Napoleon Bonaparte is famous for many things: his (actually average) height his revolutionary politics and his gigantic hat. But he’s also the reason our pantries are stocked with canned food. In 1795 he offered a hefty prize to anyone who could devise a way to preserve the army’s food from spoiling. The winner submitted a design for a method of canning food but not long after inventor Peter Durand developed a thick can of wrought iron and tin to preserve food. The can opener had not yet been invented so the proposed way to open such cans was with a hammer and chisel.
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How to open a can without a can opener easy and fast
Over time the can design became thinner as steel was used instead of tin and in the mid 1800s the first can opener was invented decades after canned food. It had a blade that pierced the lid of the can while another part sawed the edges. However it left a jagged edge and was not the safest tool to use. Fortunately around the 1920s or 1930s the standard crank design was invented by Charles Arthur Bunker.
Unless your cans are made with a convenient pull tab Bunker’s design is still in use today and the can opener is a standard tool in almost every kitchen. But what do you do if you don’t have one? There are a few methods you can try.
Before can openers were invented in the 1850s a chisel and a hammer were the tools most people used to open their cans. In fact this was the method recommended by can manufacturers which makes sense when you consider that the first cans were ridiculously thick making them harder to open than the cans we know today.
