Unsung utensil, sometimes called a basting lid. Claim to fame: cheeseburgers. Got any tips or dishes or stories that go with it?
Unsung utensil, sometimes called a basting lid. Claim to fame: cheeseburgers. Got any tips or dishes or stories that go with it?
by cramber-flarmp
48 Comments
Jesustron
It’s called a hat
Penguin_Tempura
Cut your cook time on thick cuts of fish by splashing some water and steaming that bitch
Creative-Display-3
Every burger place has one. None with a fuckin handle.
Vishnuisgod
I use a stainless steel bowl with a magnet.
RummyMilkBoots
Sunny side up eggs.
Banananonymity
Loud as fuck if it hits the floor. Otherwise rad
machuitzil
I’m too tall for the grill so I always duck under the hood and feel like a mother bird feeding her young when I pull these up to add cheese or whatever. I can’t shake the feeling. Like a god damn bird.
TuckAmok
They cost $4 and you never, ever, ever, replace them
zbzzz142
Steam eggs when you’re truly in the shit.
Icy-Bid224
We had one that was blackened and beat up. I personally used it for 3 years, and it was already beat up when I started.
D1sappeared
Need to melt the cheese on a sandwich real quick? This and pop a small piece of ice under it to release the steam slowly and not soggy up the bread.
KillaThing
Using frozen veggies to thaw super fast, steaming veggies so that it takes less time for a stir fry. And yeah, eggs are so much easier to cook too.
Sad_Confidence9563
Crisp up that quesadilla faaaast
Appropriate_Past_893
If you do eggs on the flat, use em to steam omelettes, too
pokahi
Anybody still have the little knob on top?
meh_good_enough
It’s a go-to when something is needed on the fly
JunketPuzzleheaded42
I call it a Can, but have heard it called a lid, hat and baster
Astreauxs5
Dive in PHX called Harvey’s Wineburger fries/steams patties in red wine under them on the flat top. To die for.
SmokeOne1969
Good for pepper bombs. Hey, smell this new burger rub…
Shmuzhe
I think I’ve only ever seen two of these things with the actual handle thing and that only lasted a week or two.
Perfect-Pirate4489
I just flat out love em to death. Life savers when you’re swamped.
SekureAtty
Then the knob melts off and leaves an open hole, use a fork and bend the tines in opposite directions (half in the hole, half out) to pick it up easily.
veenell
i briefly worked at a bakery/cafe that had these. the head cook would exclusively use these to melt the cheese on cheese steak sandwiches and pulled pork sandwiches but would do this weird convoluted and easy to fuck up thing for burgers where he would put the cheese slices on the piece of metal that hangs over the end of the grill (not sure how to describe it other than that) and let them heat up until they were soft and then put them on the burger. if you got caught up in something else for just barely too long the cheese would get too melted and you couldn’t lift it off to put it on the burger because it was a fully melted glob of cheese at that point and you would have to either put new cheese on and wait for that to heat up which could take a minute if you were sticking to his method. i just used one of these. cheese goes on the patty, thingy goes on top, a little squirt of water under it for steam and wait a couple seconds and it’s perfectly melted. being the head cook he would teach every new cook his way and they would fuck it up constantly and just use this instead because it’s basically idiot proof and if he saw you doing it he would try to correct you on the “right” way to make a cheeseburger. for the love of god someone invented a tool just for this and it’s right there in the kitchen, just let people do it the reliable way instead of getting up our asses for not doing it the stupid way that’s easy to mess up. none of the customers will ever notice or give a shit that it’s done one way or the other.
Vortilex
I’ve been told I remind people of the monkey from Toy Story 3 when I bang them together like cymbals when I get bored. Too bad we don’t have them at my smaller kitchen…
raccafarian
I love using these to make the quickest grilled cheeses at the retirement community, I just put the two slices of bread down with a couple slices of cheese on each leave them open cover and 2 mins later it’s all melt and toasted, put them together, slice and serve. Otherwise it takes so long to get melt grilled cheese and both sides toasted, the nanas and papas wanna eat
OatmealGod
Not to brag, but I’ve used one with it’s original handle
Neat-Pangolin1782
Can’t figure out why my cooks are in love with the 9″ ones and won’t use the 6″. Big ones are only necessary in like 15% of our items when you need to melt cheese onto bread. Otherwise, the big ones take up way too much space on the flat when it’s busy. Only reason I can guess is that they only had the bigger size for years until I got them the small ones. They do not like change for any reason.
linecookdaddy
Literally ALL of us have used a beat to shit hat at some point
They lasted forever. It was great. You couldn’t really raw dawg the handle anymore, but that fine. It was preferable to no handle at all, and the plastic knobs only lasted a week or two.
MagentaLea
Steam hat
sleverest
I found myself unprepared and quickly in need of a cover while making dinner (cheesesteak) the other night and realized mine was outside with my griddle. Turns out my KitchenAid 6qt bowl is the perfect size for my comal. I also frequently use my wok lid.
eelpus23
Touch it, do it…
flyxdvd
double sided egg, i basically dont need to flip on low flame
Any-Practice-991
I used this when I needed to do a chicken breast and a burger patty in the same time. Throw the lid on the chicken while you cook the burger normally, and flip both at the same time.
Lost_Tumbleweed_5669
The secret ingredient to good sizzler bread
DingusMacLeod
One of my major pet peeves is people who don’t understand the difference between steaming and basting. This is for steam cooking. Basting involves ladling your cooking liquid over a joint of meat that is being braised or roasted, or spooning hot fat over the whites of your sunny side up eggs. If you cover something to trap all the moisture in, you are steaming it. At least that’s what some French guy who I paid a bunch of money to told me.
GrizzlyIsland22
Must be nice to work at a fancy rich place where you get to use these. We use stainless steel mixing bowls
TackyPoints
So much discussion and division for a “lid”.
CatsMakeMeHappier
Oh that’s called the cover with hand gesture down towards the flat top when we can’t find it
SometimesIEatTooMuch
It’s a dome
But the ones I use are actually dome shaped. I bought a couple from my own pocket working in a corporate burger joint years ago, because the ones we had were just completely fucked. When my boss found out three years later that it was me who bought them he insisted the company reimburse me the 20 bucks
dummibabble
we had exactly one for a year and a half. the handle came unscrewed and we lived with it, got good at manhandling it with spatulas and squirting water through the screw hole. now we have two regular size and one big size for when we get slammed with grill orders. i still go to move it with the spatulas out of muscle memory
thatspideyguy
Flipping the ones without a handle with a spatula and then using the spat to pick it up. I think I’ve seen a silver one once in my career.
chunkhead42
Working on the restaurant’s food truck this summer, we were hyped to get one to speed up the cooking time on hot dogs on the flat top. It was dropped on the floor by day two, breaking the handle off of the top of it.
Maybe hot take, drill a hole in a stainless steel bowl of the proper size. Attach handle. Generally superior.
StupidMario64
Fuckin POS, rhat thing is. Got a replacement nurger lid, stg the fuckin screw loosened in like 3 months. I HATE them. Id rather fuckin cover it with tinfoil at this point.
captiankickass666
My eldery cook from Mexico called it a “chinese hat” in broken English and from that day on that’s exactly what we call it.
48 Comments
It’s called a hat
Cut your cook time on thick cuts of fish by splashing some water and steaming that bitch
Every burger place has one. None with a fuckin handle.
I use a stainless steel bowl with a magnet.
Sunny side up eggs.
Loud as fuck if it hits the floor. Otherwise rad
I’m too tall for the grill so I always duck under the hood and feel like a mother bird feeding her young when I pull these up to add cheese or whatever. I can’t shake the feeling. Like a god damn bird.
They cost $4 and you never, ever, ever, replace them
Steam eggs when you’re truly in the shit.
We had one that was blackened and beat up. I personally used it for 3 years, and it was already beat up when I started.
Need to melt the cheese on a sandwich real quick? This and pop a small piece of ice under it to release the steam slowly and not soggy up the bread.
Using frozen veggies to thaw super fast, steaming veggies so that it takes less time for a stir fry. And yeah, eggs are so much easier to cook too.
Crisp up that quesadilla faaaast
If you do eggs on the flat, use em to steam omelettes, too
Anybody still have the little knob on top?
It’s a go-to when something is needed on the fly
I call it a Can, but have heard it called a lid, hat and baster
Dive in PHX called Harvey’s Wineburger fries/steams patties in red wine under them on the flat top. To die for.
Good for pepper bombs. Hey, smell this new burger rub…
I think I’ve only ever seen two of these things with the actual handle thing and that only lasted a week or two.
I just flat out love em to death. Life savers when you’re swamped.
Then the knob melts off and leaves an open hole, use a fork and bend the tines in opposite directions (half in the hole, half out) to pick it up easily.
i briefly worked at a bakery/cafe that had these. the head cook would exclusively use these to melt the cheese on cheese steak sandwiches and pulled pork sandwiches but would do this weird convoluted and easy to fuck up thing for burgers where he would put the cheese slices on the piece of metal that hangs over the end of the grill (not sure how to describe it other than that) and let them heat up until they were soft and then put them on the burger. if you got caught up in something else for just barely too long the cheese would get too melted and you couldn’t lift it off to put it on the burger because it was a fully melted glob of cheese at that point and you would have to either put new cheese on and wait for that to heat up which could take a minute if you were sticking to his method. i just used one of these. cheese goes on the patty, thingy goes on top, a little squirt of water under it for steam and wait a couple seconds and it’s perfectly melted. being the head cook he would teach every new cook his way and they would fuck it up constantly and just use this instead because it’s basically idiot proof and if he saw you doing it he would try to correct you on the “right” way to make a cheeseburger. for the love of god someone invented a tool just for this and it’s right there in the kitchen, just let people do it the reliable way instead of getting up our asses for not doing it the stupid way that’s easy to mess up. none of the customers will ever notice or give a shit that it’s done one way or the other.
I’ve been told I remind people of the monkey from Toy Story 3 when I bang them together like cymbals when I get bored. Too bad we don’t have them at my smaller kitchen…
I love using these to make the quickest grilled cheeses at the retirement community, I just put the two slices of bread down with a couple slices of cheese on each leave them open cover and 2 mins later it’s all melt and toasted, put them together, slice and serve. Otherwise it takes so long to get melt grilled cheese and both sides toasted, the nanas and papas wanna eat
Not to brag, but I’ve used one with it’s original handle
Can’t figure out why my cooks are in love with the 9″ ones and won’t use the 6″. Big ones are only necessary in like 15% of our items when you need to melt cheese onto bread. Otherwise, the big ones take up way too much space on the flat when it’s busy. Only reason I can guess is that they only had the bigger size for years until I got them the small ones. They do not like change for any reason.
Literally ALL of us have used a beat to shit hat at some point
I’ve always called them “Dome Lids”.
We fucking hammered these things at a brunch place I worked at. We used these for everything. When the handles would melt off/fall off, we would replace them with stainless steel cabinetry handles (something like [this](https://www.build.com/product/summary/1721088?uid=4068470&jmtest=gg-gbav2_4068470&inv=1&&source=gg-gba-pla_4068470!c15146996814!a128720266305!dc!ng&gad_source=1)) and use a hi-temp Loctite on the screw that held the handle on.
They lasted forever. It was great. You couldn’t really raw dawg the handle anymore, but that fine. It was preferable to no handle at all, and the plastic knobs only lasted a week or two.
Steam hat
I found myself unprepared and quickly in need of a cover while making dinner (cheesesteak) the other night and realized mine was outside with my griddle. Turns out my KitchenAid 6qt bowl is the perfect size for my comal. I also frequently use my wok lid.
Touch it, do it…
double sided egg, i basically dont need to flip on low flame
I used this when I needed to do a chicken breast and a burger patty in the same time. Throw the lid on the chicken while you cook the burger normally, and flip both at the same time.
The secret ingredient to good sizzler bread
One of my major pet peeves is people who don’t understand the difference between steaming and basting. This is for steam cooking. Basting involves ladling your cooking liquid over a joint of meat that is being braised or roasted, or spooning hot fat over the whites of your sunny side up eggs. If you cover something to trap all the moisture in, you are steaming it. At least that’s what some French guy who I paid a bunch of money to told me.
Must be nice to work at a fancy rich place where you get to use these. We use stainless steel mixing bowls
So much discussion and division for a “lid”.
Oh that’s called the cover with hand gesture down towards the flat top when we can’t find it
It’s a dome
But the ones I use are actually dome shaped. I bought a couple from my own pocket working in a corporate burger joint years ago, because the ones we had were just completely fucked. When my boss found out three years later that it was me who bought them he insisted the company reimburse me the 20 bucks
we had exactly one for a year and a half. the handle came unscrewed and we lived with it, got good at manhandling it with spatulas and squirting water through the screw hole. now we have two regular size and one big size for when we get slammed with grill orders. i still go to move it with the spatulas out of muscle memory
Flipping the ones without a handle with a spatula and then using the spat to pick it up. I think I’ve seen a silver one once in my career.
Working on the restaurant’s food truck this summer, we were hyped to get one to speed up the cooking time on hot dogs on the flat top. It was dropped on the floor by day two, breaking the handle off of the top of it.
Heres my story lol https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/s/32EKvzPml2
Thats a fire extinguisher
Maybe hot take, drill a hole in a stainless steel bowl of the proper size. Attach handle. Generally superior.
Fuckin POS, rhat thing is. Got a replacement nurger lid, stg the fuckin screw loosened in like 3 months. I HATE them. Id rather fuckin cover it with tinfoil at this point.
My eldery cook from Mexico called it a “chinese hat” in broken English and from that day on that’s exactly what we call it.
I miss you benji