How to Crack an Egg Without Touching It

There's plenty of ways to break an egg—but there's only one tool that'll let you pick up and crack an egg without touching it. Introducing the Egg Tool, a wooden designed by Jesslyn Sutisna. Currently a sophomore at the Rhode Island School of Design, Sutisna designed and fabricated this so-called Egg Tool in a first-year studio class, where she was given a relatively simple albeit slightly absurdist task. "The tool had to be made of wood and had to be able to pick up, break and whisk the egg without the user touching it," she explained in an email, adding, "Funny assignment, don't you think?"

And she did it, creating a wooden box that will let you not only crack an egg without getting shell in your omelet, but also letting you do it all without touching it once. For inspiration, "I looked at other existing kitchen tools for inspiration and came across a certain garlic crusher where you twist the tool to crush the garlic," she said. "I really liked the idea of twisting the tool to maybe crack open the egg. I thought twisting an egg to crack it open sounded ridiculous and unique, which was why I went straight with that idea." That's how Sutisna came up with the round design, which she admits kind of looks like a dim sum basket, but was necessary "in order for it to twist smoothly."

There are three main parts of this egg tool, according to Sutisna: "the egg fingers, the twisting lid, and the egg filter." Walking me through the whole process, Sutisna explained that the first step is to pick up the egg with the egg fingers, by putting your own fingers through the so-called "eyeholes."

"Then take off the twisting lid, and place the egg on one of the holes," she continued. There are two egg holes, one for smaller eggs and the other for slightly larger ones.

"Put the lid on, place the tool on top of a bowl, and then twist it and that should crack the egg open."

"The egg shell should crack in half, the bottom half will fall inside, underneath the tool. However, there are holes to filter the shell from the yolk so you wouldn't need to worry about eating egg shells in your omelet," Sutisna told me. "Give it a few seconds and then the yolk will fall through the holes and into your bowl/pan/plate."

"For the final step, take the egg fingers again, put your fingers through the 'eyeholes' and whisk away! Then—bam—breakfast is served!"

Sustina has yet to try the egg tool for her own breakfast yet, though one of her favorite breakfast dishes is eggs served sunny side up on toast. But she's not limiting the scope of her egg tool. "Its main purpose is to just work on eggs, but maybe it can work on other things too...I should try..."

If you'd like to see the twisting egg cracker in action, check out Sustina's Egg Tool on Yanko Design.