Ree Drummond's Cooling Rack Hack To Instantly Dice Hard-Boiled Eggs

Are you in a rush to make egg salad or any other dish that requires you to smoosh some hard boiled eggs? There's an easier way to do it than repeatedly smashing those hard-boiled eggs with a fork. It comes via celebrity chef Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman, who uses the same cooling rack she uses for baked goods. You just need to place it over the top of a bowl and push your eggs through the metal rack. Boom: You've got some neatly diced eggs, with Drummond saying she can dice a dozen eggs a minute with this method. Using hard-boiled eggs is key here: If the yolk is at all soft, you'll run the risk of getting some egg stuck to the rack.

Of course, this only works with a cooling rack that has a grid shape — if your rack has wires that only run in one direction (all parallel to each other), you'd just end up with egg strips if you try pushing them through. Ideally, the holes on the rack won't be too big — if they are, you'll end up with a much larger dice. If the holes are small, you'll get the reverse (a small dice), or just a blob of mushed egg.

One famed restaurant in Richmond, Virginia takes the trick to the next level. Staff at Sally Bell's Kitchen, which is famed for its to-go boxed lunches, created a cooling rack-like grid contraption that spreads over a much larger rectangular container, allowing a lot more space to push eggs through it.

In fact, the staff at Sally Bell's restaurant use a cooking rack to speed up food prep with more than just eggs as they seem to be pushing cooked potatoes through it. So, you could use it for preparing potato salad or even mashing (although you might need to use a masher afterward if you don't want lumps). 

In theory, you could try dicing anything with a cooling rack – avocados are another option, for example. But stick to soft items: If you've got superhuman strength, you could try pushing an uncooked potato through there, but you may just end up bending or breaking your cooling rack.