Kitchen Scissors / Shears

Kitchen scissors give you a fast way to make precise, straight cuts without requiring a chopping board; the main advantage is that it makes very regular cuts very easily. It's important to get a reliable, sharp pair but that's easy to do ... even good ones are cheap.

Obviously, sometimes a knife and chopping board are the right choice, but here are some situations where I rely on the shears:

1) Cutting leafy vegetables into strips, or shredding them into small bits

2) Chopping bananas, cucumbers, carrots, and other long thin fruits and vegetables into small pieces in a pot

3) Cutting tortillas, pitas, and other flat breads into even rectangular strips (for wraps and so on)

I actually keep a second pair around for opening plastic packages and so on, so I don't have to worry about any cross-contamination (i.e. the one for "food" is treated just like any other cooking utensil, and doesn't do any non-cooking jobs).