I love collecting vintage cookware and kitchen accessories. It usually starts with an innocent purchase at a local flea market at a very good price and ends up being a hefty PayPal bill from eBay sellers later on. A perfect example was the Dansk Kobenstyle cookware that I absolutely had to have after I purchased a $5 frying pan at the Laney College flea market. The only thing that finally stopped me from searching eBay everyday was the lack of space in the kitchen. Since then I have moved on to Rosti, Danish made plastic cooking accessories.
This new obsession is a byproduct of my boyfriend moving in. At first it was just a display piece on top of the kitchen cabinets, but I started to pay more attention after the cat knocked it off and we had to replace it. eBay is a great resource for these as Rosti is not as known or popular as Heller products. I was able to collect different pieces at very good prices. The different shapes of the spoons and utensils is what I love, but I still have no idea what is the spoon with the round whole for. My best guess is a stirrer. If you have any other ideas, please comment below.
If the vintage aspect of this collection is not your thing, you can get the the Rosti products as they are still produced under the Rosti Mepal brand, now a Dutch company. Some of the designs have changed, but the overall aesthetic is still very appealing. The new collections feature many different kitchenware, dinnerware, and food storage items in vibrant colors. Their famous Margrethe mixing bowl from 1955 that was named after a Danish queen and used to bare an official stamp, is still one of the most famous Rosti designs.
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Comments (22)
:-D oh dear. i guess it is a sign of old age when people start collecting the stuff you are using in your kitchen ever since you had one of your own ...
14 years ago i packed up and left a long-term relationship, taking with me the kitchen stuff that had been sitting in boxes in the attic for 15 years, and when i unpacked it in my now home, i had a good laugh, because it was all in brown and yellow - and a lot of it was Rosti. i still have many of those things, and use them, too.
now i feel really old :-P
ohhhhh. i have a rosti pitcher in orange! i love it!
The spoon with the whole in it! We had (parents still have) it in brown and I think the only thing it was ever used for was mixing orange juice from concentrate.
I think the spoon with the hole in it is a salad spoon?
it is? I thought that was for some kind of dough - (guessing). Cute collection.
I had the spoon with the hole in red- I used it to stir sauces.
I think it's for measuring spaghetti.
I love the collection, and I also love that this post contains words like "I", "me" and "mine".
"I" ??? what happened to "we". I think I like it. Not sure. The "we" felt there was a little space between you and me. Now I feel like there's a real person behind the post, but I kinda feel like "woah, that's a little bit personal!"
Go figure.
The spoon-with-a-hole is for kneading dough and stirring thick batter.
In my mothers kitchen (in Denmark) the best one was a dark purple one, because it had a pointy end :).
I now own a red one (without a pointy end).
Apart from kneading dough, it is also used to stir minced meat for instance for frikadeller.
I've seen spoons with holes used for stirring risotto. But reading the comments, it seems they serve several functions. :)
why on earth does anyone want to cook or eat, drink from plastic?
I love these!!
Pigletliver--I color coded my mixing spoons and cutting boards after the disastrous onion flavored apple pie incident. Everything red is for making desserts. The rest mostly wooden utensils, cutting boards and metal spoons is for everything else. Since you're usually handling mostly cold ingredients for making desserts, using plastic hasn't been a problem.
These tools are also probably made from ABS a very durable and stable plastic.
LoriSF, not plastic, they are, or at least were, made of melamine.
Designed by Sigvard Bernadotte who was an uncle of the Swedish King.
Shut up Lori
I love all of these and I doubt any of mine are Rosti, but am well familiar with the brand. If you go to any good kitchen shop, they will often sell Rosti, if not Heller too.
One word of caution, do not put your salad tongs in the same crock w/ the rest of the cooking utensils, especially if they are NOT heat proof, some of the lesser plastic ones are not intended for cooking. I store mine in a drawer to help avoid this. My best friend had a set of Coptco plastic salid bowl set I'd given him for Christmas one year years ago and he used to put his tongs in the crock next to the stove and a good friend grabbed one and tried to cook with it...
I find that the quality melamine utensils to look nice, it's the cheaper ones, sometimes w/ their raw edges that look cheap.
I have several in various colors of red, yellow and blue and a shallow strainer in teal that I use daily along with wooden spoons and spatulas and 3 flexible spatulas in silicone and 2 flippers, 2 cheapie nylon ones, one I've had for years and is a little discolored these days.
The softer more flexible nylon or wooden utensils work great on non stick cookware for they don't scratch. Melamine can since it's rigid, just an FYI
automatic thanks for the clarification and historical reference did not know. There is a store on Divisadero Street in SF called Cookin' I have seen them there before for you collectors.
labchick no one has told me to shut up since the third grade, LOL.
Cookin' is a great store in the best tradition of crotchety-but-helpful shopkeepers. And I love the hanging egg separator!
KTC you are correct that Melamine is a type of plastic, with all the problems that this this brings (melamine in your milk anyone?), but what I meant was that these bowls are not made of flimsy ordinary plastic but have a better feel to them.
Have also seen these in stainless steel. Much more expensive than the plastic ones, but great looking and should last a lifetime.
The spoon with the hole is a stirring spoon and it is purrrrrfect for achieving the silky consistency required for White sauces, ganache, dough, gravies (jus) and just about anything that swirls.
Indeed, I have three of these spoons with a hole, they are my absolute favourite mixing utensil, and that's how I found your site. I had two of them for 25yrs, one broke-- I panicked and bought two on Amazon... now they are nowhere to be found, discontinued, I guess. If you have any surplus, I would buy them from you!