We all hate lumps in our salt shakers. When table salt does not contain an anti-caking ingredient, this is a problem even on mildly humid days. Sometimes, when it’s humid enough, even salt that does contain anti-caking additives will clump up. What’s more annoying than shaking and shaking and getting no salt? Well, have you tried putting some grains of rice in your salt shaker to prevent clumping? Does it work? You bet your pepper grinder it does.
Why Does Salt Clump Up?
Salt is extremely prone to picking up moisture from the air. The water molecules attach to the surface of the salt crystals and this dissolves the salt on the outside of the crystal, forming a layer of salt solution. So, there are a bunch of grains of salt sitting in solution inside the salt container or shaker. Then, when the air drys up the salt crystals recrystalize. However, since the outer parts of the salt crystals are in solution, crystal bridges form between the salt grains, forming clumps of salt.
How Does Rice Prevent Salt Forming Lumps?
Rice is also very good at picking up moisture from the air. I mean, VERY good. But, unlike other dry foods that get soggy, like crackers or cereal, rice can take on a lot of moisture without really changing much. A grain of rice will happily take on a bunch of water. It may swell up and get a bit soggy if things get wet enough, but once the air is dry, it will go back to its previous state as if nothing much happened. So, rice is good at trapping water vapor and then letting it go without making a big fuss about it.
When you add a few grains of rice in your salt shaker, they will absorb the water from the air and protect the salt crystals from it. The salt will not clump. 1Richard Hartel and AnnaKate Hartel, Food Bites, The Science of the Foods We Eat, DOI:10.1007/978-0-387-75845-9_18, Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2008 The rice will let go of the water at its earliest convenience and be ready to trap more water later. Even if you put a lot of rice in, the salt can pretty easily flow though and among the rice grains, so the rice itself will not interfere with shaking the salt out.
This is the same reason you can use rice to dry out electronic devices that have gotten wet. So, yes, if you haven’t tried it, put a pinch of rice in your salt shaker to prevent the salt from clumping. If it’s a large shaker, use more rice.
