Buzz

It’ll make you say, “aw shucks.”

Whether you’re preserving summer’s harvest or simply making supper, the most labor-intensive part of warm-weather cooking might be the seemingly endless prep work of washing, shucking, stemming, seeding, peeling, dicing, and slicing produce. Breaking down a windfall of fresh fruit and vegetables is a thankless undertaking for home cooks and an expensive line item when it comes to restaurant labor costs.

Chef Douglas Keane, co-owner of Sonoma County’s Michelin-starredCyrus, embraces ingenuity in all things, especially when it comes to easing the labor load for his team. Early in his career, he sought a shortcut for one of many painstaking tasks faced by kitchen staff: removing the kernels from fresh cobs of corn. And the old-school tool he discovered has become a bit of a hat trick for restaurants and home cooks alike.