Technique of the Week: Salad Spinner Art

If you are a hobby room regular, you know that I posted about salad a couple days ago and the joys of using a salad spinner.  As much as I love my salad spinner, and I do, it still takes up a fair amount of space and doesn’t get used quite as much as, say, my food processor.  So I’ve been thinking about some other things you can do with a spinner.  Here are few other food-related uses:

•  Fill the bowl partway with water and swish cilantro or leeks (or other “dirty” veg) for a thorough cleaning, then pour out the dirty water and spin.
• Brining shrimp can be done right in the bowl then the shrimp dried after pouring out the brine and doing a spin or two.
• When salting veg to draw out extra moisture, do this in a salad spinner to give the liquid somewhere to drain to and then spin dry.

 But the uses don’t stop there, oh no; here are two of my non-food favorites:

• If you hand wash your delicates, you are probably aware that wringing them dry is a no-no, but how do you get rid of the extra water before hanging to dry?  That’s right, put your delicates in your salad spinner.  It’s basically the same as the spin cycle on a washing machine, but smaller and gentler.
• Add paint and paper plates to your spinner and make art.

This is a super craft for kids to do.  I guess there are some salad spinners out there that operate with a pull string, which would be a little harder for a kid to use, but the OXO salad spinner I've been using has a big plunger-style operator and this is a breeze even for my three-year-old.  The boys love putting cars and LEGOs in the spinner already, so adding paint is just a bonus.

This is what you do:

1. Get out your salad spinner.  Set a regular-sized paper white paper plate in the basket.
2. Get some paint.  We had squeeze bottles of finger paint and regular bottles of poster paint and both worked great.  I added a little water to some of the emptier bottles to stretch the paint and I liked the lighter effect of the watered-down paint a little better (and they dried faster!).  Just make sure to use paint that's washable--for the sake of the spinner and your clothes.
3. Dribble paint on the plate.  Spin the spinner.
4. Once the spinning stops, remove the lid and marvel at your plate.  Remove it and let it dry.

There will be a fair amount of paint in the bowl when you're done, so plan to either pour it back into a container or start a new one for brown paint.

As part of OXO's Blogger Outreach I was sent a salad spinner to experiment with in addition to one I'm giving away to one of my readers.  It is important to me as a blogger (and as a person in general) to be honest and fair in all I do, so know that although I received a free product, all opinions about the salad spinner are entirely my own and not influenced in any way by OXO.  To enter the drawing for the OXO salad spinner so you can entertain your kids and make a (contained) mess with paint, just fill out the form below.  The fine print: you must be a U.S. resident and 18 years or older to enter. 

Do you have any kitchen tools that you use for things they weren't intended for?

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