The salad spinner is not only for salad

If you are of a certain age (like me) you may have known the salad basket, from your mother or grandmother, that we used to shake outside with a big swing of the arms, to wring out the salad leaves after washing, and this before using them or adding vinaigrette once poured into a salad bowl.

Even if you still find this kind of basket, hardly modernized, you may have at home a salad spinner, this rather simple utensil: there is a basket inside that turns on an axis, driven by the crank on top. It's the centrifugal force that does all the work, the water is ejected from the leaves that turn very fast inside, and recovered in the bottom.

It doesn't cost much, and it's quite efficient, nothing to say about it.

So?

And a salad spinner can be used for something else than spinning salad, in practice, as soon as you have to dry or more globally to remove water from something, you can also use your spinner.

Here are 2 specific examples:

If you blanch spinach, that is to say that you plunge the leaves into boiling salted water for less than a minute before plunging them into cold water, you will then need to spin them out before you can use them in your recipe.
Traditionally, you drain them in a colander and then put them on a tea towel and press on them to remove as much water as possible that the towel absorbs. Traditional, but not very efficient, and you will stain your towel green.
It is much more effective to pass the spinach leaves out of the cold water in the spin-dryer, by small packets, you will be astonished of all the water which comes out.

Another example, you want to make a broccoli or cauliflower gratin, in principle you will also blanch them, and then drain them before putting them in the gratin dish.
Not the best method, broccoli (like cauliflower) retains water from cooking because of its structure, this water does not go away when draining in the usual way, and it may disturb the creamy side of your gratin.
Here again, a little spin-drying...

These two examples are not exhaustive, of course, you should not hesitate to use the wringer for a lot of food that you need to dry, it is much more efficient than a simple passage in the strainer even followed by a drying with a cloth.


To sum up: Your salad spinner can effectively be used to spin many other foods besides salad, both raw and cooked.