Grater




; Grater

A grater, also known as a shredder, is a kitchen utensil used to grate foods into fine pieces. The modern grater was invented by François Boullier in the 1540s, originally to grate cheese.

Uses

Food preparation

Several types of graters feature different sizes of grating slots, and can therefore aid in the preparation of a variety of foods. They are commonly used to grate cheese and lemon or orange peel, and can also be used to grate other soft foods. They are commonly used in the preparation of toasted cheese, Welsh rarebit, egg salad, and dishes which contain cheese sauce such as macaroni and cheese, cauliflower cheese.
In :Category:Slavic cuisine|Slavic cuisine, graters are commonly used to grate potatoes for preparation of dishes, including draniki, bramborak or potato babka.
In tropical countries graters are also used to grate coconut meat. In the Indian subcontinent, the grater is used for preparation of a popular dessert, Gajar Ka Halwa.
Graters produce shreds that are thinner at the ends than the middle. This allows the grated material to melt or cook in a different manner than the shreds of mostly uniform thickness produced by the grating blade of a food processor. Hand-grated potatoes, for example, melt together more easily in a potato pancake than food-processed potato shreds.

In music

In Jamaica and Belize, coconut graters are used as a traditional musical instrument in the performance of kumina, jonkanoo, and sometimes mento.

History

The modern cheese grater was invented by François Boullier in the 1540s in France with the idea that hard cheeses could still be used.

Variants

s are complex food-processing machines with grater-like mechanisms. These mechanisms rotate by the turn of a cluster to produce ribbons or noodles.

Images

In popular culture