Should You Make This Viral Meat Stick?
There are good and bad hacks and we want to give you some good reviews in this online post. A good hacker should make life easier, whether it’s using a shared object in a new way, streamlining a process, or solving a problem you didn’t even know existed. I’m not sure if this is a DIY extruder to meat these benchmarks.
You’ve probably seen this very viral video by now. In it, a Russian man uses a Pepsi bottle, a cola can, and a piece of elbow-shaped PVC pipe to create beautiful meat sticks, which I believe are kofta kabobs. A blowtorch and a drill are involved here. (We’re already at a very optimized, not overly complicated start.) I love a good meat pipe, and after many people brought my attention to this video, I decided that making this meat grinder would be a good use of my time. (My editor agreed.) Making and using this device turned out to be a rather difficult journey, and I invite you to come with it.
First, I needed to collect everything I needed. I bought PVC from the street safety department and a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper at a nearby grocery store because Pepsi is a junk drink. I have a blowtorch, but not a drill, so I asked my stage worker friend if I could borrow it because it is very convenient. She said she would leave it on the kitchen table for me and that I could come in and pick it up the next morning.
After I took the drill, my friend wrote to me that she forgot to leave the drill, which questioned my understanding of what a drill is. But before I could even try punching a skewer hole, I had to stick a PVC pipe to Dr. Pepper’s bottle. (Actually, I could probably take any step first.) I turned my kitchen torch on low and pointed it at the pipe. The pipe immediately caught fire. (I don’t have a photo of this because I was alone and putting out the fire was my priority.) After the fire was extinguished, I tried again, this time keeping the flame away. The pipe no longer lit up, but became much darker than the pipe in the video. It looked like a fried marshmallow if the marshmallow was shaped like elbows. I put Dr. Pepper’s bottle inside the pipe. To my surprise, it formed a powerful seal.
It’s time to make a hole for the skewer. I’m pretty sure I had the wrong drill because I couldn’t make the hole. The bat simply slipped off the pipe, slightly damaging it. I tried to make a small “pre-hole” with a screw, but that was also unsuccessful. In the end, I decided to go back to the hardware store and leave myself at the mercy of the skillful people who worked there. I put the phone and what I was pretty sure was a drill into the big bag and walked back to the school. When I entered the store, the drill probably went off the theft alarm.
After I assured the woman at the information desk that I didn’t rob them from the outside, a very cheerful man approached me. He asked if I needed help and I told him that I was working on “a kind of stupid project.” Fortunately, he loved silly projects. When I took the pipe bottle out of my bag, his face lit up. “I know exactly what you are doing!” he said, beaming positively. “I think I need another drill,” I said, pulling a drill from my bag.
The nice person didn’t tell me that what I was holding was not a drill, which made me feel much more confident. He showed me the drill I would need. I asked him for some “general drilling tips” and he told me that I should probably use a vise. “I have no blemish,” I muttered, my newfound confidence dissolving likecotton candy in a puddle . Then this very nice person decided that it would be easier for another good person to drill a hole in the store for me. The driller did not see the video and was puzzled by my soda bottle that I connected to a piece of PVC pipe, but was not so interested as to ask too many questions. He used a sharp tool to make a “pre-hole,” drilled the hole itself, and then returned my bottle to me. Now I was ready for serious action.
I cut open the bottle so there was somewhere to put the meat. However, I did not cut it in the optimal place. A detail I missed out on when I first watched the video is that the Russian man cuts the bottle slightly lower than its widest point, so that the Coke can fit snugly against the hole, but has a little more breathing room on the inside, which I like to call it Meat Chamber.
It turned out to be not that important. I stuck a skewer in the skewer hole, filled the meat chamber with ground beef, and pressed the meat to the Diet Coke can. The meat remained motionless.
I was starting to wonder if the texture of the meat was the problem, so I went through a few sweater recipes to see if the ground beef (or lamb) is being processed in any way. Some of the recipes did say to put the meat in the food processor. I processed the meat, refilled the chamber and tried again.
I replaced the can of Diet Coke with a can of pepperoncini because it fit a little better, and pressed again. It worked and the meat slid out of the chamber, forming a real meat tube.
The force required to extrude the meat was slightly more than shown in the video and it was quite difficult to move the stick at the same speed as when extruding the meat, but I made it work. The meat tubes turned out to be very similar to the tubes, but they slid a little on the stick. I didn’t cook the meat pipes, partly because I don’t have a grill, but mainly because my kitchen still smelled of burnt PVC pipe. I put them in a bag and put them in the refrigerator.
I’m not sure I would call this a “good hack”. While the device did “work,” it didn’t feel “easy”, “simple” or “was worth my time anyway.” For contrast, I sculpted some meat around the skewer with my human hands.
While my hand-molded tube might not be as uniform as the extruded meat tube, it took fewer trips to the hardware store and the meat did not slip on the swivel. A DIY extruder is also difficult to clean, or at least feels difficult to clean. I haven’t tried to clean it yet. I can just throw it away.