For some reason, incremental revisions of easily overlooked kitchen tech always gets me gobsmacked with admiration. The latest evolution: the common ice cube tray, now fitted with bright green tabs allowing for the easy expulsion of individual crystalline cubes … without taking out the contents of the entire tray in a frigid freezer conglomeration of geometric shapes which must be broken apart by a hammer before their dispersal into whiskey sours.
Quicksnap: A Better Ice Block Tray [Gizmag via Oh Gizmo]
Let me rewrite that for you:
“Clever new ice cube tray ejects individual ice cubes when corresponding green tab is pushed. The new ice tray feature makes quick work of an old problem. “
It’s really amazing that on into the 21st century, these simple ideas are still waiting to be discovered. It seems so obvious, after the fact.
Whether it actually works is yet to be seen, of course. And whether it’s better than keeping a larger repository for loose cubes…
I agree with DCulberson. I recently moved and I haven’t replaced the fridge yet, so I have no ice maker. When I need more ice, I dump the entire tray into a plastic container and refill the tray. When I make a drink I just grab a couple cubes from the container.
Often when an invention seems obvious it’s because it’s already been obviated.
Ice in whiskey? D:
Try adding a bit of room-temperature water instead…
(unless it’s not very tasty whiskey)
I once saw an old style of ice cube tray that I feel beats the pants off that supposed new gadget: it’s made out of aluminum, and is has this simple mechanism that causes all the cubes to separate, without splintering and jumping out everywhere.
And the weirdest part is, for some reason, ice cubes coming from this tray just taste better, somehow.
Not to mention, metal conducts heat better, meaning that the relative heat of the water in the tray is radiated off faster than with a plastic tray, helping the ice to solidify more quickly.
@5 – If you’re making a whiskey sour, I’d hope the whiskey was cheap.
@ Shutz
I have a couple of those! Mine say Westinghouse, though, and probably came with a refrigerator. They are nice, but holding them for any length of time when they are full of ice is, if you will pardon me, a chilling experience.
Whiskey sour? No way!
A bit of warm water helps bring out the flavor in whiskey. Chilling it has the opposite effect.
Obviously the best results will be with a good whiskey. Doing it with Jack Daniels will simply expose more of the horse-anus flavor.
… oh, wait, I get it now. I’m a little slow today aren’t I?
John was talking about whiskey sours anyway.
If anyone needs me I’ll be in the corner with a dunce cap on.
it seems so obvious that unless your hands don’t work, the ice tray does not actually need fixing.
Original solution: Twist tray slightly, causing every cube in the tray to pop loose at once.
Having solid masses of ice only happens if you overfill the tray, and that’s going to happen with this thing too.
This requires each cube to be popped loose seperately… it’s more work that the current standard version for most people.
It’s a neet gadget, I’ll give you that much, but what exacty is the purported benefit?
We had those aluminum ice trays when I was a kid. They worked great.
I have found that my two plastic trays work fine as long as the tray I just filled is sitting on top of another full ice tray while the ice is freezing. If two trays are filled simultaneously, the bottom one will be a difficult mess, the top one fine.
I remember those aluminum ice trays as splintering the ice. At least half of the cubes from each tray would be unusable.
Is there some special technique no one in my family knew about?
Note the cube size is proportionately smaller–that’s not good news. Also, moving parts on something that is continually exposed to a freeze/thaw cycle may be problematic(al).
See, to me this is a terrible idea – I’m married to someone who thinks it’s fine to put the empty ice tray back in the fridge without refilling it, and a tray like this will just exacerbate the problem. For anyone with roommates or spouses like mine, I think you want them to have to empty the whole tray, because it’s more likely it might occur to them one day that they should refill it.
i use silicone ice trays, they solve the same problem but without the extra tab.
@15 We never knew of any secret methods to get aluminum ice trays to work, either. Moisture sticks to metal. Stick your tongue to a flagpole to test this. Moisture doesn’t stick to plastic nearly as well. That’s why it’s virtually impossible to find AL ice trays any more. They were clumsy, bulky, didn’t stack, froze your fingers off when you tried to eject the ice, and – yes – splintered and fractured the ice into bits when you pulled the handle up. Not to mention the handle breaking off. And now this invention. To me, it’s a gimmick.
I do make literally hundreds of pounds of ice a year. I’ve tried them all. The wrong kind of plastic: fail. Metal: fail. Neoprene: fail. The most successful ice tray is the basic white Sterilite from Target. NO moving parts and it works every time.
As as for adding water or ice to a good whiskey – sacrilege! It should be neat.
Two problems with this: One, the cubes that *weren’t* stuck come flying out when you flip the tray anyway… Two, If you don’t empty the whole tray, you can’t put it to work making more cubes yet. Trays with half the cubes used are the reason I moved to an automated ice maker. One less thing to get mad at people about.
I find that the best one so far for me has been the oxo brand. It has a cover that keeps the ice from exploding forth when you twist the tray. The wells for the ice are curved so all you have to do after you’ve twisted the tray is poke one end down thus raising the other end for you to pluck the ice… cube er ice semi-circular solid… ,I suppose, out of its well. You can actually take out two at a time I find using this technique.
I have never seen such a varied discussion on ice cube trays.
I like my whiskey with grape kool-aid ice cubes in the shape of bones. The more expensive the whiskey, the better conductor for the kool-aid to bring out the flavor.