What are your unconventional kitchen tools/utensils you were skeptical of at first but feel you can’t live without?
A safety can opener that doesn’t create any sharp edges, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY (a LONG video, but quite an interesting one IMHO).
It’s nor even funny how much this thing is better than any other opener I’ve ever used, it’s just so bloody amazing!
Knew what video it was before I clicked the link. We bought one because of that video!
It’s amazing how someone can just tell when it’s going to be a Technology Connections video. Such great videos on so many different topics!
I never saw this video but I knew it was going to be technology connection before clicking on the link.
Seconded. I never thought the subjects he chooses would make for good viewing but TC is consistantly surprisingly interesting.
Ordinary wheel-cutting can openers get used wrong - they should be cutting the side of the can and not the lid, with the knurled wheel flat and pressed against the rim of the can.
No sharp lip, and you don’t need to fish a lid out of the can. Downside is you can’t use a lid cover to “save” the contents if you don’t use them all.
see, i’ve tried using them the “right” way, but i’ve found that i’d rather have the lid be sharp than the can most of the time.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=i_mLxyIXpSY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Like gramathy said, safety openers are just to make it difficult to use the tool wrong. Regular can openers are designed to do the same thing, but it isn’t as obvious and limited in the design.
I have an OXO Good Grips one that has been great for 25 years.
Of course it’s Technology Connections.
Good stuff
A danish dough whisk. Somehow it’s easier to mix dough and it won’t have so much gunk sticking between the wires like in the balloon shaped whisks. It can be cleaned easy by hand. It’s pretty large though.
Holy shit. That seems so helpful
As lemmy crashes for me when i try to dm you (idk why you are the only one i have this issue with) may i ask why you speak a minimalistic language natively ?
That’s not my native one, there were ones even before that one.
Fish spatula
@[email protected] How’s that different from a normal one
They’re very different, in fact. A fish spatula is almost completely flat, slightly curved, and has a thin, long, slotted metal body. It’s fantastic for picking up delicate or stuck-on foods, not just fish.
@[email protected] It was an honest question. Oh nice I have one of those, been using it like that anyways. Didn’t know what it was
I’m not sure about your response. I didn’t suggest it wasn’t an honest question.
@[email protected] Well now I know what to look up to replace mine if it wears out
Unconventional in what sense? For westerners? A wok probably
I used to hate wok because it is so big to wash, but then I started understanding its versatility. I still hate washing it tho.
You gotta be careful with that purchase as wok cooking is usually meant for very high heat which a lot of kitchen stoves can’t provide—those folks would be better off with a tradition pan & a lower, slower heat when trying to make a stir fry. Here, most woks at attached directly to a propane tank to generate that level of heat.
You can buy portable camping stoves that use propane as well. If your kitchen cant heat enough, then that is a useful tool to have. Honestly I’d say it’s decently useful overall in case of a blackout or something.
Wok is pretty standard here in the UK.
A giant metal wok spatula is an absolute must-have also.
I feel this. I use my wok for everything. Would like to upgrade to a carbon steel one.
aren’t woks usually carbon steel? what’s yours?
IKEA. It’s stainless steel with non-stick. It’s the only non-stick thing I have, and I’m desperate to be rid of it.
Having a non-stick wok is incredibly frustrating because it doesn’t handle high temperatures, and a lot of recipes I’d like to do require high temperatures. Like good luck trying to make chili oil in this thing, I have to use a regular stainless steel pot for that - which works fine. I like making Cantonese style scrambled eggs which isn’t really possible in a pot and it doesn’t come out right in the wok since you can’t heat it enough, meaning the egg doesn’t set fast enough.
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We have both and I can confirm the non-stick one is so unsatisfying. Wok cooking should be so hot it’s crackly and firey.
Did I miss it or did no one say Rice Cooker yet? A good rice cooker makes rice texture so much better while simplifying the whole process.
Someone gifted me a Le Creuset rice cooker. I use it at least once but often twice a week. At $200+ it’s truly something I never would have bought myself.
Oh my partner’s been trying to convince me to accept one because I make so much stovetop rice, but don’t want a digital rice cooker with plastic and circuits and all that.
How does it do?
If you make a lot of rice then spring for a zojirushi neuro fuzzy. Expensive, yes, gamechanger, yes. Buy once, cry once.
That company makes the best damn coffee maker ever
It’s great! It only makes 4-6 servings of rice at a time but I prefer that because it means there’s less leftovers
Get a good pressure rice cooker. These are meant to let you leave the rice warm inside for about up to a week. Game changer and always have rice on hand.
Not sure any food can safely be kept warm that long, they keep your rice warm and edible for quite awhile but even 12-24hrs is pushing it.
If it keeps rice above the “danger zone”, dont see why not, but that’s hot, not warm. And a week is pushing it.
It depends on the brand. Western rice cookers have a keep warm feature that I wouldn’t trust.
Zorushi and Cuckoo that keep the rice under pressure at around 140F will keep for 2-3 days. https://kitchencuddle.com/rice-cookers-that-keep-rice-warm-for-days/
Yeah, a week is really pushing it, I think I just remembered wrong.
A pot is IMO sufficient for single use cooking (maybe once every 1-2 weeks of cooking) if you are not a primary rice household.
I mean I eat rice more days than I don’t and I use a pot. 15 minutes + mostly unattended, while I’m prepping some protein or whatever.
My problem is the cleaning after with starchy stuff.
Especially sticky rice variants are annoying to clean (read: throw in the dishwasher)With a rigid bamboo pot scraper (and, yes, a little soaking if really stuck on there), I’ve found it’s actually not worth the bother of the dishwasher when it’s so easy to do by hand.
But I’m into a real rice rythme these days lol
Is that just a small piece of bamboo that you cut or something transformed. I can’t seem to find much information searching for bamboo pot scra
I just bought mine at a retail outlet. Here’s an old and unused one for comparison. This is after a couple years’ use.
Oh I found it online: https://www.bambuhome.com/products/pot-scrapers-set-of-4
Thank you for the link! Kinda want to try that seems so different than what I use…
I’ve got two - a potato ricer, basically a big garlic press you put a boiled potato in, instant perfect mash.
And one of those spiral apple peeler/corer/slicers, makes cooking anything with apple in so much faster (it’s a fiddle to clean though unfortunately)
Those rotary slicers are great. I make apple pie and those make it a breeze.
Osthyvel (a cheese slicer). I kinda miss it every time I’m on vacation and I have no means to get the expected thickness of a cheese slice.
This is the epitome of first world problems.
Yesss! I grew up with one of these and didn’t realize it was unconventional until I lived on my own and tried to find one in a store. Had to buy it online. I use it nearly every day.
It blows my mind that the ostehøvvel is not a common utensil in most countries. How else would you enjoy brødskive with brunost?
The grater usually has the same deal on the side. Vegetable peelers do the same job also.
I was in Oslo yesterday, and brunost is fucking amazing 🤤
I just hack off a chunk with a pocket knife. Also relevant,
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Where would this be unconventional?
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I bought a few small silicon dough rising containers, for use in the fridge when making pizza (i.e. low yeast content) dough. Absolutely stellar. Can easily keep balls of dough around for 1-2 weeks and they in fact get slightly better with age, and they’re trivial to clean, too.
A garlic press - saves so much time and effort over mincing garlic with a knife because I’m not a pro chef, and can be used in about 95% of situations where you need garlic. I don’t use it when I want the garlic texture, but otherwise I just adjust the amount or the cooking time versus minced garlic. There’s some hate floating around from professional chefs, but I bought one a few years ago to try it and haven’t looked back.
I bought one and hated it. How do you even clean it? The garlic gets everywhere except the dish I want it in. Maybe I’m using it wrong.
Do you peel the garlic first? I peel by squashing the garlic with the side of the knife to crack the skin and let it peel off, so I’m half done by that point.
Some of those are so crappy it drives you crazy, but some are sturdy with tight tolerances and works wonders IMO.
Just crush it with the peel.
I use a toothbrush to clean it
Seems like so much work! I’m still not conviced a toothbrush would help that much with getting all the bits out from inside it. I do wonder if the one I got isn’t a very good one.
Odd, I just push the bristles through the other way and all the gunk gets pushed out
Maybe I’ll have to try again some time.
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Haven’t been sick in ages! No friends though.
Mine goes in the dishwasher after you reverse-press the fibers into the trash. I do peel the garlic first.
Now to be fair, I hate chunks of garlic, I just want some garlic flavor in the food if it’s supposed to be there. So I’m never going to just smash or coarsely chop it. I’m also a garlic-sweater so I don’t use garlic at all if it isn’t necessary for the dish. But some delicious foods require it, and I just have to try to plan them so I don’t have something important the next day.
Does yours have some function to bend it the other way and push the bits out? I always ended up having to scoop out the stuck bits and it is so much more work than squishing the garlic with the side of a knife. But I admit it may have small lumps. I normally squish, peel off the skin, slice against the grain, and squish again.
Takes about 10 or 20 seconds, nothing extra to clean, and the biggest bits are still pretty small.
Ours does.
Interesting! Everyone is raving over theirs and I can’t imagine mine ever being useful, so it must be that I got the wrong one!
This is not exactly mine but it’s a good example because you can easily see the reverse-push part with the nubbins. I have had ones where that’s metal rather than silicone and they were fine, and you don’t need fat handles unless you have grip problems. In the olden days (pre 1980?) I had the kind where you have to dig out the shreds with a knife and I can definitely see why you’d switch to just using the knife!
I’ve just gone down a rabbit hole of garlic presses and I struggle to find any that look as poorly designed as mine!
Oh honey, time to recycle that sucker! Don’t donate it, that would only bring misery to someone else. Go on chopping or squashing your garlic if you prefer, though. I respect it even though I prefer to press mine.
I actually stopped using my garlic press because I felt it was more work than finely chopping with the knife. It’d be great if it was just “press and done”, but there’s always heaps left in the press itself that refuses to go through, which then has to be dealt with by hand anyway.
You just flip the handle over and press the little nubbins backwards through the holes to push out the woody gunk into the trash. If it doesn’t fall completely out a gentle whack on the side of the can knocks it out. It’s all fibrous and doesn’t have much flavor.
But that’s not unconventional, is it? Everyone has one.
I haven’t got one.
The taste you get is radically different though. A press vs chopping is not a convenience issue as much as a recipe one.
My boiled egg slicer. It seemed really frivolous when I bought it, and I probably only use it five or six times a year at best but man if it doesn’t cut down prep time for any salad with boiled egg in it, it also works with avocados!
Works with Play-Doh too, and is (relatively) safe for little kids.
Box cutter for removing can labels. That way, they don’t get soggy and awful when you have to rinse the can before recycling. Or rinse before opening, if you store your cans in a semi-outdoor environment like me.
Probably unconventional now, but one of those old can openers. Not the turning ones, the manual single-piece ones. Every can opener I have had dies after a year or two, but this one has been going strong for like… 50+ years.
I have an old Soviet wheel-cutting can opener that is still doing good after 40 years and lots and lots of exploitation
Boy oh boy have I been waiting for the opportunity to plug my favorite can opener. It’s a “turning one” as you call it, from a company called OhSay. American made, and built like a brick shit house, I have no doubts it’ll outlast me. Google it, I think they’re like $15-20
I love the passion for your can opener! I’ll definitely take a look at your recommendation.
In return, here’s a pepper grinder my ex-chef dad raves about that seems to be pretty tough:
!(OXO Good Grips Radial Grinder Pepper Mill, 0.385 lbs, White)[https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Lewis-Pepper/dp/B003L0OOQM/)]
Hell yeah, I’ll give it a look. I’ve almost made it a hobby to research the shit out of the most durable and long lasting items I can buy, and things that are capable of being maintained or repaired since I’m kind of a tinkerer. I also buy American or union made whenever it’s an option.
Apple watch siri set timer
Huh. No one has said ground meat breaker/chopper.shen my wife got one, I said it was a waste, a spatula was fine, etc etc. Then I used it once…holy crap so much better and easier to get exactly the chunkiness you want from ground beef, turkey, etc. Love the the thing now.
Wait… What is this thing you’re describing? Like a modified spatula of some sort?
Edit: do you mean this?
What does it do and what does it look like?
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