The texts started rolling in around dinnertime.
OMG. Cut a jalapeño and now my hand is burning.
A few minutes later:
Pain getting worse. Pretty bad.
And a few minutes after that:
MAKE IT STOP!!
But I could not help my sister, who had cleaned the ribs and seeds from that jalapeño the same way she does with bell peppers—that is, with her bare hands. I knew that the remedies she found on the internet—dip hands in milk; clutch bags of ice—would only be marginally helpful. But my advice would be even more useless. Because there's only one way I know to get rid of the sting of fiery chile juice on bare hands, and that's to avoid touching the seeds to begin with—by wearing disposable gloves.
Disposable gloves are one of the least sexy things you can wear in a kitchen—or anywhere, for that matter. If I had to describe them charitably, I'd call them institutional chic, with an aroma of hospital cafeteria. But it takes just one incident with a jalapeño to proclaim allegiance to the things.
And they're not just a barrier between you and those chiles. Keep a100-count boxin a kitchen drawer for the meatballs and meatloafs you're going to mix by hand. (It keeps the bacteria from burrowing under your fingernails.) And for rubbing a raw chicken inside and out withcompound butter. Got a pile of shrimp to devein? It's so much less disgusting when you do it with gloves.
Garlic and shallots and onions—these foods do not leave their scent on your fingers when you handle them with gloves. And crayon-colored fruits and vegetables? With gloves on, they keep their color to themselves.
五分钟前我拨Kitc Epicurious测试万博官网hen and asked Kat and Anna what tasks they wear gloves for. "Butternut squash," Kat said. "Otherwise it leaves an orange film on your hands."
"Beets," she continued. "Bloody red beets."
In the background, Anna yelled "Blood oranges! Cherries!Turmeric!"
"Anything that's going to stain your hands," Kat said. Then, murmuring: "It's probably more of a girl thing...if you have a nice manicure..."
Hogwash. Everybody, manicured or not, has use for disposable gloves in the kitchen. Yeah, you'll look like Nurse Jackie when you're cleaning those chiles. But better to look like her than toneedher, right?
