There are a lot of incredibly useful food-related inventions floating out in the universe. There is, for instance, this countertop dishwasher; there is sliced ketchup; there's the bagel guillotine, and, there's my favorite, the rapid ramen cooker. And now, there's a new cool food-warming kid on the block: the Nuni Tortilla Toaster, which purports to heat six tortillas at once for your taco-making pleasure. Truly, we live in a magical age.
According to a press release, this handy little toaster can handle corn, flour, and wheat tortillas. You drop in one to each of the six slots, wait 60 seconds, and you've got hot tortillas — which, if you're me, you instantly destroy by trying to roll them into loose, useless burritos. Though that might not sound revolutionary, tortillas are hard to heat. You can warm them up in a pan, but that takes a while; if you put a tortilla in the microwave, you will destroy it and all sense of decency.
Apparently the tortilla toaster is the first of its kind. It offers five heating settings, should you prefer your tortillas scorching or lukewarm, and releases automatically, so you don't singe your fingers trying to retrieve your tortilla. Masterful. Here's video:
Nuni Toaster, $99, Nuni
I'm never convinced by these food gadgets when I see ads for them — they feel very AS SEEN ON TV, or worse, like recreations of the Cornballer from Arrested Development. But all that changed when I got a bagel guillotine. For years, I believed they were pointless, as I had developed what I believed were superior bagel slicing skills, honed from years of exclusively living off of Absolute Bagels and cream cheese from Zabar's. (If you do not know what those places are, move to New York IMMEDIATELY and have your tastebuds blown.)
So, there I was, an expert bagel slicer, having only occasionally jabbed the soft skin between my thumb and my forefinger with a knife, generally providing brunches and friends and myself with aptly-cut bagels. But when I moved to my first real apartment in my junior year of college, my friend's mother bought us a bagel guillotine. We laughed at it. We thought it was ridiculous. "WE DON'T NEED THIS," we guffawed.
Hoo boy, were we wrong. Granted, Baltimore bagels are not particularly good, but when we did get our hands on them, we sliced the bajeebus out of them with the guillotine. My mother sent me a bagel care package from Zabar's, and we had our friends over for brunch, putting the round, baked little babies through the guillotine like nobody's business. I made my parents get one, and just this past Yom Kippur, they hosted a break fast for their friends. Have you ever tried to slice enough bagels for folks who've been fasting all day? God bless the bagel guillotine, which got bagels on the table nearly as fast as people could eat them.
A picture for your reference/FOMO:
Bagel Guillotine, $27, Amazon
A bagel guillotine is not a tortilla toaster, of course, but my point is, while these little innovations look sort of ridiculous on the outset, sometimes they really do change the way you eat. It's a lot easier to make tacos at home when you don't have to cook individual tortillas in pans or ovens, and while you certainly can still do that with aplomb, sticking a whole bunch of them in a toaster is a lot easier. Why not make your life a little easier? It's not a Cornballer.
You can purchase one of Nuni's tortilla toasters at nunitoaster.com, now on sale for $69 (regularly $99). It comes in four colors: black, white, red, and gray, and will feed you warm tortillas in no time.
