The Medieval-Looking Tool Julia Child Used To Boil Water Fast

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Julia Child taught generations of Americans how to cook like the French. Some of her techniques and tools have become home cook mainstays; if you have a beloved cocotte, aka a Dutch oven, you probably have Julia to thank. However, some of her favorite kitchen items are a little more niche. In a clip from Julia Child's show "The French Chef," she places a large pot of water on the stove and pulls out a long ultra-hot cylinder of metal on a wooden stick that resembles less a kitchen tool than an ancient weapon of war.

With her usual smile and conversational nature, Julia explains to the viewer that she had seen her French cooking instructor use a hot iron to speed up the boiling of a pot of water. She mentioned how useful such an item seemed to a friend, who made her a heated rod of her own. Child affectionately called this friend "Old Buffalo," and so christened her new tool the buffalo iron. Gripping the wooden handle on one end of the thick iron rod, Julia plunges it into the water, bringing the water to a rapid boil. She notes that it is especially helpful for bringing very large pots of water to a boil. So if you happen to have a buffalo iron of your own, it's handy for bringing water quickly back to the boil once items like vegetables, pasta, or a lobster are added to the pot.

While you won't find a buffalo iron in the shops, you can buy electrical heating elements to heat pots or cups of water, like this submersible immersion heater or these boil coils although they're more designed for camping, and your stovetop should have enough power to keep water boiling when cooking.

While modern TV chefs like Alton Brown bemoan one-use cooking tools, Julia got enough use out of her buffalo iron to justify keeping not just one, but two in her kitchen. Whether multipurpose or one-use, there was no shortage of kitchen gadgets in her collection — she called herself a "gadget freak" and loved to display interesting culinary tools and sing their praises to her audience. 

She was quite ahead of the curve at times, including being an early evangelist of the food processor, an appliance that was not widely used at the time but has become a staple in home and commercial kitchens. Child was also also an early adopter of the Crock-Pot. Other favorites include the less ubiquitous mezzaluna, also known as a rocking knife, and the Foley fork, a mini rake-like utensil that she used for cooking tasks like emulsifying sauces and mashing potatoes.