I’m madly in love withmy new freestanding range, but the short wall that houses it is the worst spot in my 106-year-old kitchen. Until I added a stainless-steel prep cart to the left of the stove, there was nothing there. No cabinets. No counters. Nada. I dream of the day I can gut the whole room and make it more functional, but for now, I make do with a20x24" stainless-steel prep cartwhile I cook.
When I’m doing something simple likefrying an eggor makingmac and cheesefor my kids, my puny side table is workable enough. But if I’m cooking something more involved, the lack of counter space becomes a real issue, especially when I need to have mymise en placeor anything else handy. More than once, I’ve stood at a full stove holding a spoon in one hand and a heavycast-iron lidin the other and screamed to no one in particular, “Why isn’t there anywhere for me to put this damn lid?!”
I knew lid rests were a thing—they just weren’t a thing I had any interest in acquiring. For starters, they surely couldn’t hold the lid to a7.25-quart Le Creuset Dutch oven. And really, wasn’t a lid rest just another item that would hog my very limited, very necessary counter space?
But then I tested theVermicular Musui-Kamado, a cast-iron induction cooker that came with its own lid rest. The lid rest was made of cast iron, too, and at 3.5 inches wide and a little over an inch tall with a deep valley down the middle, it looked more like a paperweight than something to hold a heavy lid. I was amazed that something so small could hold a three-pound lid upright, but it did. And instead of taking up nearly a square foot of my three-ish-square-foot prep area, it sat off to the side and allowed me to actually use most of my makeshift counter.
Unfortunately, that lid rest is meant to work specifically with the Vermicular Kamado lid, but it sold me on the idea of owning one. The next lid rest I tried—while not quite as compact as the Vermicular’s—held my heavy Le Creuset lid just fine. It also holds a ladle along with the lid, or you can use it to hold a cookbook or an iPad. It’s proven so handy that I imagine I’ll keep using it even if I someday have more counter space than I need.
