A grater, also known as a shredder, is a kitchen utensil used to grate foods into fine pieces. They come in several shapes and sizes, with box graters being the most common. [1] Other styles include paddles, microplane/rasp graters, and rotary drum graters. [1] [2]
Graters are commonly used to process vegetables, cheese, citrus peels (to create zest), and spices (such as ginger and nutmeg). They can also be used to grate other soft foods. Dishes whose preparation involves graters include toasted cheese, Welsh rarebit, egg salad, [3] and foods containing cheese sauce such as macaroni and cheese and cauliflower cheese. Rotary graters are more efficient than other graters, due to their mechanical leverage, and are effective for processing harder foods like nuts. [1]
Several types of graters feature different sizes of grating slots and can therefore aid in the preparation of a variety of foods. [1]
In 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. [4]
Graters produce shreds that are thinner at the ends than the middle.[ citation needed ] 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.[ citation needed ]
In Jamaica and Belize, coconut graters are used as a traditional musical instrument [5] (along with drums, fife, and other instruments) in the performance of kumina, jonkanoo, brukdown, and sometimes mento.
The first attested graters were made out of bronze, and also silver alloys, in the early first millennium BCE, examples of which were uncovered from burial sites in Greece and Etruscan Italy. [6] [7] In line with Homer's Iliad, these were sometimes used to grate goat's cheese in the making of a type of Kykeon, a fast-breaking drink. [7] The modern cheese grater was invented in France in the 1540s by François Boullier. His pewter design was intended to convert hard cheeses into something more edible. [8] [ unreliable source? ]
