3 Things You Should Never Use Paper Towels For

One is an outright kitchen danger. Scrappy chefs make the best chefs. Basic vacation rentals and bare-bones catering jobs alike have taught me to work with modest kitchens: wine bottles for rolling pins, mason jar for cocktail shakers, zip-top bags for piping bags. My greatest MacGyver’d kitchen hack in a moment of desperation also happens to be my most questionable show of judgment: using a paper towel as a coffee filter. Sure, it made coffee-flavored, brown water, but in retrospect, the thought of bleached white paper steeping its way into my morning joe should have caused some alarm. But I’m still here, aren’t I? Paper towels are an underestimated workhorse in the kitchen, capable of so much more than soaking up spilled milk and drying your hands.Anchoring a cutting boardon the countertop for safer chopping? Genius.Draping over broccolito keep its crown moist? Great.Absorbing excess moisturefrom leafy greens? Logical. But even the best kitchen intentions come with consequences, and there are some tasks the quilted paper cloth is just not cut out for. These are three common uses in which reaching for a paper towel is actually a bad idea. 1. Squeezing Moisture From Grated Vegetables For thecrispiest latkes, my grandpa always piled shredded potatoes and onions in a clean dish towel, twisted it into a bundle, and squeezed the excess moisture from the vegetables. The same approach works forshredded cucumbersandcooked spinachdestined for creamy dips. As tempting as it may be to use a disposable paper towel for the job (rather than picking tiny clumps of chopped spinach pulp out of the fabric later), it’s a bad move. Once a paper towel gets wet, food clings to its softened surface and it tears under the pressure of a hard squeeze, leaving bits of papery lint behind in your vegetables. Stick with

One is an outright kitchen danger.