FOOD NEWS
The Easy Hack That Brings New Use To Canning Tongs
By Betsy Parks
While canning tongs are mainly used to grab Mason jars, you can use them for crème brûlée, flan, pot du crème, or anything else that cooks in a water bath.
Canning tongs are jar-shaped utensils coated with high-heat rubber or silicone, designed specifically for lifting and lowering canning jars in and out of boiling water.
Since they have a round shape, they are also perfect for safely and confidently lifting round-shaped dishes, like ramekins.
Pot holders or oven mitts are helpful for moving hot jars around when they're out of the boiling water, but they can cause steam burns when wet from removing jars from hot water.
Instead, canning tongs are made of metal and designed to keep the hot jars away from your hands. Plus, the rubber or silicone coating securely grips the slippery sides of a jar.
It may be tempting to use regular tongs, but as they don't open far enough and have edged tines designed for gripping food, not containers, you'll likely drop the jar.