I am Michael Haralson. I own MHaralson, a publishing company, and I run kitchenfindsunder30.com. Alongside writing the articles here, I set the research criteria that decide which kitchen tools earn a place on this site and which ones do not.
In Professional Kitchens, 1979 to 1992
I worked in professional kitchens from 1979 to 1992. I started in San Diego restaurants as a university student, doing kitchen work, waiting tables and washing dishes. From 1982 to 1988 I was with a catering company in the same city, cooking and serving in front of guests, working up to sous-chef level and then coordinating whole parties, anywhere from thirty guests to five hundred. The last of it was cruise line galleys on the Finland to Sweden run, five months each summer in 1991 and 1992, while I finished a master’s degree. Nearly all of it was learned on the job. I have taken cooking courses since, on Finnish cuisine in Finland, Italian cuisine in Rome, and Szechuan cooking and dumpling making in Beijing. But what taught me the trade was working beside the chefs: six years with an Austrian chef in California, five of them full-time in catering, and later Finnish and Swedish chefs.
What A Chef Carries In A Box
That Austrian chef taught me the idea this site is built on. Whenever we worked a party, he brought his own tools in a box. Two chef’s knives. His favorite spatula. Serving tongs. A rubber spatula for finishing a cake in the last minutes before service. That was the whole kit. He was just as particular about the pans, because at party level a tired pan shows up in the food and on the plate.
A professional’s toolkit is small, deliberate, and in constant use. It is not a drawer full of gadgets. Working parties across San Diego and up into Los Angeles and Hollywood, some on the beach and some inside private homes, I saw exactly what separates a good tool from a poor one when it is standing in front of guests.
The Analyst
After the kitchens I spent fifteen years at Nokia. I began in product marketing and product management, where technical specifications and supplier evaluation were part of the work. My responsibility grew from a few countries to a region to global roles, then into sales and corporate strategy, and that took me to Beijing from 2010 to 2013.
Cheap or expensive is the wrong question. Cost per use is the honest one. Check out our new Calculator.
Cost-Per-Use Calculator →Since then I have worked in high tech and now in AI. In a marketing role I work to bring the engineer’s voice to the customer. In a sales role I bring the customer’s voice back to engineering so the next product is better. Both directions come down to the same questions: how was this made, what does it actually do, and do the claims hold up. Kitchen tools are designed, manufactured and marketed much the way consumer electronics are, so the questions transfer.
What I Learned Eating Abroad
I have eaten in more than 40 countries: 30 in Europe, seven in Asia, and the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama and Australia. My focus has been the Mediterranean. In Southern Europe, when the food at a restaurant is good, I talk with the chefs, and I have been invited to see their kitchens.
One of them was in Rome. I often traveled there and went out to lunch with the team. I ordered a pork cutlet with arugula, spices, olive oil and lemon. It was a very simple dish, but the taste was fantastic. I asked the waiter how big the kitchen was, and he said, “Why don’t you come back and take a look?” There were several grills, the meat was grilled over an open fire, and the kitchen was very hot. One person made all of the salads and vegetables, and the grilled meat went to that person, who prepared the salad or vegetables to go with it. It smelled of grilled meat, parmesan and a lot of olive oil.
From 2010 to 2013 I lived in Beijing. Many weekends I left with a group on a Friday evening and on Saturday morning was in a new city, most of the time in a province I had never been to. We saw the highlights and then tried the food that province is famous for. My first trips to China were business trips in 2005, 2008 and 2009, and between 2014 and 2020 I went back on my own, to Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guilin, Hong Kong and other places. In all I have been to 11 provinces and more than 30 cities in China.
At home I cook from all of it. After a trip I would cook what I had eaten, when I could find the spices: dim sum and Cantonese roast meats, Sichuan and Guilin-style dishes, French and Italian food, and Mediterranean grilled fish, stews and braises. It was after I moved to Europe that I first noticed enameled cast iron pots and Dutch ovens. French bistros and Spanish restaurants used them for their braises and stews. I had been using my bare cast iron pans for some time, and I realized that for stews they were not the best choice. Trips to France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Germany showed me how much use those pots get.
Why This Site Exists
I have three kitchen drawers and a stack of boxes in the basement. The first holds what I reach for eighty percent of the time: the spatula I always go for, the silicone, the tongs, the ladles. The second is a gadget drawer, sorted into compartments, and every single-purpose thing in it has earned its place. The third is slower, things I might reach for once a month. The mistakes are not in any of them. They are in the basement, in boxes, on their way to being thrown out, and they very rarely come back up the stairs.
Kitchen Finds Under $30 exists to help you fill the drawers and skip the basement. The ceiling is $30 because that is where the gap between a tool that lasts and one that does not is widest, and hardest to see before you buy. Value for money is not the cheapest option. It is the tool still working in three years.
How I Work
I do not run laboratory trials, and nothing on this site suggests otherwise. The research method is set out in full on the How We Research page.
Contact
Michael Haralson worked in professional kitchens from 1979 to 1992: San Diego restaurants, six years with a catering company beside an Austrian chef, and two summers as a cook on the Finland to Sweden cruise route. He then built a fifteen-year career at Nokia. It began in product marketing and product management, where technical specifications and supplier evaluation were part of the work, and grew from a few countries to a region to global roles, then into sales and corporate strategy. That took him to Beijing for three years, where he spent many weekends in a different province trying the local food and took cooking classes. He has eaten in more than 40 countries and has been shown the kitchens of restaurants in Southern Europe. At home in Finland he cooks Cantonese, Sichuan and Mediterranean food, and still uses the cast iron skillet he bought in 1992. He is the author of Buy It Once, Book One of The Researched Kitchen, and writes here about the balance between kitchen tools that cost too much and those that fail too soon.