Drills Are Multitasking in the Kitchen

More putzing than practical — but it’s the pandemic, so why not?

Melissa McCart
Heated

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Guy using a drill to grind coffee.
Alexi Morrissey using a drill on a Japanese hand grinder to grind coffee. Photo: Melissa McCart via Vimeo

This far into the pandemic, boredom meets inspiration, and power tools are making an appearance in home kitchens. While we’re not seeing any mini-saws multitasking as sourdough bread cutters, the drill is coming into its own.

Alton Brown, for example, is using a drill in seasoning his holiday rib roast. After rubbing meat with oil and salt, he wants to season it with two tablespoons of fresh ground pepper. But rather than grinding it by hand with a pepper mill, he takes a Japanese coffee grinder made for camping and swaps the handle for a cordless drill.

Over in Pittsburgh, my buddy Alexi Morrissey, an artist who’s spending tons of pandemic time in his studio, is a coffee fiend — and uses his baby drill on another Japanese hand grinder for a faster way to create a superfine grind.

“If you were gonna hand-grind this f’ing thing, you would be here forever,” he says, “It’s like, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” — 13 minutes long.” (The song…

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Melissa McCart
Heated

Editor of Heated with Mark Bittman on Medium. Dog mom. Pho fan. Send me your pitches: melissamccart@gmail.com