Product Description

The butane torch is an amazingly useful device that does more than brown the tops of crEme brulEe. For example: give your turkey a crackling golden skin, melt the cheese on your French onion soup, blacken peppers, turn your meringues a nice light brown. We could go on, but no doubt you've already thought of a few more uses yourself. This model is professional quality and easy to use.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125106 in Kitchen & Housewares
• Color: Chrome
• Brand: BonJour
• Model: 53341
• Released on: 2004-03-19
• Dimensions: 3.50" h x 5.50" w x 8.50" l,

Features

• Pro-style handheld butane kitchen torch, Ideal for creme brulee
• Also useful for browning meringues, melting cheese, roasting peppers
• Adjustable, anti-flare flame for even caramelization; equipped with safety lock
• Cool-touch metal body with black and red accents; removable rubberized stand
• Extra-large 40-milliliter fuel capacity for over 3 hours of caramelizing flame

Amazon.com Review
Crème brûlée, a classic restaurant dessert, is simple enough to make at home with BonJour's powerful Professional Crème brûlée Torch. Other uses for the torch include browning meringue-topped desserts, melting or browning cheese on onion soup or casseroles, and blackening peppers and tomatoes for smoky salsas. This sturdy torch is made of brushed silver-tone metal with black and red accents; the stay-cool body serves as the grip while the flame is controlled with a simple thumb-activated button at the top. A removable rubberized stand allows the torch to be stored upright in a cupboard.

A safety lock prevents unintentional ignition and snaps back into place each time the ignition button is pressed. A simple slide button adjusts the length of the flame, while flame width can be altered with a sliding air-control lever; these two functions allow the user to focus the flame as tightly or as broadly as necessary. The BonJour Professional Crème brûlée Torch has a 40-milliliter fuel capacity, which allows more than 3-1/2 hours of burn time. Butane fuel is not included; it can be purchased at gourmet, hardware, or convenience stores. The torch comes with detailed instructions for fueling, igniting, and adjusting the flame. --Garland Withers

Customer Reviews

For us it wouldn't shut off.
We got this as a gift, and had a completely different problem that the other reports. Our torch wouldn't turn off! Following the instructions for turning it off didn't have much of an effect. The flame kept on burning for at least 30 seconds or so. It would eventually go out, but there was still the hissing sound of escaping gas, so we didn't want to leave it just sitting in the kitchen. The igniter would then cause spurts of flame to appear. I finally decided to leave it outside the house so that the butane wouldn't accumulate indoors. Unfortunately, it seems to have quite a gas capacity.

Inconsistent
This torch seems to work just fine about one time out of twenty or so. When it does work, the flame is long and easy to control, but most of the time, I find that it tends to randomly shut off, as the reviewer below described, or worse, it just sort of runs out of gas. The flame will start out fine, then over the course of ten seconds or so, it runs completely out of juice. You can fill it ready to burst, and it still does this. Unfortunately, I haven't found a hand torch that works any better, but if you're in the market, look around and try these out in person if you can. I think the next one I buy will be one of those huge industrial-strength models from the hardware store.

Glad I bought it
I just about didn't purchase this torch based upon the only customer review available. But knowing Amazon's great customer service, I decided to chance it as it seemed like a fantastic value. And I'm glad I did. It is a great torch and I can only think that the other reviewer might have received one with a defect or she isn't operating it correctly. It performs as advertised and is a great value! I would most definitely recommend it.