12 Apr 2012 A very zesty citrus spritzer
More mature viewers might remember when citrus marketer, Outspan, visited their school, probably only those attended by white kids back in those bad old SA days, handing out plastic devices that you plunged into oranges to suck out their juice – a really fun way to encourage the consumption of citrus fruit. Now, the concept has gone rather more high-tech.
Spray it, don’t squeeze it! Dubbed The Stem, this handy device designed to allow a cook to spray juice directly from a citrus fruit. No longer do you have to cut and squeeze your fruit to get the juice out like a common cook. With only one finger you can now spray citrus juice on your foods evenly.
The Stem was invented by Timothy Houle, and is the 187th project to be approved by the Quirky, a sort of invention incubator, and then manufactured and sold by Quirky.
Reports Popular Science on this innovation:
“It sounds a little cheesy, but, to our surprise, it actually works great. The spritzer action is solid, and it delivers full, rich sprays of delicious lemon, lime, tangerine, or whatever other citrus into which you’ve stuck The Stem.
It’s one of the few single-purpose kitchen gadgets I’d actually use regularly, since most things I cook have some kind of citrus in them. And it’s a better way to deliver that delicious acidic flavour than the usual “cut in half and squeeze over food” method – no more worrying about seeds, no more uneven, unreliable squirts, no more sticky hands.
“Stab, spritz, done. …. And, to be fair, we don’t think it’ll work with any fruit besides citrus – the ratio of juice-to-solid in a citrus makes it about the only spritzable produce. Sorry to anyone who wanted eggplant spray or whatever.”