Give Your Dishes A Good Scrub Using A Ball Of Aluminum Foil
Have you ever gotten ready to hand wash challenging dishes with stuck-on foods and realized you don't have a good scrubber? Reach for your roll of aluminum foil instead. Simply take a large sheet of aluminum foil and crumple it up into a makeshift ball. Why, do you ask? When you do that, the crinkles on the foil work like little bristles and are quite effective at removing food particles from all kinds of dishes and utensils.
Use it like a scrubber with dish soap and hot water to scrub off stuck-on foods from pots and pans. This trick works splendidly on cast iron and is great on grills too. To clean the grill, get a pair of tongs to hold the ball of tin foil with. Warm up the grill first, use the tongs to grab the ball of aluminum foil, and then scrub the grates with it once they're nice and hot. Though aluminum foil is great with most utensils, there's one type of surface you shouldn't use it on.
Dos and don'ts with aluminum foil in the kitchen
While you can use a ball of aluminum foil to clean dishes like pots and pans, including those made of cast iron, and even silverware, avoid cleaning non-stick surfaces — i.e. those that use Teflon — with it because the aluminum foil will scratch off the coating.
Aluminum does have other uses in the kitchen. Tin foil is an insulator, conductor of heat, and impervious to extreme temperatures. It also provides a barrier against moisture, grease, and oils, and resists corrosion. Thanks to that, aluminum foil makes a fantastic preventative cleaning measure when cooking. Line the bottom of the grill, oven, and burners on older stove tops with tin foil to catch any food spills and dispose of them easily.
But while aluminum foil is great in the oven and on the grill, you cannot deploy it in the microwave because the radio waves cause the tin foil to heat up quickly and catch fire. More so if it's crinkled. But it can go into some other large appliances around the house.
More amazing uses for aluminum foil
Here's one you might not know: you can use a ball of aluminum foil in the dryer instead of a dryer sheet to reduce static cling. Tossing a few crumpled-up balls of aluminum foil into the dryer with your clothes disrupts the exchange of electrons that results in static cling. This hack could potentially save quite a bit of money spent on dryer sheets each month.
You can also use aluminum foil to sharpen your scissors. Simply fold a sheet of tin foil in half three or four times into a square. Use scissors to make several small cuts around the edges and you'll notice how much sharper they become.
You can even shine up your silverware using a sheet of tin foil, salt, and baking soda. Just take a sheet of aluminum foil and line a standard baking dish with it. Then take your silverware and lay it on top of the foil in a single layer. Mix two teaspoons of salt and two teaspoons of baking soda together and sprinkle over the top of the silverware. Add hot water until the silverware is completely submerged and let it soak for five minutes. Rinse thoroughly and pat or towel dry.
As you can tell, aluminum foil can be used to perform a plethora of unexpected tricks around the house. No wonder two in three people around the world use it every single day.