Behold, the humble coffee filter. Durable, cheap, lint-free, and you’ve probably already got them in your kitchen. If you don’t, you should get some — even if you don’t drink coffee. Why?
- Cover food in the microwave.
- Filter broken cork out of wine.
- Filter cooking grease for re-use. (See my post on how to render and store bacon fat. I hadn’t thought to use a coffee filter.)
- Weigh bulk foods. Put the filter on your scale before adding herbs, flour or sugar.
- Make an herb sachet to place in soup.
And how about some non-food uses?
- Put between fine china plates when storing to prevent scratches.
- Place in a cast-iron skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.
- Wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.
- Line plant pots before adding soil to keep it from leaking out the drain holes.
- Sprout seeds. Wrap the seeds in the filter, moisten it, place in a plastic bag until they sprout.
- Blotting paper for pressed flowers.
And because they’re lint-free, you can use them instead of paper towels for:
- Cleaning windows, mirrors and chrome.
- Applying shoe polish.
- Holding tacos and other messy finger foods.
- Disposable popcorn bowl.
They’re also pretty useful for making coffee.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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8 Comments
Great ideas. I tried to order Starting from scratch: the owner’s manual for your kitchen but I have been unable to. Susan
Susan, what happened when you tried to order it? PayPal won’t let me process a payment to myself, but everything up to that step is working.
Drew,
I freakin’ love your hints like this (or that post 1-2 weeks ago about all the various tips with food).
It’s like you’re Heloise…but I don’t have to buy a newspaper to get the awesomeness.
Also, we pretty much live by your blog in this house.
Thanks for the help. Now it’s my turn to provide a little food-lover advice. Guy Fieri has a new show called Minute to Win It premiering on NBC this Sunday( March 14th). It looks pretty cool. Check it out here: http://www.nbc.com/minute-to-win-it/
And here: http://www.facebook.com/minutetowinit?ref=ts
Drew,
I really loved this post. I have been (almost) obsessively following your blog for months now but never commented…
I have a huge stack of coffee filters I won’t throw away. They have been sitting unused in the cabinet since I got my beloved Nespresso espresso machine a year ago and threw that Mr. Coffee one-pot away! Thanks for the tips!
Obsession is good, nothing to be ashamed of.
Brilliant! I love this post.
I use coffee filters to drain yogurt to make a thick yogurt cream/cheese and separate the whey for various food uses. I also use one to cover my Kombucha and filter the finished drink when the ferment is finished.
I’m definitely going to start using them more.
Like Susan, I use coffee filters to strain my yogurt cheese/Greek yogurt. I started by using cheesecloth, but ran out one day and used a coffee filter instead. It works much better! The yogurt cheese peels right off the coffee filter instead of me scraping it from cheesecloth.
Coffee filters are great for kids craft projects such as tie dye coffee filters using water based markers.