In Defense of a Single-Use Kitchen Tool
The garlic press has one job. That’s enough.
I know. A garlic press.
It does one thing. It takes up drawer space. And yes, it’s kind of a bitch to clean.
I don’t care. Mine is staying.
If you make garlic bread, shrimp scampi, or regularly encounter a recipe that casually asks for four, six, eight cloves of minced garlic, a garlic press is a tiny workhorse.
Because I can mince garlic with a knife. Obviously. But can I mince eight cloves into perfectly tiny, evenly sized pieces without getting annoyed halfway through?
Not really.
The garlic press gives you the same fine texture every time.
No giant rogue chunk of garlic hiding in your scampi.
No pieces burning while the bigger ones are still basically raw.
No standing at the cutting board rocking a knife back and forth when dinner should have been on the table ten minutes ago.
But isn’t it a single-use kitchen tool?
Yes.
And?
I’m all for avoiding useless kitchen gadgets, but I’ve never understood the idea that every single thing in your kitchen needs to perform six different jobs. If a tool does one job extremely well and you actually use it all the time, it has earned the drawer space.
The catch: cleaning it.
This is the part where garlic presses have rightfully earned some enemies.
Do not let the garlic dry in there. That is how you end up standing at the sink with a toothpick, filled with rage.
As soon as you’re done, open it up, pull out whatever garlic skin is left behind, and rinse it under hot water. Once you get into the habit, it takes seconds and the whole “garlic presses are impossible to clean” thing becomes significantly less dramatic.
Is it essential? No.
Could I live without it? Obviously.
Would I like to? Why should I?
