grapefruit spoons

• Thu, 16:04: @altonbrown, Please settle this for me before you shuffle good eats off into the void: Grapefruit spoon = multitasker or unitasker?

I doubt Alton will have the time to respond.

Some background: I heard the other day, that Alton Brown (or AB as he is often called,) has decided to shelve his cooking show "Good Eats." There will be three 1 hour specials and then, no more Good Eats. I will miss it. I enjoyed the show's formula, equal parts Mister Wizard, Monty Python, and Julia Child. The show strove to answer a lot of cooking questions, but sometimes it created questions instead.

The great grapefruit spoon debate is one of these.

AB is a big one for eschewing unnecessary kitchen implements that have only one specialized purpose and take up space. Most kitchens are small, and space is at a premium, so there is no room in the drawers to have a separate implement that is used for only one job.

So that's the setup, here is the foundation of the debate:

In season 6, episode 6 7, ("Tomato Envy") the grapefruit spoon is used to de-seed a tomato, and is called one of the kitchen's greatest multitaskers. In AB's first book, in a section on kitchen gear, he says that it is also good to de-choke artichokes, seed cucumbers, zest citrus fruit, scrape out avocadoes, etc, etc.

HOWEVER, during season 13, episode 17 ("The Ballad of Salty and Sweet,") AB derides the grapefruit spoon as a uni-tasker that takes up storage space and tosses it aside, using a steak knife to section a grapefruit instead.

Personally, I think this whole blanket labeling of things as multitaskers or unitaskers, just indicates a way for AB to express another concept entirely. I doubt AB intended for there to be a webpage listing all the multitaskers and unitaskers for pedantic weirdos like me to peruse. Instead he's saying: "If you don't have it, don't just run out and buy it, see if something else will do the job." There is another saying that illustrates the concept, one that all tinkerers know well:

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

A unitasker is just a multitasker waiting to be born. If you already own it, or were given it as a gift, don't toss it out until you've examined it to see what else it might be able to do in a pinch. Very few things are so specialized that they can't be perverted to some bizarre culinary purpose. I've used a kitchen fire extinguisher to roll out pie dough, the filter basket from my espresso machine to cut biscuits, a box cheese grater as a sieve, a rubber no-slip jar opener as a garlic skin remover, the tamper from my espresso machine as a carpaccio flattener and ice crusher, a garlic press as a potato ricer, and lots more.

Usually I am forced to improvise like this because the item I need is dirty (or broken.) Maybe that saying should be "Dirty dishes are the mother of invention."