Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Hands Free Cooking

Do you use your hands to toss lettuce or do you whip out some snappy tongs?
Is using your hands more accurate than using a gadget?
This is the question in this article titled " The Power of Touch" , featured in Food and Wine.

In my kitchen, I use my hands for everything but embarrassingly I usually use those clear disposable gloves. I am a closet germaphobe. I am always scared that maybe there is some miniscule germ that jumped into the crevices of your hand and can't be removed with soap and water.

The truth is that a real chef has to touch the food in order to be passionate about it. I wouldn't want the chef to make my food routinely, slabbing the chicken on like those teenagers that work at Subway? I would like to believe that the chef enjoys cooking and molding our food with a passion that only a 4 year old making play dough aliens could understand?
Some questions then arise. Where were those hands before? Does this chef have a cold? Does he/she clean under his fingernails?
What do you think?

Does the use of utensils instead of hands compromise the quality of our food?

1 comment:

KellytheCulinarian said...

Sometimes a tool can do it better than I can. Sure I can cream butter and sugar together, but that would take me 45 minutes by hand and I'd probably be sore afterwards. The mixed can do it in a fraction of the time. It's still made with love, I just used a little technology to help me along.