Dan MacDonald

There are certain kitchen tools I can’t do without. Of course, there’s the chef’s knife and my favorite saute pan. And I’ve written about tongs in the past -- they are my hands in the kitchen. I also have a couple of favorite side towels -- just the right thickness, length and weight. However, the unsung hero of my kitchen is aluminum foil. It’s a workhorse that finds its way into the preparation of almost everything. When seasoning steaks, I like to place foil on the cutting board and put the steaks on top of that. I can season liberally, take the board and steaks out to the grill, put the meat on the fire and just crumple up the foil, leaving myself a clean board. This also works when seasoning a pork tenderloin. A little olive oil, some herbs and spices, and then I grab the north and south ends of the foil and roll the tenderloin around to season it thoroughly. I can tell whether the cook also does the dishes by watching to see if foil is used. I never grab a sheet pan without first lining it with foil. Cleanup is so much easier. In fact, if you need to clean the crud off the grill grate, wad a baseball-size hunk of foil, grasp it in tongs and run it over the grate. (This does have a fingernails on the chalkboard sound, but you’ll get over it.) Besides making cleanup a snap, foil is a piece of cooking equipment. It’s much easier to use than parchment paper when preparing fish en papillote. Place an onion slice on the bottom, a seasoned fish fillet on top, maybe some carrot sticks and small red potatoes and a splash of wine or apple juice, and loosely wrap that in foil – you have a meal in a packet. Of course, every Cub Scout knows about cooking a hobo’s supper of hamburger and potatoes in a foil pouch over an open fire. On the grill, place foil on the grate and sliced vegetables won’t slide through the spaces. While I can’t imagine a kitchen without it, aluminum foil didn’t appear in homes until after World War II, when the Reynolds Metal Co. was left with a surplus of aluminum. They rolled it into sheets in 1947, and cooks’ lives haven’t been the same. To get the most out of foil, here are some tips to consider: n Don’t worry about shiny side or dull side when cooking. It doesn’t matter that much. But if you’re the picky type, and you’re lining the inside of the oven (for easy cleanup) put the shiny side on the outside. -- Spray the foil with cooking spray before putting it over a dish like lasagna. It will keep the cheese from sticking to the foil. n Quit burning your pie crusts. Before baking a one-crust pie, take a rectangular piece of foil a bit larger than the pie and fold it in half. Cut out a semicircle, slightly smaller than the pie. Unfold the rectangle and place it over the pie, exposing the middle (that needs to be cooked), and the foil will protect the crust. -- As long as the foil does not touch the sides of the microwave, it can be used there. Doubt it? Check out all the foil in the microwave ovens at Lubi’s restaurants. n Don’t use foil to wrap items for the freezer. It isn’t air-tight. n Don’t use foil to wrap tomatoes or onions. The acids in these items don’t get along with foil. n And here’s a storage tip. Put foil, plastic wrap, wax paper and the like in an empty cardboard six-pack container that once held beer bottles.