During a recent workshop at The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, Calif., a recipe calling for fresh-squeezed lime juice spurred some quick-thinking resourcefulness by one of the demo chefs. With no juicer on hand, Chicago’s Rodelio Aglibot, chef-owner of E+O Food and Drink and Yum Cha Dim Sum Parlor grabbed tongs to juice the limes on the fly.
We asked Chris Koetke, vice president of the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College in Chicago, to share some other inventive ways he’s seen chefs use the handy kitchen tool. “A lot of the barbecue guys use tongs to judge the doneness of brisket,” he says. “They grab the brisket in the middle and lift it up to see the jiggle on it, and that indicates how it’s coming along with its smoking [and avoids overcooking].” Tongs also are good, Koetke says, “for opening bottles of beer after work.”