Sharpen Blender Blades With A Genius Rice Hack

Just as your scissors or kitchen knives can get dull and need sharpening, so might the blades in your blender. All sorts of normal blender use can speed up the need for sharpening. For instance, if you use your blender to puree or crush hard ingredients — like ice cubes for a frozen margarita — you can actually dull the blades in your blender over time. Improper cleaning, or even too frequent cleaning, can also take the edge off your blades.

Fortunately, you can easily sharpen your blender blades again using the absolutely genius hack of blending uncooked rice. Simply pour half a cup or so of rice into your blender, and pulse until the blades are sharpened. Not only will your sharpened blades blend ingredients more smoothly, they'll also help reduce the ear-splitting noise of blending. Blenders aren't the only use for this hack, either. You can also use the dry rice method to sharpen and clean your coffee grinder blades.

To be clear, the rice method is not the only blender blade sharpening hack floating around on the internet, but it is one of the best. Other popular but less efficient methods include whetstones, which aren't as feasible for those of us with only the most essential hand tools in our kitchens, and aluminum foil and eggshells – neither of which are sturdy enough to actually realign your blender blades, let alone sharpen them.

Rice, while arguably also a soft material, is robust enough to align, clean, and sharpen blender blades. Unlike eggshells, which will disintegrate, rice contains a strong dry starch called amylose. Amylose requires high amounts of energy to break its bonds, so types of rice with especially high amylose ratios are better suited to grinding down the edges of your blender blades and actually sharpening the metal. In general, long grain rice like Basmati and Carolina Gold contain more amylose and will do a better job sharpening than any other type of rice.