We’ve seen all kinds of foods go “artisanal” lately. The old habits of just buying all of your food from the grocery store are changing, and people are learning how to make wine, beer, cheese, soda, and a ton of other foods at home.
You can now add cooking oil to that list. The Daily Expeller from designers Jyh-Zern Shen, Yu-Hsin Wu, and Po-Chun Chiu lets you turn ordinary nuts and seeds into delicious, fresh, cold-pressed oils for cooking or salad dressing.
Although oil has gotten a bad name in the past, nutrition experts now say that eating heart-healthy oils in moderation is an important part of a balanced diet. The Daily Expeller would let us bring the oil pressing procedure right into the kitchen so we can go from a handful of walnuts to a small quantity of ultra-fresh walnut oil in very little time.
The process works something like this: the nuts or seeds are poured into the expeller’s cup and then warmed up. You pulverize them with a simple movement of a couple of external levers, then attach a little vial of water to steam the nut meal. Finally, you empty the smashed nuts into a small container and begin the process of pressing out the oil. Start to finish, the process takes around 15 minutes.
For every 100 grams of nuts that you feed into the machine, you get about 20 ml of oil, which is just the right amount for a meal serving two people. The entire process happens right there on your countertop so you can feel a sense of satisfaction from being involved in every part of the production process.