Food strainers are an integral part of the kitchen and have tons of different uses.  Everyone knows that you can use them to drain pasta and wash lettuce, but I want to share some of the creative recipes that I cook that make use of my food strainer.  If you’re looking for shopping tips instead of recipes and ideas, check out my Food Strainer Buying Guide post.

The most common recipes that use food strainers are salad dressings.  How many recipes call for fresh lemon juice?  Most of them!  It’s so often that we squeeze the lemon over the bowl/food processor/blender and one or two seeds will always pop out and land in the dressing.  The absolute easiest way to prevent this is to put your food strainer on top of the bowl and squeeze the lemon into it.  This will catch all of the seeds without you having to worry at all!

Chipotle Red Pepper Mayo

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 tsp. chipotle powder
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp. Kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp. fresh ground pepper

Directions:

1. Put mayo, chipotle, lemon juice, and salt into a medium size mixing bowl.
2. Rough chop bell pepper and run through the food processor until it becomes a fine pulp.
3. With your mesh food strainer on top of the bowl with the other ingredients pour the red pepper pulp into the strainer.  Using the back of a large spoon push out as much juice as possible from the bell pepper, leaving behind the pulp.  Throw out the pulp.
4. Mix everything together, taste, and add more salt and pepper as desired.

You now have the easiest and tastiest mayo that’s perfect for fish and chicken sandwiches!

Easy Blackberry Chocolate Ganache

Use this for decorating cakes, cupcakes, or whip into frosting.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups chopped bittersweet chocolate
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup blackberries

Directions:

1. Put chopped chocolate into a medium size bowl.
2. Put heavy cream in a small sauce pan on the stove on medium-low heat.
3. Carefully watch the cream, at the point when it starts to steam (before boiling) add in the blackberries.
4. As soon as the blackberries/cream mixture begins to boil, pull it from the stove.  Pour the mixture through a mesh food strainer.  Use the back of a large spoon to smash the blackberries into the mesh strainer, releasing all of their juice.  This should be easy since they’re hot.  Throw away the skin and seeds.
5. Mix everything together in the bowl until combined.  Let cool for a few minutes before decorating your cake/cupcakes.

These are just two of the extremely easy and versatile things that you can do with food strainers.  There are thousands more recipes just like this that are waiting for you and your strainer!