Ice cubes & ice accessories

Start with the way you want to make ice. A canvas Lewis bag with a wooden mallet gives you crushed ice that stays dry, because the cloth absorbs the meltwater as you strike. If instead you want to get large clear blocks out of a bigger piece, you use a saw and a pick. A pick with a single point is more accurate, a three-point version is faster but gives a rougher result.

Then choose a scoop that suits your ice bin. The sizes of 0.15 and 0.35 litre are meant for filling glasses during service, the 0.7 litre one for topping up the bin itself. A perforated scoop lets meltwater run back, which affects how quickly the ice starts diluting in the glass. Choose tongs on length and grip: eighteen centimetres is the usual size for a bar bin.

Never pick up ice with your hands or with a glass. A glass used as a scoop can break in the bin, and then the whole bin is lost. Use the scoop for filling and the tongs for placing a single block, such as the large chunk in an old fashioned or a negroni.

For crushed ice, fill the Lewis bag no more than halfway, fold the opening over and strike with the flat side of the mallet. Turn the bag over in between and the grain comes out even. If you work with a saw, let the block come up to temperature out of the freezer for ten minutes first, otherwise it splits unpredictably.

Rinse ice tools after service and dry them off. Stainless steel does not rust, but meltwater that dries on leaves limescale marks that are hard to remove later. Copper versions have a coating that wants hand washing, because it discolours in a dishwasher.

Wash the canvas Lewis bag at sixty degrees in the washing machine and air dry it, not in the tumble dryer. Keep wooden handles and mallets out of the dishwasher entirely, because wood swells and cracks once it repeatedly gets wet and dries again. It survives a single round, not twenty.

If you are only after the tongs or only the scoops, the ice tongs and the ice scoops have their own place in the menu. If you want to freeze blocks yourself in a fixed shape, look at the ice cube moulds. The wider range of crushers, picks and saws is with the ice tools. And if you are looking for the glass that large chunk belongs in, the old fashioned glasses are ready and waiting.