Life hack: Finely slice your ingredients – with a paper shredder

The Japanese are ingenious at coming up with home-friendly kitchen tools such as the toast stamp and battery-powered frozen beer machine. But these devices can be costly, and are probably used only occasionally. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just make use of everyday things to achieve similar or even better results?

Well, a Japanese Twitter user who goes by the username @gossi_nsr did! Who knew a cross-cut paper shredder can double as a tool to add more flavour to your meals?

After getting a paper shredder, the first thing he wanted to try slicing was the tough and smelly dried squid.

Apparently, after running it through the shredder, the squid was a lot easier to eat, and it was delicious.

Since the dried squid turned out pretty good, why stop there? Time to try other food!

Konbu, also known as the kelp used for making broths, turned into a nice snack to go along with some beer.

How about some shredded seaweed on your donburi or rice bowl?

A whole sheet of seaweed is probably too much, though.

Upon seeing this life hack, Japanese netizens were thrilled to bits: “I shall try this too,” “You’re a genius!” “Never knew there is such a way to use the paper shredder,” and “This is convenient!” went some of the comments.

Although the idea is worth a try, cleaning the paper shredder looks troublesome – not to mention it is probably difficult to remove the stubborn smell of dried squid!

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