Speaker A
Well, you went to the store for a birthday present, and you came home with a quesadilla maker, $34. It was on the end cap, it was red, it had a picture of a perfect quesadilla on the box, and it
Bertha reveals 12 kitchen gadgets that waste space and how Mexican households simplify with just 3 essential tools.
Key Takeaways
- Most modern kitchen gadgets are redundant and less effective than traditional tools.
- Mexican kitchens use a minimal set of versatile tools that perform multiple functions.
- Traditional methods preserve flavor and quality better than many electric gadgets.
- Many gadgets are marketing inventions, not cooking necessities.
- Simplifying kitchen tools can save space and improve cooking outcomes.
What the video covers
- Many kitchen gadgets are single-purpose, costly, and rarely used, cluttering cabinets unnecessarily.
- Mexican kitchens traditionally rely on just three versatile tools that perform multiple tasks effectively.
- The garlic press is less effective and harder to clean than the traditional molcajete stone mortar and pestle.
- Electric spice grinders remove essential oils by overheating spices, unlike the traditional toasting and grinding method using a comal and molcajete.
- Rice cookers cannot replicate the authentic fried Mexican rice made in a pot, which is essential in many households.
- Toasters take up counter space and create crumbs, while the comal toasts bread and tortillas more efficiently without waste.
- Electric tortilla warmers make tortillas soggy, whereas cloth-lined baskets keep them warm and soft naturally.
- Food processors chop ingredients, but traditional crushed salsas made in a molcajete have superior flavor and texture.
- Many gadgets were designed to solve problems that don’t exist and were marketed to consumers over decades.
- Bertha encourages embracing traditional, multifunctional kitchen tools to save space and enhance cooking quality.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Quesadilla Maker Story
- 01:04Overview of Kitchen Gadgets and Mexican Household Approach
- 02:11Garlic Press vs Molcajete
- 04:18Spice Grinder vs Traditional Toasting and Grinding
- 05:29Rice Cooker Limitations and Traditional Pot Cooking
- 06:33Toaster vs Comal for Toasting Bread and Tortillas
- 07:42Electric Tortilla Warmer vs Traditional Cloth Method
- 08:52Food Processor vs Molcajete for Salsa
- 09:47Summary of Kitchen Gadget Issues and Traditional Solutions
- 12:40Closing Thoughts and Invitation to Learn More
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
is in your cabinet right now behind the salad spinner, in front of the egg cooker, and you have used it twice. And that is not the only one. If you opened every cabinet in your kitchen tonight and pulled out everything that does
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exactly one job, you would fill the table. And you could not tell me what most cost, only that it was all under $40 and it all seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, that does not happen
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the same way in a Mexican household. And I want to be very clear about why because it is not that we are smarter in the kitchen than you, and it is not that we cook better. It is that the kitchen I
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grew up in was built around three things. Three, and every one of those gadgets on your table was invented to replace a job that one of the three was already doing. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Those are all of them
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today, Micha. And I will tell you right now, number three is the one you're going to fight me on because you love it, and I am going to be honest with you about it anyway. Number 11 is the
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biggest thing on your counter, and you use four slots of it. And stay with me for number 12 because number 12 is the one I am going to tell you to keep, and the reason why is the whole point of the
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video. But first, so nobody feels bad, and I mean this, none of this is your fault. Every one of these gadgets was designed by a very smart person whose entire job was to make you believe that a problem you did not have was a problem
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and that the answer was $30. You did not fail. You were sold to one gadget at a time over 30 years. That is the only reason I am making this video. My name is Bertha.
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This channel is the old ways from the women in my family to you. Let us open the cabinet. Number one, the garlic press. It is in the drawer by the stove.
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It is stainless steel. It cost you somewhere between 12 and 20 dollars. And here is a thing you already know and do not say out loud. You do not use it because washing it takes longer than the garlic. Half the clove stays in the
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little holes. You dig it out with a toothpick. Then you soak it. In my mother's kitchen, there was el molcajete, the stone. Three legs, a bowl carved from volcanic rock, and a pestle, la mano, the hand. You add a clove of
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garlic, a pinch of salt, three turns of the hand, and it is a paste, a real paste with the oils out of it in five seconds.
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And the stone rinses under the tap. The molcajete was doing this job in Mexico a thousand years before anybody bolted two handles together and called it a press.
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Here is the honest mechanism, mija. A press cuts the garlic through holes, and it leaves the best part behind. The stone crushes it, and crushing is what opens the flavor. The press does the job worse and takes longer to clean, and you
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paid for it. You did not buy a tool. You bought a second way to do a thing the stone was already doing better.
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Número two, the spice grinder. The little electric one, the size of a coffee cup. 20 to 40 dollars. Lives in the cabinet above the microwave. You bought it the week you decided you were going to toast your own cumin. You
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toasted your own cumin one time. Now it smells like that one time forever because you cannot wash the part with the blade. My mother toasted her cumin, her pepper, her clove on the comal, dry, 30 seconds, until the kitchen smelled
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like it, and then it went into the molcajete, and the stone ground it. That is el tostado, the toasting, and the stone is the second half of it. The stone keeps the oil in the spice. The little electric blade heats the spice up
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as it spins and cooks the oil off. You bought a machine that removes the part you wanted. A grinder that cannot be washed is not a grinder. It is a jar that remembers everything you ever put in it. If the old ways matter to you,
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mija, these are a handful from hundreds Mexican households have lived by for generations in the kitchen and in every room of the house. I have gathered them all into one book, The Old Mexican Way, at oldmexicanway.com.
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You can scan the QR code on the screen or click the link in the description to get your copy and start bringing the old ways home this week. Now, back to the list. Number three, the rice cooker. I
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know, I know, mija. Put your hand down. I said you would fight me on this one, and I am going to be honest with you about it. The rice cooker is $30 for the small one and $150 for the fancy one
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with the song. When you eat plain white rice every single day, if it is the bread of your house, the way it is for many families, then it is not a gadget, it is a stove, and you keep it, and I
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will not say another word. But most of you bought it for the idea of rice, and it lives on the counter making no rice.
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And here is the thing it cannot do at all, our rice, arroz rojo. Mexican rice is fried first in a little oil in the layolea, the pot, until every grain is gold, and then the tomato and the broth
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go in and the lid, and you walk away. A rice cooker steams, it cannot fry. It cannot make the rice that made you want a rice cooker in the first place. The cooking lives on my other channel, and I
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will leave it there. The pot is the pot, and the pot has made every rice in my family for 100 years.
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The machine cannot make the rice you grow up on. It can only make the rice you settle for. Number four, the toaster. Toasts lots, stainless, $25 to $40, a full square foot of the counter next to the outlet, and inside it
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right now is a layer of crumbs that has been there since the last time you turned it upside down over the sink, which was never. In my mother's kitchen, the bread went on el comal, the flat griddle, cast
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iron or clay that lived on the stove and never left it. A bolillo split and pressed face down for a minute. A tortilla, 10 seconds a side.
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A slice of bread, a bolillo, a piece of pan dulce from yesterday to bring it back to life. The comal toasts everything, and it toasts one side at a time, which means you can see it, which means nothing burns. And the comal has
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no crumb tray because the crumbs fall on the stove and get wiped, and it has no cord, and it has no slot that your bread does not fit in. The toaster is a comal that can only do one thing, standing up
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with a plug. Número five, the electric tortilla warmer. This one hurts me a little because it was invented for us. A round plastic dome with a cord, $25 to $40, sold in the aisle with the Mexican flag on the packaging to keep tortillas
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warm at the table. Mija, el tortillero, the cloth. A tortilla goes on the comal for 20 seconds a side, and then it goes into the servilleta, the embroidered napkin, folded over inside the basket or a clay pot. And it stays warm and soft
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for an hour because the cloth breathes and the steam stays every Mexican table for 500 years. The plastic dome with the cord makes the tortillas wet, and a sweating tortilla goes limp, and you know that because you have eaten one. They
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took the cloth off the table, put a cord on it, and sold it back to us with our own flag on the box. Number six, the food processor, the big one, 60 to $200.
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The bowl, the lid, the blade, the disk, the other disk, the little pusher, and it lives in the corner cabinet where you have to get on your knees to reach it, which is why you use it three times a
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year, and every time the cleaning takes longer than the cooking. My mother made salsa in the molcajete, and here is the word that matters, martajado. Crushed, not chopped. Salsa from the stone is crushed, the tomato and the chile and
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the garlic are broken open against each other, and the oils come out, and it tastes like a salsa. But salsa from a machine is chopped, a thousand tiny cuts, and it tastes like wet pieces of tomato. You know the
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difference. You have tasted it at your tía's house and wonder why yours is not the same. It is the stone. The machine chops a thing into piec...
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Now, that is six. Wait. And I want you to notice something before we keep going because you may have already seen it.
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Every single one so far replaced the comal, the molcajete or the olla. Hold on to that because at the end I am going to show you the arithmetic and the arithmetic is the whole story. Number seven, the egg cooker, a little white
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dome, $20, holds six eggs, beeps when they are done. You bought it because somebody on the internet said it changed their mornings. It changed your cabinet.
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An egg goes in a la o le mija. Pot of water, the eggs, the lid, the fire.
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10 minutes. Every hard egg in the history of the world was made this way until about 10 years ago. And the pot also makes the beans, the caldo, the rice, the cafe de olla, and the pasta on Tuesday.
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The egg cooker makes eggs, only eggs. It is a pot that forgot how to be a pot.
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You did not buy an egg cooker, you bought a pot with a wall around it so it could only do one job.
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Number eight, the salad spinner. The bowl inside the bowl with the lid with the core you pull, 25 to $40, the size of a small child on the shelf above the pots.
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You use it, honestly, twice a week. And every time you look at how much of the shelf it takes for a slightly drier lettuce.
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My mother washed the lettuce in the sink, shook it in the colander, and rolled it up in a clean bright trapo, the same trapo I have told you about before, and gave it a shake, and it was dry.
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10 seconds. El trapo does not need a shelf. It hangs on a hook. This one is not even one of the three, mija.
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It is a rag, and the rag beat a machine the size of a helmet.
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A machine with a pull cord to dry lettuce is a toy that talked its way into being called a tool.
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Number nine, the quesadilla maker. The red one from the cold open. 20 five to $40 with the wedge groups so the quesadilla comes out already cut into triangles, which is the entire feature.
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Mija, the quesadilla was born on the comal, tortilla on the hot iron, cheese, fold, press with a spatula, flip, and the cheese runs out the side and burns a little on the comal and that burnt lace of cheese, la doradita, is
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the best part. And the machine cannot make it because the machine seals the edges. The machine was designed to make a quesadilla that does not leak and a quesadilla that does not leak is a quesadilla with the best part removed.
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They sold you a $30 machine to make a worse version of a thing the comal makes in 90 seconds. Number 10, the avocado slicer. $6, green plastic. Three in one it says. It splits, it pits, it slices.
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It is in the drawer with the other things you cannot remember buying. My mother opened an avocado with a knife and took the pit out with a spoon, la cuchara, the spoon, the one that is already in the drawer, that you already
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own, that does the whole job and then stirs your coffee. The avocado slicer exists because a spoon cannot be patented and a piece of green plastic can. It is not a tool. It's a spoon that costs $6 and does less. Numero 11, the
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knife block set. 15 knives in a block of wood. $80 to $200 sitting on the counter taking up the space of a small appliance and if you are honest, you use three of them.
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The bread knife, the big one and the little one. The other 12 are waiting for a dinner that is never going to come.
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And the steak knives have never left the block. My mother had one knife, one. El filo, the edge, was the thing that mattered, not the number. She kept it sharp on the bottom of a clay plate, the unglazed ring, a few strokes before she
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cooked and that one knife cut the onion, the chicken, the bread and the birthday cake. When it finally wore thin, after 20 years, she bought one more. All right, two, Miha, a big one and a small one. I will give you two.
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But not 15 and never a block on the counter holding a dinner party hostage.
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15 knives in a block is not a set. It is one knife you use and 14 you paid for so the box would look full. But 12, the air fryer, and I said I would tell you to keep it so listen to how. It is on your
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counter, it is black, it costs 80 to 150 dollars, and it is the biggest single object in this video. And here is an honest word, it is a small oven with a fan. That is all it is. And if you use
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it every day, Miha, if it is how your family eats, then it is not a gadget, a stove. A thing that gets used every day has earned its place and I do not care what it is called. Se gana su lugar. It
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earns its place. That was the only rule in my mother's kitchen and it is a rule under all 12 of these. The comal earned its place every single morning. The molcajete earned it every salsa. The olla earned it every pot of beans. Not
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one of them ever sat in a cabinet for three months waiting. And the air fryer, if it is used every day, has done the same thing. And it stays. But if it has been on the counter for a year and used
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four times, then you know what it is and so do I. The question was never whether a thing is old or new, Miha. The question is whether it works for you every day or whether you are storing it
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for the company that sold it. Well, and now the one gadget my mother did own because I promised to be honest and because it proves a rule. El rayador.
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Box grater, four sides, thin, two dollars at the tianguis. And it grated the cheese, the carrot for the rice, the potato, the chayote, the coconut, and the nutmeg. And it is 50 years old and it is in my kitchen right
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now. It earned its place. That is why it is the only one. Now now, let me show you the arithmetic because these were never 12 separate things. Go back through the list. The garlic press, the grinder, the rice cooker, the toaster,
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the tortilla warmer, the food processor, the egg cooker, the salad spinner, the quesadilla maker, the avocado slicer, the knife block, the air fryer. Add them up honestly at the prices you actually paid. It is somewhere between $400 and
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$700 and it is taking up two cabinets and half the counter and most of it is waiting.
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Now the three. A comal, $12 to $20. A molcajete, $25 to $30. An olla, $10 under $50 for all three. And here is the part that matters. The three outlive the house. My mother's comal is on my stove. My
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mother's molcajete is on my counter. The house she cooked in is gone and the stone is not nothing in the gadget aisle will outlive anything.
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And here is the quiet word about who profits. The gadget aisle sells you a tool per job. That is the business. One job, one box, one price and a new job invented every season because a kitchen that already has a comal is a kitchen
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that does not need the aisle. The comal has no marketing department me. Nobody is paid to make you want the molcajete.
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It has never been on an end cap and it has never had a picture on a box and that is the only reason you own 12 things instead of three. These are not 12 problems in your kitchen. It it is
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one pattern standing in 12 different boxes. Your grandmother was not cooking with less because she had less imagination. She was refusing to pay over and over again for something the stone and the iron and the pot had already solved and the food was better.
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You know it was. So, do not do 12. Do one this week. Open the cabinet, take out the one gadget that has not earned its place and give it to someone who will use it every day or to the segunda
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because most of it is nada. It leaves as a gift, not as trash. And then put a comal on your stove if you do not have one and leave it there. Watch how many of the other 11 you stop reaching for
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and then come and tell me in the comments which one is in your cabinet right now. And I know some of you have all 12 and which of the three your mother had. And tell me the gadget your
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grandmother owned that I did not put on this list because those are the ones I am really collecting. And and your county, of course. I read everyone. Next time, the greater. The $2 rallador that is 50 years old and the 11 jobs it does
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in my kitchen that you are buying 11 gadgets for. I will give you everyone about this week. One gadget out and one comal on the stove. The women who ran these kitchens were not making do with three things. They had found the three
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things that do everything and they never once let a box talk them out of it. And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
Topics:kitchen gadgetsMexican cookingmolcajetekitchen space savingtraditional cooking toolskitchen hacksfood processor alternativesrice cooker critiquecomalkitchen clutter
