What?
The Absorb Bin biodegradable kitchen fat trapper (Lakeland, £8.99) is a lidded tray housing a biodegradable bed of moulded wood pulp. Absorbs cooking fat and oil.
Why?
A blocked pipe is a real drain.
Well?
In response to the vogue for healthy eating, I’ve been getting into deep fat frying. But it’s a messy affair. It has always been problematic, the business of getting rid of oil. I know we’re meant to be #keepingitintheground, but whenever I try and put it back there, people start shouting. (Not that type of oil, eh? I’ve had enough of experts.)
If you pour cooking fat down the sink or toilet, your house will have a heart attack. If you put it in the bin, you will enter a nightmare. I freeze mine in Tupperware, and forget about it until two months later, when I defrost some delicious-looking “soup” and nearly kill myself. But what have we here?
Absorb Bin is a shallow tray that holds fat trappers to soak up oil. (A simple concept, but when I explained it to friends, one misheard this as “fat rappers”, as if Notorious BIG was somehow stuck in there, sopping up Flora.) Fat trappers are made out of “super absorbent material” that looks a lot like recycled packing cardboard, arranged like crazy paving. Cooking fats poured into the middle of the bin chicane around these card bollards, eventually drying into the material.
When the Absorb Bin is done absorbin’, you throw out the pad and replace it; sort of like changing the kitchen’s nappy. It’s described as a “clever waste disposal system”, which is overegging it a bit. You can’t just slip the word clever on to unremarkable cause-and-effect processes. I passively absorbed a lot of TV in the 90s, to the extent that I will rap the entire Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme if someone gives me the first three words. But I don’t pretend there’s anything clever about it.
More crucially, Absorb Bin doesn’t really help with my deep-frying problem – it was overwhelmed in seconds. But it earns a humble counter place, for everyday drain-savings. If you can’t keep it in the ground, keep it by the sink.
Any downside?
Are fat trappers still biodegradable when coated in gallons of Crisp ’n Dry? I asked Mother Nature, but her throat was too clogged to answer. #Deep #Makesyouthink.
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?
Hardly Bel-Air, but I don’t care. 3/5