What Makes a Mad Hungry Tool

You know the Mad Hungry spurtle origin story, right? If not, read it here. Within the spurtle story lies the entire thesis of our tool DNA: unique, FUN, multi-use tools for the home cook. Our tools don’t specialize in only one thing. Everything we make does more than one task, performs more than one action. This ethos emerged from decades of cooking in our small, hardworking home kitchen in New York City, where space is at a premium. Facts: our broom closet in the kitchen multi-tasks as a wardrobe closet, storage space and laundry stash. A family of five thrived here for decades. All three sons were taught to cook as soon as possible. To cut down on the extra dishes, every tool you grab from the crock or drawer must do more than just stir the pot—like the spurtle! It also smashes, spreads, scoops and serves.

Consider our Super Spoon—which was designed to combine the attributes of a slotted spoon, potato masher and strainer, all of which is more than should be reasonably expected from any one tool. We went a little further and added a grating feature to the palm of the spoon, which pulverizes garlic and ginger. Imagine making a tomato sauce. First the garlic is grated from the palm of the spoon into a hot pot swirled with olive oil. Next a can of whole tomatoes is added. After it’s simmered a bit, mash the soft whole tomatoes to the desired consistency (from chunky to smooth) with the top of the spoon. All steps are handled with one tool. Then one day while the pasta was boiling, I thought…too bad the outer circumference of the spoon doesn’t have tines, then I could scoop up the noodles from the boiling water and add to the sauce—sauce and noodle actions completed with just one tool.

So, we created the Forked Super Spoon, which has found its own success. And so it goes with our other original Mad Hungry tools: our innovative measuring set (which stands upright in a crock), the Lip & Loop Colander set, Everyday prep and eat bowls, the enamelware Kitchamajig, and even more.

Ideas are found everywhere. Sometimes while traveling in a foreign country, I’ll see a tool meant for something specific and I see the possibilities beyond it. Other times, a stroll through a flea market will present a table of vintage tools—ones I’ve never seen, often from a time before electric appliances made life so-called “easier.” Those handheld tools had to work hard to achieve tasks handled by electrical appliances today: whipping, grinding or blending. Take for example a Beetle. It’s a tapered mallet with a rounded head. A potato masher of old, it’s linked to an Irish dish called champ, also known as poundies, cally, bruisy and thump. The dish combines cooked potatoes beaten to a pulp with warm milk, butter and scallions. But I use it to flatten meat fillet slices, make apple sauce, cream of wheat (no lumps), mashed potatoes or root vegetables. It was such an important tool in kitchens of the early 20th century that you see it in the kitchens of old movies or TV series (see Carmela Corleone’s tiny kitchen counter in The Godfather Part II). The Beetle is even immortalized in a rhyme:

There was an old woman
That lived in a lamp
She had no room
To beetle her champ.
She’s up’d with her beetle
And broke the lamp,
And now she has room
To beetle her champ.