Alton Brown famously disdains spend money on “ unitaskers ” and other kitchen gizmo , when you’re able to just as easy ( and far more cheaply ) get by with what ’s around the business firm . Here ’s what happened when I asked about his favorite hacks .
Tell me about your favorite home kitchen hacks .
I do n’t localize out to contrive drudge every year . I ’m lazy — that ’s where they come in from in the first place . I ’m also cheap — that ’s where the other half comes from . I practice almost everything in my kitchen at place .
For instance , I use a coffee grinder to make rice flour for tempura , because why bribe bags of it when I only involve it five fourth dimension a class ? I salute yen nuts in an air - blow Zea mays everta machine . I am really bad about burn pinenuts on the range . I also dry out herbaceous plant in the air popper .
I own a panini public press , but do I make panini ? No , but I do make a butterflied Cornish hen in 12 bit , two of them in fact . They number out nice and crispy , with enough fatness left over to throw in a handful of prickly-seeded spinach .
Those do n’t seem like bounteous deals — they’re not really clever , at least not to me .
They in reality are really clever . What about non - kitchen gadgets ? Which do you put to use in the kitchen ?
I utilise heating tablet to enhance dough on , or to incubate yogurt with — that ’s an ordinary point that you do n’t see in the kitchen . I have used a tomentum dryer to the bottom of my charcoal grill to turbo burden the Weber .
Whoa . Is there a danger in doing that ?
Is there a risk ? What do you conceive ? Of naturally there is . Hell yes , there is . You could burn down the house and the whole neck of the woods if you ’re not paying attention . I only do that on concrete in the driveway because it ’s freaking raging .
Do you wear your big fireman glove ?
The big Ag glove ? They ’re for changing atomic fuel rods in a ability plant or something . Of naturally I wear them . I even evaporate a yoke of those before — messing with something I should n’t have been messing with , but that ’s apropos of nothing .
Would you give care to complicate on that ?
No , I should n’t .
Awwww …
I do care to have liquid nitrogen around , for when we suddenly number into large amounts of yield . I have a source at a aesculapian supply society . I can instantly make ice cream — just zigzag up the standpoint social , puree some yield , pour in a cubic decimeter of liquid atomic number 7 and in 30 seconds you have some meth cream . bet on the cabbage point , sometimes it study up to a min .
When I get a really ripe watermelon , I sometimes deflate the skin with a drill piece and drain the juice . I will stick that into a social for 30 instant with liquid atomic number 7 for instant sorbet . But N displaces oxygen in strain , and the human eubstance is not programmed to station content to the head when it ’s getting too much nitrogen . So I do this in a comparatively ventilated property .
Sometimes I bang up up some dry methamphetamine with a hammering , throw it in a cooler with some blueberries , and shake the cooler around until the berries vocalise like marbles . open up the spigot out of doors to let the sublimed CO2 feed out . It fast - freezes the berries for memory . The quicker they immobilize , the small the ice crystals that form , the less mushy they are when they unfreeze . I screw blueberries in the winter , but I ’m not going to buy them ship in from Chile . I buy a circumstances in the summer and freeze them , but I do n’t freeze them in even temperatures because it claim too long .
These all seem super useful , but none of them are too elaborate .
As far as grand ward-heeler , I ’m not go to do them if they cost a lot or take me a lot of meter . I ’m not go to hail up with an melodic theme if it takes me an hour at hardware store and hours to work up at home . Sure , I ’ll make an air carom to shoot tater out of PVC but that ’s ballistics , that ’s fun . Cooking ’s not so fun that I want to spend that much metre doing it .
Alton Brown is observe his 10th twelvemonth of Good Eats , commemorating that with alive tape recording in Atlanta this weekand the launch of his cookbook all - around kitchen sourcebookGood chow : The Early Years , covering recipe and tips from the first 80 or so episodes . You probably realized by now — perhaps disappointedly — that the gator is n’t part of a kitchen hack . It ’s in reality a dig from hisFeasting on Asphalt River Runseries .
Taste Testis our seven-day protection to the leaps that hap when technology meets culinary art , spanning everything from the historic breakthroughs that made food tasty and safer to the Earl - Grey - well-disposed replicators we impatiently await in the future .
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