I love mason jars. We use them for everything in our kitchen. They are sturdy and versatile. And, there are so many uses for mason jars in your kitchen outside of the obvious. Here is a list of 10 uses for mason jars in your kitchen. Hopefully, you will find one or two of them to be useful.
Uses for Mason Jars in Your Kitchen
One: Preserve the Harvest
Okay, let’s begin with the obvious. Mason jars are intended for long-term food storage through canning and preserving. So go ahead, make jam, jelly and pickles. Love the popping sound that the lid makes when the seal is complete. We also use mason jars for our honey harvest and our maple syrup harvest.
Two: Drinking Glasses
Drinking from mason jars may just be something that is trendy right now, but the truth is mason jars just don’t break like regular glasses do. True story: my husband and I have been married 9 year. In the first 4 years of our marriage, we went through at least five boxes of glasses. Some of them expensive, others were cheap. It always ends the same way. One or two glasses make it through for some time, but most of them break in a very short amount of time. Maybe we’re just clumsy.
Recently, we have just been drinking out of mason jars. It works great. They come in a variety or sizes and you can choose your style too. We drink out of jelly, pint (both wide and regular mouth) and even quart jars with this great straw lid combination from Ball. You can use them for hot or cold beverages. Oh, and it’s portable. Screw a lid on it and your drink is ready to go. And did I mention red neck wine glasses?
Three: Homemade Granola & Other Dry Goods
Half-gallon size mason jars are awesome for storing homemade granola, pretzels, and more. My kids love letter pretzels in their school lunches which means they are usually around for a week or more. Crunchy foods like pretzels and goldfish stay fresh in the jar longer than in the bag. And, it’s prettier too.
Four: Utensils on the Counter
When we got married, people gave us utensil jars that matched our dishes. That works great at home, but at our Adirondack cabin, I am always searching through the drawers for utensils. However, once I moved them to a wide mouth quart size mason jar, the struggle was over. Now, just like at home, the utensils can be quickly grabbed from the counter top.
Five: Homemade Salad Dressing
I make homemade salad dressing all the time: Chive Buttermilk, Buttermilk Ranch, Bacon Chive Buttermilk, Russian and Italian. Usually, I measure my ingredients into a two cup glass measuring cup, mix them with my favorite flat whisk and then pour the dressing into a mason jar for storage. We sometimes use the pint jar and sometimes we use the 12 ounce jar. Always, we cover it with these plastic lids (wide mouth and regular).
Six: School Lunches
There are lots of recipes or at least examples of people using mason jars for lunches and breakfasts. One of the women I work with makes overnight oats and brings them to school (we’re teachers) for a midmorning snack–always in a mason jar. I use the four ounce jars and eight ounce wide mouth jars for yogurt, granola, cottage cheese and salad dressing. And again, we use the plastic lids (wide mouth and regular).
Warning: these plastic lids can leak especially if you are putting a liquid in them. Something viscus like yogurt is okay, but a thin salad dressing like Italian is a no go. Use a metal lid and screw band or one of these inserts which I have not yet tried, but are totally in my next Amazon order!
Seven: Vases
Yes, we have vases in our house in a variety of sizes. But, sometimes you just don’t have the right size or you need something quick. I used the half-gallon size for these amazing sunflowers that I grabbed as an impulse buy at the supermarket. When my kids bring wild flowers in from the yard, it’s quicker and easier just to grab an empty mason jar from the shelf. So, there is no need to head to the other room and dig for the right sized vase. A bouquet of dandelions looks awesome in an eight ounce jelly jar.
Eight: Baking & Dessert
Who doesn’t love cute individual desserts? The eight ounce wide mouth jar or a four ounce jelly jar is a perfect way to present dessert. The beautiful thing is you can bake right in them. If you don’t use them all, put a lid on and it is easily stored for the next day. This is actually chocolate mousse made from this recipe for a recent visit of my parents and sister. (I added whipped cream when I served it–should have taken the picture then because it was so much cuter, but by then, the light was gone.)
Nine: Marinate or Brine Meat
When we are not making Dill Pickle Crock Pot Chicken, we use the leftover pickle juice to brine our meat. I recently had the thought that it is unnecessary to dirty another dish or a disposable bag. Instead, put the meat right in the jar with the leftover pickle juice. Shake it a little to be sure that the juice spreads out evenly.
And, it works equally well for a marinade that you add. Place your meat in the jar. Pour the marinade in, shake and refrigerate until you are really to grill. For this chicken breast, we used a half gallon jar.
Important tip for marinating: make sure that you don’t stuff your meat in the jar. There needs to be room for the meat to get to the juices. I learned this the hard way after a batch of dry chicken breasts! If you need to marinate more meat that you can comfortably fit into the jar, just split it into two jars.
Ten: Food Storage
Recently, I purchased cherry tomatoes at one of my favorite local farm stands. The owner of the farm stand transferred the tomatoes from the pint box to a plastic bag. Plastic bags are not the ideal way to store tomatoes, so as I looked around my kitchen, I saw a wide mouth pint jar and thought: perfect! It’s ideal. The tomatoes can hang out on the counter top (which is the best place for uncut tomatoes) and look pretty too. You could even do this with tomatoes or other fruit best stored on the counter when you buy them at the supermarket too.
This would work equally well for something that needs to go in the refrigerator like fresh fruit or leftovers. Don’t forget that you can freeze wide mouth jars, so you could even put leftovers in a wide mouth jar, freeze them and then you have an easy lunch or dinner for later on.
Recap
As I looked around my kitchen recently, it became blatantly clear that mason jars aren’t just for jelly anymore. So, grab a mason jar and use it!
- Preserving the Harvest
- Drinking Glasses
- Homemade Granola and other Dry Goods
- Utensils on the Counter
- Homemade Salad Dressing
- School Lunches
- Vases
- Baking & Desserts
- Marinate or Brine Meat
- Food Storage
So Friends, pull out those empty mason jars and make use of them! How do you use mason jars in your kitchen? Let us know in the comments below.
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