We all know that salad spinners are effective for drying your greens for a crisp and fresh salad. However, there are six other lesser-known ways you can use it to improve the efficiency of your kitchen.

Remove excess moisture from grated potatoes

An essential step for hash browns or latkes is removing moisture from the grated potatoes. This can often be time-consuming, but if you throw the already grated strands of potatoes into the spinner, then this will save you time and really dry them out.

Defrost shrimp

This trick can help you defrost and dry frozen shrimp in a jiffy. Put the frozen shrimp into the spinner and place it in the outer bowl, as you would when spinning salad. Then, pour room-temperature water over the shrimp until they’re submerged. Spin to thaw, then once thawed, drain out the water and spin them again until they’re dried.

Dry broccoli or cauliflower florets

If you’ve ever tried and failed to make cauliflower fried rice, your misstep was likely that the cauliflower wasn’t dry enough. Avoid this disappointing situation by washing and drying broccoli or cauliflower florets in the salad spinner so that they’re ready for whatever you want to make out of them.

Strain moisture from zucchini

Spinning grated zucchini in the salad spinner is a quicker and more effective strategy for getting rid of moisture than squeezing out water with your hands.

Clean leeks

Leeks are also rather difficult to dry once they’ve been rinsed and chopped. Give them a good spin in the salad spinner for an ingenious and easy solution.

Drain and dry pasta

Avoid sad watery pasta salads by draining and spinning your cooked pasta in the salad spinner. This will get the noodles extra dry and make the dressing stick to the pasta rather than pooling at the bottom of the bowl.