I don’t know why, but when it comes to kitchen tools, I simply must have them all. I think one of the reasons is because when I was little, my aunt used to have all the coolest kitchen tools, and I would love to look at all her cookbooks’ pictures and see how she used every single tool.
Every now and then I will share one of these cool kitchen tools with you. Perhaps they are not essential, or even necessary, but I would definitely love to have them all.
Today’s Kitchen Tool is:
El Budare (Comal or Round Cast Iron Griddle)
El Budare
I figure since we where in the Arepa theme, I would post a good kitchen tool to have when making arepas.
This tool is commonly known in Venezuela as “El Budare”. Initially I think the native Indians used large stones that they leveled and shaped as circles in order to cook many things including arepas, Cachapas and casabe. Most places still have large circle or square budares in order to cook more arepas at a time. However, since we probably don’t have the kind of space in our home needed to place an original budare to cook, we can still make delicious arepas using a basic round cast iron griddle like the ones sold by Lodge Logic.
Here are some links to great images I found online of original and even improvised budares:
Venezuelan Cooking 
