the fish spatula spokesperson, and here I’m sharing all the ways I use it in my home kitchen every day – and the ways you should use it too. Read on, then consider joining my letter-writing campaign to get the fish spatula renamed the Everything Spatula.
But first, what is a fish spatula?
A fish spatula has a longer and thinner head than a regular stainless steel spatula does. This fin-shaped head is so thin, in fact, that it’s very nearly sharp. That means the spatula can slide under even the most delicate of foods – such as fish – with precision and grace.
In addition, the edge of a fish spatula is usually beveled, or angled upward ever so slightly. That makes it easier to come in from an angle to maneuver food you’re trying to flip or extract. The head contains five long slots that allow oil or cooking liquid to escape, isolating the food you’re trying to lift and preventing it from sliding off of the spatula.
How do you use a fish spatula?
A fish spatula being used on a fried egg
For flipping and lifting delicate foods
Yes, I do still use my fish spatula to pan fry salmon – its sharp edge won’t leave behind any of the coveted crispy skin when I take the fish from pan to plate.
But when I make crepes for my family, my fish spatula slides under a paper-thin French pancake beautifully, preventing breakage when I remove it from the pan. Need to flip regular pancakes? I recently made a stack to celebrate a snowy day, and trust me, you’ll never do it better than you will with a fish spatula. Its edge really gets underneath the pancake crust, leaving no baked bits behind when you flip.
And I probably use my fish spatula most for frying eggs. The thin, sharp edge pries the stuck-on edges off the pan and maneuvers the egg without breaking the yolk. When I make scrambled eggs, I can also slide the spatula’s edge under the scramble as I’m moving it around in the pan, preventing a thin layer of egg from baking onto the cooking surface. (Just know: you shouldn’t use your fish spatula on a nonstick skillet, because it could scratch the coating. I make my eggs in stainless-steel cookware.)
For straining oil and other liquids
a fish spatula being used to lift a poached egg
I don’t own a spider, because everything I’d use a small handheld strainer for, I can just rely on my fish spatula and its slotted head. I use it to make poached eggs regularly, fishing the finished egg out of the poaching liquid. On the occasion that I decide to tackle a deep frying project at home, I’ve used my fish spatula to lift pieces of crispy chicken out of the piping-hot oil.
The spatula’s perforations even make sauteing and shallow-frying easier: this time of year, I always make latkes at least once, using my fish spatula to flip and lift the fritter out of its sizzling pan without flinging excess oil on my arms. What’s more, your food won’t slip and slip around the spatula head as much, since its perforated surface catches less oil.
For baking perfectly crispy-chewy cookies
Photograph: Emily Johnson/The Guardian
The fish spatula is my secret weapon to good cookies. I learned that when I developed a chocolate chip cookie recipe for Epicurious. Cookies with lacy-crisp edges and chewy centers are deeply important to me, and this tool has a unique ability to slide under a cookie without breaking those edges that add crucial textural intrigue.
Plus, since the edge is almost sharp, I like to use the tool to cut into brownies or bar cookies when in a pinch. And the slanted head makes it easy to maneuver my way into that sliced pan of brownies, neatly extracting the one I want and slicing through the crumbs or custardy centers.
Photograph: Emily Johnson/The Guardian
For whisking a creamy pan sauce
A pan sauce is a key ingredient in a home cook’s repertoire. To make one, you scrape up the browned bits that stuck to your pan while you were searing meat and emulsify them with wine and butter to create a sauce with lots of deep, savory flavor. The fish spatula is, as we’ve established, great for scraping. But you can also use it to whisk and emulsify your sauce.
Let me explain. Years ago, I tested whisks and made hundreds of pan sauces as part of the process. I found that I liked a flat whisk (it has flat, oval-shaped rings, rather than the common balloon-shaped ones) for this specific use. A flat whisk was able to get into the corners of my pan in ways that a more rounded whisk couldn’t. But I didn’t think owning a flat whisk in addition to a balloon whisk (which I liked better for every other whisking task) was worth it for that hyper specific purpose.
Instead, I’ve taken to using my fish spatula for emulsifying pan sauces. Its oblong holes are similar to those of the flat whisk, and it’s lightweight and flexible enough that I can agitate the sauce with it. And its long, angled head can deftly make its way into the corners of the pan, allowing me to swab up every bit of liquid.
Photograph: Bartosz Luczak/Getty Images
For scraping clean pans
For the same reason that it’s great for flipping easily stuck foods (that sharp, thin edge), the fish spatula is great for cleaning your pans when they’re burdened with lots of stuck-on grime. Use that sharp edge to scrape cheese or egg that has baked to the bottom of your skillet. I use my fish spatula to help clean my cast-iron and stainless steel cookware. As I mentioned, stainless steel cookware will scratch when you use a sharp edge to clean it, but this scratching is simply cosmetic – and unavoidable if you, like me, use your stainless steel cookware several times a day. (I wouldn’t advise using your fish spatula – or any other scraper – on ceramic pans or the enameled coating of a Dutch oven, and I certainly wouldn’t use it on nonstick cookware.)
Which fish spatula should you buy?
If it has all of the qualities I’ve just sung praises for, any fish spatula will work wonderfully. My favorite from Victorinox is inexpensive and has a wooden handle.
Photograph: Courtesy of Victorinox
Victorinox Slotted Fish Turner Wood
$31 at Victorinox
This makes the spatula look nice, but also means it won’t risk melting if it gets too close to the heat source while you’re cooking, as a plastic handle might. The spatula is also made of sturdy stainless steel, so it’s not prone to bending or warping as you put it through the ringer – as I absolutely have in my years of using it to both test kitchen gear and cook for my family.
And if you’d like something even more inexpensive, I’d recommend this Zulay spatula or this OXO spatula.
Photograph: Courtesy of Zulay Kitchen
Zulay Kitchen Stainless Steel Fish Turner Spatula
$14.39 at Amazon$18.99 at Zulay Kitchen Photograph: Courtesy of Oxo
OXO Good Grips Little Fish Turner
$16.95 at Amazon$16.99 at OXO
