Martha Stewart's Simple Food Processor Tip Wowed Jamie Oliver

Martha Stewart has spent her life building a domestic empire around cooking and entertaining, and along the way she has managed to amass an astounding mental catalog of kitchen advice. She even coined the catchphrase, "It's a good thing," to describe her simple-but-clever tips, tricks, and hacks. So it's perhaps no surprise that Stewart has a few surprises up her sleeve to show even seasoned professionals like Jamie Oliver a thing or two, who she wowed in 2023 with a simple technique to hold a food processor bowl. If you hold the food processor from the bottom and slip a finger through the center hole under the bowl, you'll have a lot more control using just one hand. This way, you'll be able to hold both the bowl and the blade in place while transferring food out, without having to use your other hand too.

It might not seem like much, but if you've ever wrangled with scooping a creamy salad dressing or, in the case of Oliver, a cheesecake filling, out of a standard food processor bowl, you'd know that these pieces can be surprisingly awkward to handle. The bowls of food processors, which are not the same as a blender by the way, have a wide body with tall sides. To make matters worse, the removable s-shaped blade usually gets in the way when you're trying to get a clean sweep, and needs to be held in place. This often requires two hands to get the bowl under control, which leaves no option for holding a spatula to pour everything out unless you get a little help. 

Martha Stewart's method for holding a food processor bowl is all about grip and leverage. By holding from the bottom center of the bowl, the container stays steady and the blade is held in place from under so you can tilt it for scooping and scraping. The moment she blows Jamie Oliver's mind comes from an episode of her Roku-exclusive show, "Martha Cooks." It's a small adjustment, but it can save you a lot of heartache trying to get the bowl clean without making a huge mess, and frees up a hand to grab a spatula for help.

It's moments like these that go to show you that despite all the viral cooking hacks and flashy gadgets that make the rounds from up-and-coming food influencers on social media, you can't always compete with a lifetime of experience like Stewart's. When she demonstrates a tip, like how to hold a food processor or how to cook the perfect porterhouse, it seems like something you should have already known because it's so seamless (check out 10 more of her best cooking tips). That's not luck, it's a lifetime of learning the choreography of a kitchen, and the effect can't be faked. "I can't believe I didn't know that," Oliver said in gentle disbelief after Stewart showed him the trick (via TikTok). "See, still learning."