The $11 Piece of Plastic That Can Help You Attain the Clean Kitchen of Your Dreams

There’s nothing sexy about the rectangular piece of plastic that is the bench scraper — a common cook’s tool for measuring, cutting, gathering, and cleaning.

But Sarah Rich, half of the duo behind the pasta destination Rich Table, in San Francisco, cannot survive in the kitchen without the Matfer Bourgeat Nylon Dough Scraper. She discovered it working at another acclaimed San Francisco restaurant, Michael Mina. “All the sous chefs had them,” she says. So she got one, too — and it hasn’t left her kitchen since.

Matfer Bourgeat

“It is the perfect combination of flexibility and firmness,” she says. “Some of the ones you get have no give at all, and some of them are really flexible to the point that they are useless.” The Matfer Bourgeat has a slight bend to it, so “when you are scraping things off your counter and you want to be able to curve it a little to dig in there,” you can, without fear of the tool breaking or flopping over. The thickness, too, makes for a perfect grip, she says, and its compact size means you can fit it in your back pocket for easy access while you cook.

When Rich is making pasta at the restaurant, she uses the Matfer Bourgeat bench scraper to portion and shape the dough, and it also seamlessly scrapes those clingy bits of flour off the counter. At home, “I keep it in one very specific spot, and if someone moves it, it is the first thing I notice because I use it every day,” she says.

“People are going to read this and look on Amazon and be like, eleven dollars for a plastic card? But for me, it’s totally worth it.”