Kitchen & Food

#13 · Stir the bottom of a jam jar

When the jam or nut butter is nearly gone and you can't reach the bottom, a chopstick finishes the job beautifully.

Jam jars, honey jars, tahini, and the peanut butter that has separated into an inch of oil sitting on a brick of solids. Anything narrow-mouthed with something good hiding at the bottom is a job for a chopstick. A spoon scrapes; a chopstick actually stirs.

The specific problem with natural nut butters and tahini is that they separate by design - no emulsifier means the oil rises. A knife or a spoon pushes the solid block around as one lump and flings oil over the rim. A thin rod can get in beside the block and work oil back through it, which is what recombining actually requires.

How to do it

1. Pour off nothing. The oil on top is the fat that belongs in the mix.
2. Slide a clean chopstick down the side of the jar to the very bottom.
3. Stir in slow, wide circles rather than fast small ones, working the oil down through the solids.
4. Every few turns, drag the chopstick up the inside wall to lift the dried film that collects there.
5. Keep going until the texture is even throughout. On a badly separated jar this takes a genuine two or three minutes.

Why it works

A round jar has a square internal corner where the wall meets the base, and the curve of a spoon simply cannot reach into it. A straight-sided rod can. That corner is exactly where the densest, driest solids collect, which is why jars that seem stirred still have a hard plug at the bottom.

Tips & warnings

• Store natural nut butter upside down between uses. The oil migrates back through on its own and you barely have to stir at all.
• Crystallised honey: stand the jar in a bowl of hot - not boiling - water for ten minutes first, then stir.
• Keep one chopstick by the sink purely for this. It will earn its place.