“How do you open jars,” I texted an expensive buddy one night time after a very grueling and soul-sapping tussle with a cussed marinara lid that bruised each fingers and ego and made me marvel how I managed to independently feed myself.
“A mallet,” he informed me. Particularly, this rubber mallet for underneath $12. As an individual who lives alone with bodily limitations and a number of variations in his life, I trusted his suggestion implicitly. 5 minutes later, my buy was confirmed. Two years later, my mallet nonetheless has pleasure of place on the window sill above the sink. Pals giggle after they see it. They’re lacking out.
I’ve tried all method of jar-opening gadgets in my years (these did nothing for me) and plenty of a kitchen trick to interrupt a cussed seal, like gripping the lid with a towel, holding the jar underneath a stream of sizzling water, thumping the perimeters and backside to launch the seal, even the ill-advised insertion of a knife level between the lid and jar lip. Typically these strategies even work!
However with a light-weight faucet of the mallet on two or three spots alongside the vertical edges of a lid, it simply twists open, vacuum launched. This mallet methodology is lifeless easy, takes seconds and works each time. (You additionally will not gauge your self on a pointy knife or open scissor, and it would be fairly exhausting to hit your personal thumb.)
The story does not finish there, as a result of though I purchased the rubber mallet for speedily dispatching cantankerous jar lids, I discover myself greedy the deal with and swinging the enterprise finish extra typically than I anticipated.
Ice that is partially melted into chunks shatters beneath the mallet’s weight. Garlic peels fly. Meat (in zip-top luggage) is gently massaged into uniform thinness. The mallet head is well lined in a clear bag or material, or in any other case sanitized, however principally I cowl the meals on the level of contact, somewhat than the mallet. A sturdy faucet is normally all it takes to do no matter must be carried out, and I gotta admit, swinging a hammer across the kitchen is a number of enjoyable.
Sometimes, I even use the rubber mallet for nonculinary utilitarian duties like, you recognize, constructing furnishings (these pesky dowel ends!). However the subsequent time a buddy ribs me with a “why do you’ve a mallet in your kitchen” line, I’ll seize the tightest-lidded jar I can discover for a demo — after which ship them the hyperlink above.
For much more sensible buys we love, this helpful multitool is one my colleague has in his bug-out bag, and one other coworker swears by this Powrun P-One automobile soar starter battery pack (this is why she likes it).