When it comes to tools for prying open oysters, filleting and grilling fish, and making stock from shrimp shells, I’ll take any excuse to pull out my favorites. I was able to pair my latest pieces for The Spruce Eats with a recent trip to the coast, so I took advantage of fresh oysters from Westcott Bay Shellfish Co. and black cod and other shellfish direct from fisherfolk at Bellingham Dockside to capture the photos I needed. I highly recommend checking out both if you’re ever on San Juan Island and in Bellingham, respectively.

My mini-reviews have landed in roundups of other oyster knives and tools, giving plenty of ideas for ways to prepare and cook seafood. My recent Health.com article on backyard and portable grills aligns nicely with these pieces, since grilling is my favorite way to cook fish.

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Oyster Knives

When it comes to oyster knives, I gravitate toward ones that I see in the hands of professional shuckers and that farms set out with their shuck-your-own tools, and they haven’t steered my wrong yet. I now own a couple of different styles that work well for the oyster species we shuck, usually from West Coast waters and typically in slurpable sizes ranging from tiny to midsize. I also highly recommend a cut-resistant glove to protect your nonknife hand when shucking.

Learn more about my favorite oyster knives in this product roundup.

Fish and Seafood Tools

Keeping a fillet knife in my kitchen has been a fairly recent development, but the purchase was well worth it. I rarely buy and fillet whole fish—although I just had to brush up my filleting skills when I had a chance to pick up fresh black cod in Bellingham directly from the fishermen of Sleipnir. Beyond whole fish, a fillet knife’s sharp, narrow blade comes in handy when removing just the skin from raw salmon and even from gravlax. I take it to my sushi workshops, where we use it not just for skinning fish but also for slicing sashimi and even rolls.

I keep copper grill mats, one of my other favorite tools for fish and shellfish, in several places: the mudroom for easy access to our charcoal grill, my picnic basket for use on community grills, and aboard The Blue Mule for cruising meals. They’re handy for so many grilled foods, from thin ones that want to fall through grates to marinated ones that threaten to splatter onto the fire.

Learn more about my favorite fish and seafood tools in this product roundup. You can find recipes that use these tools in the recipe index and more of my work off the blog here.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.