22 March 2019 _ PopularMechanics.comPHOTOGRAPHBYALLIE^HOLLOWAYTHINGS YOU CAN DO
WITH A DESK TORCH
Melt cheese on stuff. Bread,
a tortilla, your lunch, a slice
of pizza, your phone. Who
cares!
Brûlée a grapefruit. Seg-
ment it with a knife first so
it’s easier to eat. Top with
cane sugar and blast.
Brûlée vanilla Greek yogurt.
It’s like healthy crème brûlée.
Actually you can put sugar on
anything (oatmeal, ham) and
create a crust. That’s kind of
the whole point.
Blast a tortilla. Add taco
fillings from home.
Top leftover pasta with
bread crumbs and a drizzle
of oil. Blast until toasted.
Also try: thinly sliced
tomatoes, onions, garlic,
or almonds. Just thinly
slice stuff.
Sear sushi.Well don’t you
just look like Masayoshi
Ta k a y a m a?Fire is better than the office microwave.
DON’T WANT TO make this depressing, but the reason I can’t con-
vince myself to bring my lunch to work is because it hurts my heart.
Sitting at a desk all day is bad enough when there are people out there
making a living surfing (cough North Shore lunatic Jamie O’Brien)
and flying planes (cough hero Southwest Airlines pilot Tammie Jo
Shults) and importing wild cumin from Afghanistan (cough Bur-
lap & Barrel cofounder Ethan Frisch). I shouldn’t also have to wait
in line for a sad science box from the 1940s to wilt my vegetables and
humidify my leftover pizza. Life is short, and what’s left of the fire in
my incandescent anarcho-punk heart has been smothered enough.
You know what isn’t depressing? A butane-powered crème brûlée
torch. It could easily light my shirt on fire. If building security finds
out I have one, they will probably make me throw it away right in front
of them. But they’re not going to find out, because I am going to be
extremely careful not to ignite my desk while brûléeing fruit in an oven-
safe casserole dish. I’m going to roast corn, peppers, and tomatoes for
desk salsa when no one is looking. I’m going to microwave my leftover
pizza like a good little drone and then harness the elemental energy of
fire and natural gas by-product to burn just the very top layer of cheese
so that the pizza is good, rather than bad. It’s a small rebellion, but you
have to start somewhere. —Jacqueline DetwilerBlister shishito peppers.
Microwave them for a min-
ute or two first, blister with
the torch, sprinkle with salt.
Share.
Make midafternoon s’mores
for all your coworkers. Use
metal skewers. Also very
punk.
Torch orange peel to put
in happy-hour beers. Once
cool, squeeze over the beer
so that the oils dust the top.
Also works in manhattans
and martinis.
When the inevitable water
wars begin, use it to light
Molotov cocktails and your
bra on fire. Whoops—I mean
make more brûléed yogurt.A THING YOU INEXPLICABLY
CAN’T DO WITH A TORCH
Make toast. If you butter it
first, you can make hot but-
tered bread. If you don’t, you
can make regular bread that
tastes burnt.↓ THE LUNCH PAILPRACTICAL KNOWLEDGETorch
Yo u r L u n c h
The Torch
BonJour Crème
Brûlée torch, $26.
Butane sold sepa-
rately (try a smoke
shop or Williams
Sonoma). Fill where
no one will notice
the smell.