Useful kitchen gadget: the plunger

In keeping with my theme of AB (that’s Alton Brown), let me introduce you to my newest kitchen gadgets! For years I’ve watched Good Eats and have admired Alton’s gadgetry, particularly the plungers he used to measure out and extract troublesome, sticky products, like honey, or mayo, or ketchup. So, I finally broke down and bought two! As you can see, one is large (up to two cups), and the other is small (up to one cup), but what’s great about these helpful tools are all the myriad measurements listed on the outsides. For example, on each plunger, an equivalent table breaks down the teaspoon to tablespoon equivalent, the tablespoon to ounces equivalent, and ounces to cup to pint to quart and to gallon equivalents. Additionally, it allows measurement by milliliters, liters, cups, pints, teaspoons, tablespoons and ounces, all in one gadget.

These plungers let you build within them as well. You can dose out your required ¼ yogurt into the plunger and then pull the yellow plunger part down to the ¾ cup measurement and add sour cream, knowing that you will get an exact ½ cup. But the coolest thing about these plungers is their ability to capture all the honey (yogurt, sour cream, etc…) in the measuring cup and extract it into the dish you’re making. One swipe with a rubber spatula over the smooth top and the job is done! No more scraping around my measuring cups to try to get it all out. They are available at www.altonbrown.com

Hats off to the plunger!