I’ve got a couple vintage ice picks, but they’re all the traditional long, single-tine “assassin” style. I recently discovered a shorter trident style that intrigues me–it looks like it’d be more likely to hit the sweet spot and less likely to mess up ice buckets, bowls, etc.
Anyone have one of these? What do you use?
Made me realize that I haven’t used an ice pick in maybe 30 years. Ice cube trays and icemakers in fridges seem to have negated the need for most people.
LOL, they’re not as obsolete as the delivery tongs!
We buy and store shaped cubes in bags. Depending on how the bags are handled, it’s common to get some agglomerated bergs. Breaking these up is mostly what we use a pick for, but I confess that I sometimes like to mix cubes with fragments, so I see another use (other than a mallet).
Spoiled here. Fridge makes both full cubes and crushed ice. Occasionally the cube basket will include grouped blocks but a screwdriver and mallet will do when I need that much ice. Otherwise I just toss the block and use what’s left.
Your fridge keeps the crushed from consolidating? I need one of those!
It crushes full sized cubes on demand, so no consolidating. Typical water/ice dispenser in the freezer door.
We keep one of these on hand in the country to separate cubes that were victim of power outage.
The only ice I bust up from brick is dry ice.
Twice per year[1] my wife permits me to make dry ice bombs - Dasani or Coca-Cola product plastic bottles with about 30 ml of water and about 20 g dry ice.
I put the brick into an old cooler and one of my daughters smashes it up with a hammer and we scoop the broken chips into the bottle.
BOOM. The plastic stress hardens as it stretches and gets very brittle, and can hold an incredible amount of pressure before it ruptures.
[1] New Years and U.S. Independence Day. She figures there’s enough other booming going on then that I’m less likely to get arrested.
Cool!
Brought back some forgotten memories. I wonder which of my siblings inherited the ice tapper? This was great for making shards of ice from a single cube, for soothing a sore throat. On the rare occasions now in our house when we use ice, and even more rare situations when separation of cubes (enclosed in a plastic bag) is needed, my meat-tenderizer mallet handles the job.
