The best chefs out there will tell you to—if you can help it—avoid seemingly cool single-use kitchen items. While the pizza scissor, banana container or carrot sharpener (yes, all these gadgets exist) appears to be ingenious during the live demo at the supermarket, you’ll find that they’ll fast get entangled with other similarly inane tools, to become one indistinguishable mess.
There are, however, kitchen contraptions that appear to do only one thing but are in fact quite versatile—like Weber’s deluxe poultry roaster. With ceramic non-stick coating that makes it a breeze to clean, don’t be deceived into thinking it just delivers juicy roast chicken.
Though it seems a stretch, our chefs at Weber have created wonderful desserts using this allegedly one-trick tool. There are simple, no-fuss ones that anyone can make, like grilled fruits and marshmallows with chocolate sauce.
While the poultry roaster’s bottom is used like a typical grill—diced fruits, nuts and marshmallows are spread evenly over it and grilled with a bit of honey, the inventiveness comes 10 minutes after the fruits have been grilled.
The poultry roaster cup, typically filled with beer, wine or another liquids to add flavor to the chicken, is used almost like a chocolate fondue pot. The steps? Simple place chopped chocolate in the poultry roaster cup and allow it to melt.
For chocoholics, there’s the chocolate dream. Used like a Bundt pan, the cake batter is poured into the circular ring where the bird usual sits. Similarly to the grilled fruits recipe, the poultry roaster cup is used to melt the creamy white chocolate that is later drizzled over your moist cut of chocolate joy.
A little more unexpected, guests will have a hard time believing this banana tarte tatin can be made without a conventional pie dish. Built in reverse, the caramel and banana slices are first arranged around the pan evenly, followed by pastry on top of it. Baked for about 25 minutes until golden brown, a serving dish is then placed over the pan and flipped upside down to release it. If this dessert doesn’t hit your personal sinfulness scale, add a scoop of ice cream!
