Behind the Knife - Chef Toolboxes Tell All

You're Kidding, Right?: How To Sous Vide Your iPhone

While we here at BehindTheKnife.com have long had on our radar the art and craft of using non-kitchen tools to create great dishes, we hadn’t yet been alerted to the opposite: using kitchen tools in conjunction with items that have nothing to do with food preparation.

Until Chip Sheen of Charleston Grill here in the Holy City mentioned in an off-the-cuff remark how he uses the sous vide machine, a/k/a a CryoVac, in the kitchen to protect his iPhone.

(For the uninitiated, sous vide is French for “under vacuum,” and is essentially a professional version of the Seal-A-Meal that dotted so many avocado- and harvest gold-hued kitchens back in the disco era. After sealing, you cook the vacuum-packed food in a heated water bath.)

Y’all know Chip Sheen from our previous ManPans post where we attempted to blow them up with fireworks.

Turns out at the beginning of each shift, he sends his iPhone through the sous vide to protect it from the various flying liquids and substances he encounters in the course of a normal shift in the kitchen. He said he can still use it to email, use the apps, and make calls, though he said the plastic muffled incoming and outgoing voices slightly.

So we asked him to demonstrate:

You can also watch the video on YouTube.

Neat, huh? Know of other innovative uses for kitchen tools? Leave a comment below!