Wondering what a colander is? Check out this guide to learn about the many uses for kitchen colanders and how they differ from strainers and chinois.
Listen, everybody loves a warm spaghetti dish as a late-night meal. It’s delicious, inexpensive, and so easy to make…well, for the most part. What we don’t love is the very last step of transferring the pasta out of the water.
Thankfully, a colander is a must-have kitchen tool that can help with that, all while also serving so many of your other kitchen needs.
The Many Uses of a Colander
Are you curious about the many other uses for a colander? Here we highlight some of them. It’s time to discover what makes a colander a kitchen essential!
When you buy grapes (or any fresh fruit and berries) from the grocery store, how do you usually wash them?
Presumably, you just hold a few of them in your hand and run them under some water. Or maybe you take the slightly more difficult route of putting them in a bowl, pouring water over them, and covering them with your hand to contain them as you tip the bowl over to drain the water. These are time-consuming and not very effective ways to get the most out of your kitchen.
Believe it or not, its possible to rinse fruit in a much easier and faster way than both methods, and all you need is a colander. All you have to do is place the fruit in the colander and rinse it with water—that’s it!
You don’t even need to transfer it to a bowl; you can just eat it straight out of the colander. How convenient! Not to mention, it’s much better than eating out of your hands, right?
With the pasta and fresh fruit examples, the water was drained and discarded after it passed through the colander. There are times, however, when you’ll want to keep the liquids as well as the solids, just not together, such as when handling canned food items.
If you’re straining, for example, canned juice and you want to keep the liquids, a colander will be a very helpful tool in the process. All you have to do is place the colander above a larger bowl, pour the canned fruit into the colander, and allow the juice to drain out into the bowl; it’s as simple as that.
Now on to some uses that you probably wouldn’t think of right away. Some foods such as berries, mushrooms, and grapes are moisture-sensitive and can easily spoil. If you store them in a colander in the fridge, the moisture dries faster, which will prevent mold and ensure that your produce lasts much longer.
You already took care to preserve your stunning party outfit with your Linen Apron, but how do you keep your kitchen clean as well? Here’s a very creative use for you: using colanders to prevent grease splatters! Inverting a colander over the pan while frying an egg or cooking a burger allows for water vapor and heat escape and ensures that most of the fat spray is contained.
This works because fat molecules are much bigger than water molecules and therefore can’t escape through the holes.
We put a lot of work into getting the design aesthetic of our kitchens just right, so it’s disheartening to see our Instagram-worthy kitchen reduced to a grimy mess.
If you don’t happen to have a steam basket on you, no worries! A colander can come to the rescue. By setting the colander filled with vegetables in a larger pan filled with water, they can steam just as well as traditional vegetable steamers.
A colander comes in handy for this use, especially in the summertime. When the weather’s nice, all you want to do is eat outside every chance you can get, but the pesky bugs that come along are a nightmare.
To keep them from swarming around your food, just turn over your colander and place it on top of the food, and they’re sure to be bug-free!
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Cooked By: Caraway Home
Subject: The Home
Date: September 8, 2021
Wondering what a colander is? Check out this guide to learn about the many uses for kitchen colanders and how they differ from strainers and chinois.
Listen, everybody loves a warm spaghetti dish as a late-night meal. It’s delicious, inexpensive, and so easy to make…well, for the most part. What we don’t love is the very last step of transferring the pasta out of the water.
Thankfully, a colander is a must-have kitchen tool that can help with that, all while also serving so many of your other kitchen needs.
Ideal Uses of a Tiny Colander
FAQ
What are 3 things a colander is used for?
What do you call a small colander?
What’s the difference between a colander and a strainer?
What is the point of a colander?
What is a colander used for?
The main use of a colander is to drain and wash vegetables and fruits. But it can also be used to protect the heads of lettuce, cauliflower, or broccoli while washing them. Another colander use is to prevent pasta or potatoes from boiling over the side of the pot by placing a colander on top of it, thus avoiding messy spills in the kitchen.
How do you use a colander?
During testing, we used the small colander to wash berries, the medium to drain pasta, and the large to rinse a few pounds of fruit. Each nested into its own bowl, allowing all the foods to drain without taking up precious sink space.
What are the advantages of using a colander as a kitchen tool?
The main advantages of using it as a kitchen tool for cooking are the following: The weight of the colander is light which makes it easy to store and use. A colander is more hygienic than pots because it has holes on the bottom which allow water to drain away.
What is a colander made of?
The bottom is perforated, which allows for water or liquid to drain through while holding on to the solids inside. Colanders are often made out of light metals such as aluminum or thin stainless steel, although they can also be made out of plastic, silicone, ceramic, or enamelware.