Double duty: unthought of uses for gear?

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mille162

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As a traveling chef, I try to keep my gear bag as light as possible. I love reading the front of Cooks Illustrated and getting ideas on using kitchen gear for uses it wasn't originally intended for or home remedies using what's on hand instead of specialty tools.

So, what are some of your best "I also use this to..."?

I recently discovered my seafood forks work great for scraping bone marrow out, and at home started using my truffle slicer (it's amazing the crap you end up with when family runs out of gift ideas and just walks into WS) to slice ginger.
 
Maybe no great surprise, but I've opened several packages with my mioroshi deba. (Works great.)
 
I use my immersion circulator to keep my bathwater warm!
Thermapen to take my kid's temperature.
Benriner mandoline blades to comb my beard.

Just kidding.
I use a salad fork for deveining shrimp.
An egg slicer for avocados and buffalo mozz.
Small woodworking chisels to hollow out grape tomatoes and grapes(I curse you Martha Stewart).
Let's not forget that Microplanes were originally used for woodworking.
 
Ive used a whetstone as sandpaper, a bottle of scotch as a rolling pin and a cuisinart knife as a hammer, for actual nails... I later bought a hammer. I use a coffee grinder for spices, ice cube trays to store compound butters, why yes i do have tom ka gai flavoured butter for your grilled shrimp. Cast iron pans to crush pepper corns. I use a small ice cream scoop for meatballs and melon balls. Waffle maker has made paninis and omelets(whip eggs and fillings and like magic you have an omelet.
 
i have a small square of marble i use for crushing garlic, peppercorns, etc. it is also my weight for holding open recipe books, ballast for floating artichokes, dry mushrooms..weight to squeeze out water from tofu.
i've used it to hammer out thin steaks and chicken before the dredge.

i use my all clad lids for a weight to hold down sandwiches when i pan fry them. works to hold bacon flat too.
 
Instead of a tumbler to tenderize meats, or if I don't have time for the marinade to do it's job I will vacuum seal the protein and toss it in the dryer for 20 minutes (no heat of course). Works like a dream.
 
Bill13 said:
Instead of a tumbler to tenderize meats, or if I don't have time for the marinade to do it's job I will vacuum seal the protein and toss it in the dryer for 20 minutes (no heat of course). Works like a dream.
Click to expand...

the clothes dryer??!!!

if so, shut the thread down..you win!! that is fantastic.

i read an article once where some guy Italy did something similar to tenderize octopus. :)
 
The best part was I told my wife that I had been looking into tumblers because I had found that vacuum sealing them didn't really reduce the marinade time and with a tumbler not only would the marinade time shorten, it would also tenderize the meat:doublethumbsup:. She gave me the ugly eye like "how much is this going to cost". I said no, don't worry, I'm not looking to buy a tumbler because we already have one - the dryer, her look was priceless! She was pretty worried but we have not had any issues. I still think I may get one as a gift from her cause she does worry it might leak.

My kids were so excited to see their crazy dad use the dryer on the leg of lamb pieces that were cut up for kabobs going into the dryer that first time they followed me downstairs to the laundry room. It really makes cooking seem more interesting to them and they are still ready to help in the kitchen esp. if they know the food is going into the dryer for a spin.

It's also a great dinner topic when friends come over and they ask "so how did you prepare this"

I should give credit to Dennis or mucho bocho with his thread on sausage making, before that I'd never even heard of a tumbler;).
 
I guess you could adjust the hot and cold faucets on the washing machine and use it for sous vide:cool2:
 
I used 5, 10" bamboo skewers and some stainless steel wire to make an omelette fork. No matter how tough non-stick pans are, metal forks will scratch them. I never found a plastic or silicone fork that would work as well as a plain old metal dinner fork. Every wooden fork I found always had tine too large to do anything like an omelette. So, I wrapped 6 coils of stainless wire into a little spring, and laid the skewers between the coils, then fed the wire through the top of each coil, and cinched it up tight -- it kept the skewers flat, like a raft, leaving the width of the wire between what would be the tines. That was about 3 inches from the points of the tines. I then wrapped some more wire about an inch behind the coil, and cinched it up as tightly as possible -- that cause the skewers at that wrap to come together, putting tension on the skewers at the coil, causing the tines to bend outward like a fan. I then took a last tight wrap around the end of the skewers to keep them together, forming the handle part. I ended up with a flat bamboo rake, whose tines were perfect for both stirring the egg, in order to get the smaller curds (Jacques Pepin style), and gave me a nice flat set of tines to manipulate and fold. Works like a charm. No risk of scratching even the cheapest non-stick pans. I could not be happier -- and still have not seen anything available that would be as useful.

Cheers,

Jack
 
Dish washer to poach whole salmon, dishwasher to clean a bunch of potatoes
 
I use a smaller cast iron pan as a panini press when I toast them in a larger cast iron pan. Just make sure it's seasoned on the bottom as well.

Cheers,

Jack
 
jackslimpson said:
I used 5, 10" bamboo skewers and some stainless steel wire to make an omelette fork. No matter how tough non-stick pans are, metal forks will scratch them. I never found a plastic or silicone fork that would work as well as a plain old metal dinner fork. Every wooden fork I found always had tine too large to do anything like an omelette. So, I wrapped 6 coils of stainless wire into a little spring, and laid the skewers between the coils, then fed the wire through the top of each coil, and cinched it up tight -- it kept the skewers flat, like a raft, leaving the width of the wire between what would be the tines. That was about 3 inches from the points of the tines. I then wrapped some more wire about an inch behind the coil, and cinched it up as tightly as possible -- that cause the skewers at that wrap to come together, putting tension on the skewers at the coil, causing the tines to bend outward like a fan. I then took a last tight wrap around the end of the skewers to keep them together, forming the handle part. I ended up with a flat bamboo rake, whose tines were perfect for both stirring the egg, in order to get the smaller curds (Jacques Pepin style), and gave me a nice flat set of tines to manipulate and fold. Works like a charm. No risk of scratching even the cheapest non-stick pans. I could not be happier -- and still have not seen anything available that would be as useful.

Cheers,

Jack
Click to expand...

Do you have a picture?
 
MTFK%20Custom%20Omelette%20fork_zpszwgqsknh.jpg
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Custom Omelette Fork, made from bamboo skewers.

Cheers,

Jack
 
Here's a few that my family had done for a while:

1. Spoon- peel ginger.
2. Spoon- Scrape crud off bottom of pots/pans
3. Chinese cleaver- meat tenderizer
4. Chinese cleaver- food scooper :)
5. Chinese cleaver- mince to a fine paste, like a coarse mortar and pestle
6. Chinese cleaver- use as a pestle, the handle, if you are really hard up. DAMHIK.

Is this cheating?

Btw, I have no idea why people favor gyutos over Chinese cleavers.
I'll probably be selling my Heiji 240 SS gyuto one of these days to fund a custom Heiji chuko.
 
This was not my idea but some one on the forum mentioned how they used their immersion circulator to defrost items quickly (just set the temp lower than the water temp). I have used that idea with success and gone one farther. I use it with ice to quickly chill white wines or cold tap water to chill reds. I have seen this is done at Whole Foods and Total Wine too.
 
I've got this great teaspoon sized "grapefruit spoon" from WS that I use for seeding butternut squash, coring cucumbers, melon baller, even a makeshift lemon zester. Only problem is keeping others from picking it up and using it as a regular spoon and cutting their lip on the serrated edge.
 
mille162 said:
I've got this great teaspoon sized "grapefruit spoon" from WS that I use for seeding butternut squash, coring cucumbers, melon baller, even a makeshift lemon zester. Only problem is keeping others from picking it up and using it as a regular spoon and cutting their lip on the serrated edge.
Click to expand...
I have quite a few of these in my toolbox. I love it when people try to eat with them like a regular spoon!
 
Not exactly terribly inventive but the ferrule of knives can be useful for a few different things like peeling garlic. The spine of the knife is also good for a few different jobs. As I say not super inventive but I see loads of times people using the blade of their knife when the spine would be better
 
At home:
I use a panini press to cook whole spatchcocked chicken.
A tray of ceramic house bricks as a pizza stone for some massive thermal mass.


At work:
I use a sous-vide bag to soak a sharpening stone in a hurry. Works really well, air out, water in!
A bent paperclip as a lo-fi thermometer when i don't want to put big holes in my meat.
Someone already mentioned lobster fork - I'm surprised how often i use mine. Bone marrow, periwinkles, back scratcher...
 
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