I Finally Found a Way to Char Vegetables Without a Grill
The Közmatik makes it easy to do right on your stovetop.
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CommentFor 18 years living in Brooklyn apartments, I was constantly confronted with a sad reality: I had no grill and no smart way to grill vegetables indoors — until that day that I was flipping through theMilk Streetcatalogue and I discovered the Közmatik. Suddenly, a whole world opened up. I use it to make thisbrilliant vegetable ragù. I use it to grill eggplant to eat with burrata, char Brussels sprouts for salad, or get green beans perfectly blackened.
Replicating the effects of a grill indoors was my obsession for over a decade. You can use your broiler, but the problem with broilers, particularly in the kind of rickety oven that came with my rental apartment, is that you have no idea what’s going on in there. I would slide in the tray and play a game I call “broiler chicken,” in which I would keep applying heat for longer and longer in the hopes that I wouldn’t just burn a pile of zucchini into ashes while trying to get that elusive char. I lost that game more than I won it, resulting in many tears and wasted vegetables.
But with the Közmatik, I don’t have to guess when vegetables are done because you can see them the whole time. The Közmatik is an enamel-coated steel pan with vents in the bottom that is designed to sit on the burner of a gas stove so you can monitor the level of char in real time. The first time I used it to char a pile of peppers, I knew I had found the right tool. The peppers I cooked on it became blackened on the outside and tender on the inside, exactly as if they had spent time on an actual grill. It works for eggplant, okra, squash — whatever you throw at it. The vents are small enough that nothing slips through them, unlike the grates of a grill. With it, I can make perfectly charred eggplant for baba ghannouj and baingan bharta or a tangle of quick-charred green beans with lemon juice and Parmesan as a quick salad.
There isn’t a handle on the Közmatik, which does take some getting used to. I use a pair of tongs to steady it and to shake the pan to check the level of char under the vegetables on there. It also doesn’t work on an electric or induction stove, alas, so if you have one of those you have to continue the quest. But on a gas grill? It’s perfect.
When I moved into my house in Philadelphia, we got a gas grill for our small backyard. But the Közmatik is so good and so easy I find myself reaching for it more often to use on my stove than using the actual grill, particularly in the winter. In the summer, you can use the Közmatik on the grill as a way to trap bits of skin and precious vegetable juices rather than losing them. It’s the size of a dinner plate, so it’s easy to store and grab. Plus, unlike the grill, which can be a pain to clean, the Közmatik is dishwasher safe. I’ll never have to live with flaccid vegetables again.
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