Cooking Tip / Kitchen Tip : How to keep salt flowing from a Salt Shaker

How to keep salt flowing from a Salt Shaker / How to keep Salt from clogging the salt shaker

You reach out for the salt shaker at meal time to sprinkle some salt on your food. You notice that the salt is clumping up in the shaker and salt doesn’t flow freely. The reason for this is that salt gets sticky when it is moist.

To solve this, just add a few grains of uncooked rice to the bottom of the salt shaker and then add the salt. The rice will absorb all the moisture in the atmosphere instead of the salt. Now you will find that salt flows smoothly from the salt shaker every time you use it. Since rice grains are bigger, they will not flow through the holes of the shaker.

Also, make sure that once you wash the salt shaker, you air dry it thoroughly so that there is no moisture left in the container. This could also cause salt to get sticky.

Fun Facts / trivia

Salt and pepper shakers are made from a variety of materials like plastic, ceramic, glass and metal. The plain glass screw-top containers were invented by John Landis Mason, who was the inventor of the Mason jar. The number and size of holes in the shakers vary. The shaker with fewer holes is generally taken to be salt shaker to ensure that consumption of sodium through salt is limited.

Salt and pepper shakers are now available in a variety of sizes and shapes. They are a popular collector’s items. Many people have taken to collecting shakers as a hobby as they are relatively inexpensive to collect.

Did you know?

The World’s only Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum is in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, United States.

There are over 20,000 pairs of shakers displayed here. This museum was started by Andrea, an archaeologist and her husband Rolf. You can see the changes from ancient times to the 1500’s, 1800’s, 1920’s, 40’s, 60’s all the way to present time.