Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is the Otlonpe Rechargeable Portable Fan.  Okay on the surface it is a way to stay cool on the go, but what if I told you it was a great tool for your kitchen?  It is and Alton Brown turned me onto it while I was at 32K feet in an airplane.  I’ll explain that in a bit.

First the basics of what it is as designed and intended.  The Otlonpe Rechargeable Portable Fan is a highly rated personal rechargeable fan.  It is a small, lightweight device that provides cooling on the go.  Sporting events, stuffy rooms or say being stuck in an office where you company sets the thermostat at 78 and says that is “good enough”, but the relative humidity where you live is 80%.

It gives you exactly what you expect.  The fan operates at 4 speeds and moves plenty of air.  On a full charge the manufacturer claims 5-23 hours of run time.  5 Hours would be at maximum setting, and 23 at the lowest.  As always there is no free lunch.  That said I ran it at speed 3 for about 6 hours and it didn’t blink.  My gut is you will get the following life span out of it at each speed…

• Setting – 1 – 23 Hours
• Setting – 2 – 11 Hours
• Setting – 3 – 7 Hours
• Setting – 4 – 5 Hours
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It recharges with a simple USB-C port and it worked with every charger I plugged it into and with a USB port on one of my computers.  There is a full sized USB port too but I am not sure what utility it provides.  It does not charge secondary devices and I have not seen a USB to USB cable in a long time.  It may be an inert port simply to save component cost using a standard component that fit the application.

So yeah if you want portable cooling get this little guy.

But Jack how the hell do you cook with it ya big jerk!
And what is the Alton Brown on an airplane BS about?

Okay, okay, first I was not actually sitting with Alton on the plane, I was on the phone with him.  No, you don’t believe that?  Okay, he was on my phone but it was a simple video.  I was watching one of his shorts and he was making a steak.  He did what I always do when I have time.  Salt well, put on a cooling rack nested in a sheet pan and then put it in the refrigerator for 4-8 hours or more.  This dries out the excess water, tenderizes it a bit, pulls out some of the myoglobin, and can even carry some other seasonings inside the meat as salt does it’s osmotic stuff.

The real magic though, is the pellicle.  What is a pellicle you say?  See now this is why you should listen to Alton Brown and geek out of cooking science.  The pellicle is a sticky, skin-like layer of dissolved proteins that forms on the surface of salted meat as it air-dries, acting like a built-in flavor magnet that locks in internal juices while creating the ultimate crispy, golden-brown crust when cooked.

Translation it is a method to get meat to golden brown and delicious.  Normally when doing the salt trick in the fridge for half a day, or even over night you get a great pellicle.  However, there is still a lot of moisture but you use paper towel to take it off.  The down side is no matter how good the top side is, the bottom of the meat is never as well pellicllized as the top.  It is wetter and just not as tacky even when dried off.  Now this tacky nature is great when you want to add an herb crust.  And again the better the pellicle the better the sear you will get.

When smoking meat this is even more important.  That brisket, pork shoulder or rib rack with a good pellicle just sort of grabs onto the smoke as it wafts over it.  When you talk to a real pit master about dry rubs and he says, “all I use is salt and pepper, the smoke is the sauce”, you are talking to a person who knows that a pellicle is all about.  It is that tacky nature that grabs those great flavors.

So form roasts, to steaks, to chops, to chicken (especially skin), to roasts. you want to develop this anytime you have enough time to do so.  So what if you could do it better and even a bit faster when time stretched?  Enter Alton Brown in my phone on my airplane.  So I am watching Alton put his salted steak into the fridge and I was like, “yeah, yeah Alton, tell me something I don’t know”.  As if on cue he puts the steak in the fridge and says, “I like to use a fan like this”.

Never has a short vid had me head to Amazon so fast.  I dug around and there it was, the exact fan he had in his video and only 15 bucks, smash buy.  The next day it showed up and my first thing I made with it was some ribeyes that I had hand cut off a full rib primal.  The difference after 6 hours in the “chill chest” was dramatic.  Both sides were very sticky and mostly dry on the outside.  A quick towel dab and they were perfect.  The rosemary, garlic, black pepper and thyme herb rub stuck to it like glue and the sear was in a word perfect.  I can’t wait to give one a full day before it hits the grill or flattop.

I plan to do wings salted and dried over night and see just how crispy the skin helped by a tiny bit of baking powder can get with this method.  Oh yea, it is still a portable fan, it can still do normal fan things.  I think if you get one of these at only 15 bucks you may end up getting more.  My favorite part, simple cleaning.  The cover pops right off for easy cleaning.  This is great for normal use but even more important if it plays a role in your cooking.  One more use, set it next to those laptops that like to run hot and help keep them cool.

In any event hit is a highly rated tool with 4.5 stars and over 4,000 reviews.  The reviews when tested by the Fake Find Filter with a solid 9 out of 10 rating.  So you know it is a great tool especially for the price point.  It will keep you cool and improve your cooking.  So check out the Otlonpe Rechargeable Portable Fan and chill out while elevating your cooking game at the same time.

Check Out the Video Review of this Little Fan

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