Do You Really Need Power Tools In The Kitchen? The Shocking Truth!

Random Slice Wednesday is made for mayhem like this. We’re not just talking mess in the kitchen. We’re talking spectacular splatter, abstract-expressionist-in-brown, action-painting art mess.
 
You see, I was busy being “smart.”
 
A couple of years ago I shocked my wife by bringing a cordless power drill into the kitchen.
 
It was all about the peanut butter.

If you're a fan of foods that are less processed than, say, Screamin’ Dill Pickle Pringles covered in Cheez Whiz, it’s likely you have come home from a moment of supermarket whole-foods weakness with a jar of all-natural peanut butter.
 
I did that.
 
I do it periodically. We don’t eat a lot of peanut butter. The salty savory appeal is offset by the tile-grout adhesive nature of the product.
 
Plus, bringing home a natural peanut butter brings home the added bonus of “Free Oil Slick In Every Jar!”
 
And when you buy groceries in the large economy size as I often do, you unscrew the lid on that jar, and inside you find a peanut-oil, Deep Water Horizon slick across your Gulf Of Goober ‘Merica inside.
 
SIDEBAR: If you don’t know, the word “goober” is one of many nicknames for peanuts. But did you know "goober" is derived from the Kikongo Bantu word for peanut, “ngoba.” You’re welcome. I find out these things so you don’t have to. And yes, cultural appropriation abounds!
 
Anyway, this jar of natural peanut butter the size of a child’s head on my kitchen counter had clearly been sitting on the supermarket shelf for a while.
 
Beneath the oil slick on top, the ground up “groundnuts” (another name by which peanuts are also known) had compacted into a mass with an industrial compressive strength comparable to marine ferrocement.
 
Attempting to stir the product with a butter knife was a fool’s errand calculated to destroy any of the collectible butter knives in our heirloom Walmart flatware collection.
 
But being a man who believes that any job requires a proper tool offering an exponential overkill factor calculated to get TikTok views in the gazillions, I went straight for the power tools.
 
My wife walked in just as I was fitting the beater from an antique electric hand mixer into the chuck of the cordless drill. (Honestly, it’s a lightweight product as power drills go, but the big, green Makita hammer drill seemed excessive even for moi.)
 
She looked at me and said, “What are you doing?”
 
I said, “Watch.”
 
I inserted the steel beater down through the goober slick and into the massed peanut butter.
 
Using a slow speed and steady hand, it was a matter of moments before the entire jar of legume paste was almost smooth and creamy enough to be mistaken for the time-honored commercial product of the ever-choosy Jif-mother generation.
 
Another bonus: using a power drill fit with a steel beater means the peanut butter oil slick stays blended into the product for longer.
 
Yay, ham-fisted technology!
 
Some people like to rely on food chemistry for curing the natural irregularities of agricultural products in favor of industrial-like homogeneity.
 
Instead of relying upon industrial providers, I prefer the hobby-chef hands-on liberation of brute-force power tools in a culinary setting.
 
And the method has never failed me.
 
So just yesterday, why did I default from the power drill to the immersion blender?
 
Call it laziness. I was also tired. Maybe that was the inspiration.
 
I thought, I never use the immersion blender whisk attachment for anything. Why not use it for this?
 
So I blindly attached the whisk to the blender, inserted it into the jar of peanut butter, and hit the button.
 
The wrong button.
 
There are only two speeds on this immersion blender. It’s great for pulsing a pot of boiled potatoes and leeks into vichyssoise.
 
It’s not the greatest power tool for anything requiring finesse.
 
Instead of pulsing the button for low speed, I engaged the blender at high speed.
 
There was a brief, guttural whine. There was a rapid-fire splattering sound.

​My kitchen now looks as if it was attacked by Jackson Pollock during his diarrhetic peanut farmer period.
 
I’m still mopping up the countless splats of oily brown paste from the tiles, the salt shaker and the peppermill, the array of cutlery on the magnetic knife strip, the electric kettle, the blinds, the ceiling fan—you get the picture.
 
I’m taking a break right now to write this as a public service, reminding you to always use the right tool for the job—particularly when it's a tool possessing the potential to create the kind of dada-esque artwork I am presently enjoying in my kitchen.
 
You’re welcome.
 
This coming Saturday, back to our regularly scheduled pizza.

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​A lot of big-time professional artisan pizza makers once made their first pizza in a home oven just like yours. You can do it, too. My weird little award-winning book is one way to make it so. The book is about how to get from zero to pizza using the oven you already have. Besides learning to make great pizza, there’s not much else you can do with it. In fact, you can’t even use it to level a table leg if you buy the Kindle edition (which is less expensive than the print editions and has links to instructional videos and printable kitchen worksheets). To learn more about Free The Pizza: A Simple System For Making Great Pizza Whenever You Want With The Oven You Already Have, click here. ​