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.
Ten Years In Professional Kitchens
I started in food service as a university student in San Diego in the late 1980s and stayed in it for ten to twelve years. Catering companies first, then restaurants and cruise line galleys, mostly through the summers while I finished a master’s degree in Finland. Nearly all of it was learned on the job. I took some cooking courses, but what taught me the trade was working beside the chefs: five years with an Austrian chef in California, 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, Los Angeles and Hollywood, I saw exactly what separates a good tool from a poor one when it is standing in front of guests.
The Analyst
My career since has been in product marketing and sales, across mobile phones, high tech, and now 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.
Cheap or expensive is the wrong question. Cost per use is the honest one. Check out our new Calculator.
Cost-Per-Use Calculator →Why This Site Exists
I have two kitchen drawers. The first holds what I reach for eighty percent of the time: the spatula I always go for, the cast iron, the pans I trust to give me a good result. The second holds the mistakes. Tools I used once. Tools that failed after three or four months. Purchases I still cannot explain. Fifteen years of cooking for family and friends filled both drawers.
Kitchen Finds Under $30 exists to help you fill the first drawer and skip the second. 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 is an author, analyst, and founder of MHaralson, a publishing company. He spent five years with a San Diego catering company, cooking for events of up to 600 guests and working part-time in the main kitchen. He writes about the balance between kitchen tools that cost too much and those that fail too soon.