The ultimate guide to opening a can of mutton

Raina Prasad

Passionate Home Cook

  • Sydney, Australia

Tim Mutton recipe..

It was a Sunday; I thought about it all day…corned mutton – I needed to have it!! I went into the kitchen, put the rice on, peeled the garlic, cut the chilli and the onion. I was so excited; I could already taste it and had been craving it for a few months now and today was the day.

I went on to fry the onion, chilli, garlic – oh the smell!! It was time, I opened my drawer and nothing! Where is my can opener?! I rumbled through all my utensils, checked the other drawers and still no can opener! How could this be? What should I do? I switched off the stove and just stared at the cooked rice, fried onion/chilli/garlic and canned of corned mutton – how devastating…this would have never happened if I still lived at home!

I sent my mum and cousin a message of my heartbreak and of course they laughed not understanding how I could not have a can opener in my drawer…isn’t that a staple utensil in an Indian household?! I was still so desperate to have this corned mutton; I even messaged my neighbours asking if they had a can open…oh the despair was real.

My cousin (aka the corned mutton saviour), who lives in Fiji then decided to video call me saying that she was going to teach me the Fiji style of opening a can. I watched her closely, this ‘Fiji style’ consisted of a sharp knife and the can…oh the infamous can. For any of you not privy to the Fiji style of opening a can, here it is: Step 1: stick the knife into the can and Step 2: cut your way around the top of the can – very safe….Obviously not having any other solution I grab a knife and start, now let me be honest this 2-step method is not an easy process! 40 mins later and I had only managed to open half the can, but I was determined, after an hour I had 1 opened can, a very used mortar and a blunt knife but none of that mattered I could now have my corned mutton and wow it was soo great and well worth the effort.

Now some might say I could have handled the situation differently, like go to the shops which is next door to my apartment but on that fateful Sunday…that (for some reason!) was not an option in my mind.

 

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