Over the years, I’ve discovered that most industries have basic pieces of general knowledge, best-practices that are broadly followed, but somehow never make it out to the rest of the world. That’s particularly true on the culinary front, where the way restaurant chefs cook is, in a slew of ways, completely different from what most of us do at home.

So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover the Jaccard a few years back, a handheld device that completely revolutionizes cooking steak. In short, the Jaccard is a stamp-punch of dozens of long thin blades, which you push down repeatedly along the top of an uncooked steak. The small blades break up fibers in the meat, which both leave it far more tender, and prevent those fibers from wringing juice out of the steak as they contract during cooking.

The Jaccard is used nearly universally by steakhouses, but by almost no home cooks. Skip a couple steak dinners out, and cook them at home instead (for those who don’t know how, here’s a short tutorial on pan-roasting from Lobel’s, and a longer, illustrated one on pan-searing from Serious Eats), and your Jaccard will quickly more than pay for itself.