How to Drain Greasy Food When You’re Out of Paper Towels

Fried foods are comfort foods. But stick to it freshly fried crunch is a precarious dance of siphoning off oil and allowing food to cool on a wire rack without getting soggy before dinner. The traditional method is to use half a roll of paper towels to soak up excess oil, but what if your roll just ran out? If you have any of the following junk items lying around, you don’t need paper towels to ensure a crispy exterior on fried foods.

But first: A good oil-soaked material is anything that’s slightly porous, strong enough that it won’t stick to food or break under its weight, and something you don’t mind getting covered in oil. That’s why paper towels are the best frying partners. when you are without any unfinished paper product (not waxed or glossy) that is disposable or used to be something else are great candidates for the job. Not only that, you won’t delay your fried food plan food, but you will reuse something and reduce Paper towel waste.

Household items that are great for draining fried foods

I’m one of those crazy people who doesn’t actually use paper towels anymore (except for holiday parties because multiple bottles of wine can mess us all up) but I still fry food. Here’s what I use instead.

Paper egg cartons are one of my favorite materials for soaking up excess oil for a number of reasons. Eggs are my favorite food and me through about a dozen a week, so I can always reach into my trash can and pull out a box or two for the occasional apple pancake. Because it’s made from an untreated porous paper, the airy cardboard is the perfect soaking material. Finally the divots! Unlike most other paper products, egg cartons are molded with little pockets, allowing these cartons to serve a little dual purpose depending on what you’re frying. They can absorb the dripping oil with several touch points and also serve as a makeshift drying rack when you put the food over the grooves. To get the most out of your egg carton oil rack, open it up or separate the top from the bottom to utilize both sides. (Just to be clear, the plastic or foam Ones won’t work; recycle these.)

paper shopping bags are often destined to live multiple lives like eachthing off potato cultivation AIDS to textbook covers (why was that a thing? scribble?). THey are also great for fried food, because you can get a lot of usable space out of a bag. I like to cut the pouch into five planks along the seams and use the inside surface to drain my freshly fried morsels. Newspapers are similarly effective (see: the traditional fish and chips) although they are rarely used in this way today as in the past.

Cardboard is another clutch member on your degreasing team. The modern dependency on online ordering means you are undoubtedly well stocked in boxes. Other cardboard carriers, like pizza boxes and some other to-go grocery boxes, are too made of paper. As in B. a paper bag, I cut open the box along the seams and use the inward surface to drain the oil from fried foods. This is my last resort selection the above options, since cardboard is not as absorbent as the others and I’m suspicious where boxes have been. Of course, don’t use boxes that look visibly damaged, use the inside surface and try not to think about it too much. Pizza boxes are ideal because they’ve already been used for foods you trust, and most cities won’t allow you to recycle cardboard that has oil on it anyway (although some will allow you to compost it). Give it a second life by letting it soak up more oil since they’re already out of the race to recycle anyway.

dishtowels are the ultimate reusable fried food drying material. I have purchased one large collection of tea towels and tea towels over the years (my mom gives them to me compulsive ), so it is reasonable to name two or three for oil separation. (However, if you happen to live in an apartment and the only washing machine is down the street, this isn’t the best practical possibility.) It’s very simple: uThen use the dish towels to soak up the extra oil Wash them with a good amount of soap and white wine vinegar in the hottest water you can get, next to it Only evenly soiled textiles. Note that tea towels are different from tea towels –you usually consist of tightly woven, of thin cotton and without pile, while dFish towels have tangled thread piles and loose fluff. This is nice and absorbent on your hands and dishes but can stick to food. Nobody wants fuzz on their fries.