Do you have a food strainer in your kitchen that only drains water from pasta and potatoes? If so, you’re only getting about 1% of its functionality from it! Now, I’m not talking about a colander, I’m talking about a perforated or mesh strainer. If you’re unsure of what you have, check out foodstrainer.net for examples of both. Colanders don’t do a whole lot more than drain water and rinse leafy vegetables. If you have a food strainer, and are only using for these things, read on to learn what a powerful and versatile kitchen gadget you have on your hands!
The most useful thing that you can do with your strainer is juicing fruits and veggies that are tough to do otherwise. Berries are the first thing that come to mind since their large number of seeds always slip past commercial juicers. Blanched and skinned tomatoes are also easily pressed with a food strainer to make homemade sauce, and the left over in the strainer can be canned as crushed tomatoes. To do this successfully, put whatever you want juiced into the strainer and press it with the back of a large spoon. Smashing the fruit into the mesh or perforations will press out all of the juice, while keeping the skin and seeds inside.
You can also sift flour very easily with a strainer. Getting your dry ingredients properly aerated when baking will make sure that you don’t get dry clumps and everything rises evenly in the oven. Putting the strainer on top of a large bowl and adding your dry ingredients will allow you to tap it onto the side of the bowl to perfectly sift everything down into the bowl.
These two, very different, examples were chosen for this post to demonstrate just how versatile a food strainer is. It handles juice as well as it does dry goods. There are thousands of different uses in between these two extremes that are just waiting for you to explore!
Tags: food strainer, food strainer or colander, jucing fruit, uses for food strainers, versatile food strainers