Cooking is a pursuit everyone can enjoy, and these nerdy kitchen tools will let you express our geekier side. Whether you're a diehard Star Trek fan, a chemist who aspires to create your own mad scientist lab or a child of the 80s who never let go of comic-book icons and retro toys, you're sure to find a must-have kitchen tool for your arsenal.
1. Vulcan Oven Mitt ($29.99, Meninos): These oven mitts feature the split-fingered Vulcan salute, enabling Star Trek fans to say "Live long and prosper" each time they remove a hot dish from the oven. Unfortunately, Meninos warns that the mitt can only be worn on the right hand.
2. Superhero Aprons ($45-50, Etsy): Bethany Sew-&-Sew has created an army of Character Aprons that range from comic-book superheroes like Wonder Woman and Batman to Disney characters like Mr. Incredible and Alice in Wonderland. Each apron is made to order, and Bethany even takes custom orders for customers whose favorite characters aren't a part of her current collection.
3. Rubik's Cube Salt and Pepper Shakers ($14.99, Perpetual Kid): These salt and pepper shakers are made of actual Rubik's cubes; a simple twist dispenses your spice of choice from the adjustable ceramic grinding mill. Although you can't actually play these Rubik's cube spice grinders, you can channel childhood nostalgia.
4. The OCD Chef Cutting Board (price TBD, Fred & Friends): Everyone knows a cook whose diced vegetables and basil chiffonade have to be just so, and the OCD Chef Cutting Board is covered with an intense grid of measurements to accommodate this obsession with perfection. Fred & Friends hasn't put the cutting board on its product pages yet, but Swissmiss spotted it on the website's landing page, so it should be up soon.
5. Pizza Pi Cutter ($12.99, ThinkGeek): This double-bladed pie and pizza cutter lets math lovers slice baked goodies and ponder whether pi is an irrational number at the same time. Particularly enterprising chefs can even use the Pizza Pi Cutter to quiz kids on the area of the dish.
6. Tweet Towel (£10.00, We Are What We Do): This tea towel lets Twitter fanatics select a choice tweet and username to commemorate forever through embroidery. Just like its online counterpart, the tweets on the Tweet Towel must be under 140 characters.
7. Good Chemistry Salt & Pepper Shakers ($12.99, ThinkGeek): A roundup of nerdy kitchen tools wouldn't be complete without some mention of chemistry, and these salt and pepper shakers are the perfect way to do so. The designers note that since pepper is comprised of over 100 volatile compounds, they chose to make up a chemical formula in the name of brevity.
Photos by Meninos / Bethany Sew-&-Sew / Perpetual Kid / Fred & Friends / ThinkGeek / We Are What We Do / ThinkGeek
