Discover the 41 different types of spoons and their purposes! Who knows? You might even find a spoon you never knew you needed!
Did you know that there are so many different types of spoons? I didn’t! Just like how there are different types of forks or knives, spoons have been made in different ways to best fit their purpose and make life easier for you, me – all of us.
Don’t believe me? Just you wait! After reading about the different types of spoons, you might find yourself searching the store for a parfait spoon!
What Are The Different Types of Spoons?
The 41 different types of spoons that you’re about to learn about have all been made to work efficiently and serve their purpose to a T. That might be for measuring, stirring, or getting to the very bottom of a glass.
Whatever the reason, it’s time to see if you’re about to find the spoon you never knew you needed!
Plastic Spoon
Without a doubt, plastic spoons are the most common type of spoon in the world. You get them from fast food places, restaurants, and we buy them from the store for parties, cookouts – for almost everything. Why?
Well, plastic spoons are easily disposed of. No one has to do the dishes, you just toss them into the trash and get back to the fun! Although they may not be the best option, they are the most accessible and easiest to rid yourself of.
Wooden Spoon
Wooden spoons and utensils are most frequently used when cooking or as a serving spoon after the fact. They can be made from pine, maple, or even bamboo. If you find the right kind, they can last you for a very long time – and they don’t harm the environment, even when you’re ready to throw them away. Wood is biodegradable, after all.
Now, these can require a bit of a different washing routine. For excellent advice on how to care for any wooden spoon, take a look at The Gingered Whisk‘s step by step instructions on How To Care for Wooden Utensils! Do the work and you’ll be sure that your wooden spoons last for years to come.
Stainless Steel Spoon
Stainless steel spoons are the most common household spoon. This is due to the fact that they are able to endure high temperatures, like in a dishwasher, without being damaged. The only reason you would have to replace these spoons would be for personal preference or you’ve lost pieces to the set.
Silver Spoon
Have you ever heard the saying “born with a silver spoon in their mouth”? It comes from the literal silver spoon because having silver utensils was, and sometimes still is, a sign of wealth. So, to say someone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth is to say that they live a privileged life.
Silver spoons, like other silver utensils, are often stored in display cases with other high-end dishes and only brought out for special occasions.
Pewter Spoon
Pewter spoons can be found in many different kinds, shapes, and decorative styles. However, you won’t find these spoons being sold in stores today due to the weakness of pewter. It bends easily, making it a poor choice of material to make any utensil out of.
Measuring Spoon
Everyone has some sort of measuring spoon in their home to assist with cooking and making drinks so that they can follow recipes.
When you buy a set of measuring spoons, it typically goes like this:
- 1 tablespoon
- 1/2 tbsp.
- 1 teaspoon
- 1/2 tsp.
- 1/4 tsp.
- A dash – 1/8 tsp.
- A pinch – 1/16 tsp.
- A smidgen – 1/32 tsp.
Sometimes, you’ll find a measurement like 2 tsp. or 1/3 tbsp. to help you be more precise in your cooking.
Table Spoon
Not to be confused with ‘tablespoon’, the table spoon is what you use in day to day meals in your home. It can be used as a measuring instrument but the results aren’t as accurate as a proper tablespoon measuring spoon.
Everyone has table spoons in their house, typically an abundance, and they’re used for basic needs such as eating, cooking, stirring, and all the things most of us don’t care to buy the proper spoon for.
Small Spoon
Not everyone prefers the size of the table spoon, which is why you can find a spoon just a bit smaller that suits you better. Whether you need it for smaller hands, containers, or even mouths, it still gets the job done like the basic table spoon.
Miniature Spoon
If you’re someone who likes tiny objects, I know you will like this type of spoon. Miniature spoons are exactly what you think: teeny, tiny spoons! While I can’t say that they have a practical use other than scooping small amounts of sugar or salt, that doesn’t mean they aren’t usable. Stirring sugar into your teacup is a great way to reason away the need for this adorable addition to your spoon collection!
Baby Spoon
Baby spoons tend to be short, with a shallow bowl for scooping. These are generally found made from plastic but you can get yourself a nice stainless steel spoon for your little one, too. The handle needs to be smaller than normal so that those little hands have an easier time navigating the food to their mouth, and the bowl has to be flatter than a regular spoon because children often have a hard time getting all of the food out of spoons with a deep bowl.
Slotted Spoon
Slotted spoons are used to scoop food from the cooking pot without the liquid, such as peas or corn. It’s a very effective way to make sure you don’t have a river of water running over your plate and getting the rest of your food soggy. They can also be used for stirring food as it’s cooking.
Serving Spoon
There are a variety of different types of serving spoons. The one shown in the picture above is the most common, with its deep bowl elongated. You’ll often find this same shape with slots or holes for drainage, which are also used as serving spoons. Soup serving spoons sit with their handle at an upward angle and a large or rounded bowl at the bottom so you can serve soup in as few scoops as possible without spilling.
Another serving spoon might be more decorative, with engravings on the handle and in the bowl itself. There are spoons for serving gravy and even one for stringy pasta – but we’ll get to that later!
Souvenir Spoon
This might seem silly if you aren’t a collector but souvenir spoons are items you can buy in other cities or even countries at gift shops or old stores. For people who spend a lot of their time traveling it’s fun to bring something home to remember the trip by. Spoons might not have been your first thought but just take a look at how cool the collection in this picture is!
Sugar Spoon
A sugar spoon is for, that’s right, sugar! These spoons are small and very elegant no matter what material they are made from. Their sole purpose is to scoop sugar into tea or coffee, and mix it in if you want. Though you can use it for a sugar cube, there are tongs that people tend to choose instead. Sugar spoons are more for granulated sugar than sugar cubes.
Salt Spoon
According to dictionary.com, a salt spoon is “a small spoon with which to take salt at the table”. The spoon is about the size of a 1/4 teaspoon and has a typical teaspoon shaped bowl, and used to be paired with a salt dish so that salt could be served at the table. Nowadays, the majority of people use salt shakers in their place.
Iced Tea Spoon
What is an iced tea spoon? A spoon for iced tea, of course! It may sound simple but this spoon isn’t your typical example. It has a delicate appearance with its long and thin handle and a narrow bowl that you may notice isn’t as deep as your typical spoon is. That is due to the fact that tea spoons are used for stirring sugar or other sweeteners or flavors into a tall glass.
Coffee Spoon
A coffee spoon is pretty self explanatory – it’s a spoon for stirring coffee! Almost everyone adds creamer or sugar, or some kind of addition into their coffee drink, and stirs it to mix the ingredients together. That is what a coffee spoon is for, not to be confused with a coffee measuring spoon. You can also find an espresso spoon but some designs really aren’t that different from a coffee spoon, which means they can be interchanged if you wish.
Soup Spoon
No, not a soup serving spoon. This spoon is for eating soup and has been designed to do so better than any other household spoon! It is short with a wide and flat bowl for scooping soup. The round, shallow bowl helps cool each bite off so you don’t burn your mouth! Nice, right?
Chinese Soup Spoon
Chinese soup spoons have a shorter handle but an elongated and deep bowl for scooping soup. Chances are, you’ve used one of these at a Chinese restaurant before, or even with Korean and Japanese cuisine. Made from plastic and wood, or historically porcelain, these spoons are ideal for sipping classic soups but are also used for loose food and other liquids.
They call this spoon 散蓮華 (Sàn liánhuá), which translates beautifully to “lotus flower”. Who wouldn’t want to use a lotus flower to eat soup?
Cream Soup Spoon
A cream soup spoon is, in fact, different from a regular soup spoon. How? Well, instead of the short and wide make of the basic soup spoon, the cream soup spoon more resembles a dessert spoon. The handle is a bit longer but the bowl itself is slightly deeper and still rounded.
Why is this better for cream soup? Cream soup is thicker than regular soup and the deeper bowl allows you to get a decent bite!
French Sauce Spoon
Otherwise known as a saucier spoon, the French sauce spoon is possibly the most unique looking of all the different types of spoons. The oddly shaped bowl is designed to pour sauce over dishes during food preparation before they are served.
Gravy Spoon
The wide bowl of the gravy spoon was made to scoop and pour gravy without making a mess. While you can find a gravy boat or use a typical spoon, this gravy spoon has been made with pouring gravy specifically in mind and does it’s job very well. The spoon’s bowl is deep enough to spoon a nice helping and allows you to pour your gravy in one easy scoop.
Dessert Spoon
Dessert spoons are meant to scoop ice cream out of sundae dishes, fudge chocolate, sprinkles and all! Naturally, there are more dishes than a sundae cup, such as the mouse glass you see in this picture, a tulip dessert bowl, as well as small dessert plates. You can find them made from almost anything, though glass and porcelain tend to be the two most popular choices – other than plastic, of course.
Ice Cream Scoop
How do you expect to fill your sundae cup without the proper scoop? Ice cream spoons have a deep and circular bowl, a thick handle, and the perfect amount of strength to roll balls out of the chilly desert. Some scoops even have the lever on the side so that you aren’t running the spoon along the length of the container, and tend to make better balls once you learn to use it correctly.
Egg Spoon
Egg spoons are used for eating boiled eggs. After cracking the top open, you use the rounded bowl and pointed tip of the spoon to scoop bites directly out of the eggshell! This is something that has been done for many years and originates from way back in Ancient Rome! Can you believe it?
Risotto Spoon
Risotto is not only a dish, it is a type of rice. The risotto spoon was designed to stir the delicate grains without breaking them down, thus creating an unappetizing mush that no one will want to eat. Spoons that don’t have the hole in the center will do just that, which is why it is important to have this specific spoon – and stir gently!
Spaghetti Spoon
I would be surprised if you don’t already have this spoon in your arsenal! This dull-toothed spoon is to strain excess water from spaghetti noodles, or other long and stringy pasta, as you scoop them out of the pan. If you were to attempt this with a regular serving spoon, the noodles would slip right off and splash back into the pan!
Pasta Spoon
No, this isn’t the same as a spaghetti spoon. This spoon has no teeth, no holes, and closely resembles a regular table spoon. The difference? Pasta spoons are big! Giant, even. And their purpose! As shown in this picture, pasta spoons are meant to help you collect noodles on your fork by twirling a fork in the bowl of the spoon until they have been wrapped around it completely. It’s way easier than holding the fork above your head to eat them!
Bouillon Spoon
The bouillon spoon is a soup spoon, used for lighter soups that are thinner in consistency. It’s almost identical to a regular soup spoon if you don’t know what you’re looking for. But, if you do, you’ll notice the smaller and more shallow bowl of the spoon.
Olive Spoon
The long, thin handle of an olive spoon helps you reach into any size of jar to get to the olives at the bottom. Holes at the center of the rounded bowl allow the oil to drain and keep you from making a slippery mess when you put the olives down.
Salad Spoon
Just as simple to guess as the olive spoon, the salad spoon is for stirring, accurately known as ‘tossing’, a salad. People who are unfamiliar with big family, friend, or group dinners at home probably won’t find these to be a necessary household item but when hosting a large dinner, salad is often prepared in a bowl with the dressings and toppings. Salad spoons toss and mix everything together, as well as doubling as serving utensils.
Rice Spoon
Traditionally called a Shamoji, the rice spoon resembles a paddle with its flattened bowl. The reason for this resemblance is due to the fact that stirring sushi rice is a delicate task that requires a very specific touch. Made from wood, rice spoons stir the fragile rice grains without breaking them so that they can be properly seasoned but not turned to rice mush.
Bar Spoon
The ingenious design of the bar spoon will become your best friend if you’re interested in learning how to mix your own drinks. These are also favored by bartenders, and can be found in different designs for different drinks. Unlike the other spoons you’ve read about, the bar spoon actually utilizes both ends!
Mustard Spoon
Used for serving mustard, the mustard spoon is small and amounts to about 7cm in length. Now that we can simply squirt our mustard and other condiments from plastic bottles, these spoons aren’t commonly found in the average house anymore. However, they are great for those who enjoy whipping up their own mustard!
Grapefruit Spoon
Dear grapefruit lovers: your life is about to get way better! This pointed and serrated spoon is the best way to scoop juicy grapefruit from the peel. A grapefruit spoon is much more efficient than hacking away at the fruit with a regular spoon or a knife!
Parfait Spoon
Everybody loves a nice desert but it’s a bummer when you can’t get to the bottom of the glass. That’s why you should look into getting a parfait spoon! The long handle and narrow bowl let you scoop every last bite of ice cream – and not just in a parfait. These spoons are great for shakes, slushies, and desserts of all kinds!
Caddy Spoon
We haven’t always been able to buy boxes of individual tea bags from the store! The caddy spoon is what came before, serving the purpose of measuring out dried tea leaves to steep in a teapot or teacup. The decorative bowl resembles the inside of the clam shell, while the short and squat shape lets you keep a firm hold so you don’t spill.
Marrow Spoon
Bone marrow used to be considered a delicacy, and this spoon was the way to get it. The long, half circle shape of the bowl was able to reach deeply into the bone to scoop marrow out. There are variations of both narrow and wide bone marrow spoons, and they can be found online like on amazon.com.
Spork
Ah, the spork. We all know the name, if not for the uniqueness then for the odd appearance. The spork is both a spoon and a fork created as one utensil. These are still common today, and are even given out when you order from places like KFC! You might even find one that has the spork on one end and a knife on the other.
So, what do you think: is the spork a spoon or is it still a fork?
Iron Spoon
The only place you’ll be finding these cast iron spoons is in the antique shop. It’s true, they aren’t commonly used anymore but they were, once upon a time, a frequent addition to the utensil drawer. Aside from the fact that they are the heaviest type of spoon, this material isn’t as sustainable as stainless steel or the materials you see today.
The Spurtle
The Spurtle: the only spoon with a stranger name than a spork! Although this looks like a wooden paddle, it is, in fact, a wooden spoon. This Scottish spoon is used for stirring delicate foods, such as porridge or even whipping frosting or cream, without making them lumpy like spoons would. You might not be familiar with it but this wooden spoon can be found in many professional kitchens!