Uses For Aluminum Foil

uses-for-aluminum-foil

Not only is aluminum foil useful for covering a casserole pan (for example), its many additional uses make it a unique preparedness item to have around…

Here are some uses for aluminum foil. Add your own ideas at the end:

Foil Hat: Great to wear while reading conspiracy websites… ;)

DIY Cooking Pans: Works best with heavy-duty aluminum foil – Fold into the shape which suits your cooking needs. Place on low heat, hot coals, etc..

Storing Food: Provides a barrier against light, oxygen, odors, flavors, moisture, and bacteria.

DIY Utensils: Shape into bowls, plates, etc..

Solar Oven Reflector: Use your creativity and make your own solar oven.

Scrubber: A little bit of crumpled aluminum foil for scrubbing pans of tough messes.

Bird Deterrent: Great for around gardens to scare off birds – Tear off sheets, attach to anything to catch the rippling wind.

Funnel: Shape it into a cone shape and start pouring…

Sharpen Scissors: Fold a sheet of foil several times and cut through it with a pair of dull scissors to sharpen the blades.

Reflect & Radiate Heat: Wrap a piece of plywood in foil and tuck it behind a radiator to reflect heat into the room.

Rust-free steel wool: Set your kitchen steel-wool scrubber on a piece of foil to keep rust away.

Shine Your Silver: Chemical reaction with the foil: Line a glass pan with foil, add several spoonfuls of baking soda and salt, fill the pan with boiling water, and drop in tarnished silver for a quick cleaning.

Fishing: Press some aluminum foil around a fishing hook, covering it completely, causing it to wiggle in the water.

Keep Stuff Dry: Wrap it tightly around things like matches, tinder, or anything you want to keep dry

DIY Faraday Wrap: To help protect a portable radio (or any device) from EMP. First completely insulate (wrap) device in a non-conductive material (Ziploc, paper bag, etc.). Then completely wrap the now-covered radio with foil. Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil works better due to the ‘skin depth effect’. Repeat procedure for greater effectiveness (insulate-foil-insulate-foil, etc..).

Signal Mirror: Use the reflective properties to form into a signaling device.

Cat Toy: Roll into a ball and let the fun begin…

Start a Fire With a Battery: Touch both ends of a battery – will generate heat and flame-out depending on battery.

Antenna Reception: Wrap a piece of foil around radio antenna for potential of increased reception. Don’t do this for transmitting.

Dryer: A scrunched up aluminum foil ball will help relieve static cling in the dryer.

Windows: Foil taped over windows will keep out summer heat.

My favorite aluminum foil is an 18″ roll (500′ long) which we purchased awhile ago. Being wider than the typical roll, it has more uses. For example it will cover an entire cookie sheet with one piece (e.g. cooking bacon!).

Though ours is Kirkland brand, the best equivalent deal I could find is ( this one ) on amzn.

Can you suggest more uses for aluminum foil??

[ Read: Uses for Ziploc Bags ]

40 Comments

  1. A lot of good uses ,We have not used aluminum foil for cooking however due to the leaching effect of aluminum into your food . Maybe a google search would help you make your own decision.Great site Ken. I look forward to your daily articles

    1. Northern Watchman, I’m wth you i have had enough sources of aluminum n my diet in the past, i simply don’t need anything else to interfere with my thinking ability. Very hard to get this stuff out of the brain… and when one adds fluoride to the mix,research has shown… it increases the toxicicity up to 100 times… think i’ll pass on that one too.

  2. It’s also useful for making pot lids to help water boil faster. Especially useful if you’re boiling water in one of those stainless steel water bottles so you don’t warp or melt the plastic cap. I keep a few feet in my B.O.B. for this reason and many others.

  3. Don’t forget about the tin foil hat. It keeps the gubment from beaming radio waves into our heads and brainwashing us.

    Note: don’t wear the tin foil hat during a lightning storm.the results could be bad. ⚡️🙄

    1. It also helps with the signal some when wrapped around a radio antenna.

      1. In the old days of rabbit ear TV antenna tin foil came in handy to pick up the weaker signals.

        1. Good point Mrs. U
          I remember the rabbit ears on the TV wrapped in foil. It would help us get one of the Chicago stations come in a little better. Then we got a long antenna cable and was able to put the rabbit ears in a window facing Chitown. That helped even more. That was before my parent went ‘big time’ and put an antenna on the roof.

  4. Shining silver
    I didn’t know that. Good idea.
    I bought a silver round from a pawn shop a few years ago and it was very tarnished. Should make it look like new.

  5. Have used aluminum foil to make little collars to put around the bases my little plants in the garden. Keeps snugs, caterpillars, and bugs away until the bases grow strong.

    1. This can deter slugs?? That would be amazing if I read that right. Thanks for the tip!

      1. Northern boy,
        It does work,
        Another one is to cut both sides off a used tin can, make sure label is off, place it over your small seedlings like a collar, that also deters them.
        Another one to deter slugs is sand, pour a border of sand around stuff you dont want slugs on, can add calcium to your soil too if source of sand is limestone

  6. Wrap around bottom couple of inches of squash plant stems before you transplant them into the garden. Keeps the squash vine borers from getting into the stems and munching on your plants.

  7. What NO instructions on how to make the “Tin Foil” hats??? What kind of site is this!!!

    1. It depends on the conspiracy site that you’re visiting. If it happens to be CNN, the Tin Foil hat needs to be very strong indeed! A slightly altered design for other conspiracy news sites such as ABC, NBC, and the rest ;) (must protect your brain from the programming!) But I digress…

      1. Sorry Gray One, where are my manners?
        After decades of research, I found the simplest way to make a tin foil hat is to line the inside of a baseball cap. However, when sizing, make sure you leave enough material on the sides to be used as ear flaps. Regular MSM like ABC, CBS, and NBC, you don’t need to have the ear flaps down. But, if CNN or MSNBC is on, you REALLY need to have the flaps down. That is because they put out an especially deadly ray, called the BS ray. So have the flaps down when those stations are on to protect from the BS ray. The last one is most important. If you are watching CSPAN and someone like AOC comes on, you need to have a grounding wire connected to the tin hat. Otherwise the BS+ rays could fry your brain.
        Ohhh, don’t forget the chin strap. Don’t want the hat to fall off.

        Again, decades of research.

        Hope this helps

        1. INPrep
          Thanks for the most informative instructions, but I was wondering if the ear
          flap needed to be doubled with the grounding strap for AOC?

        2. No need. Any sort of grounding would cancel her entirely. The increased strength of the BS ray is negated if she herself is cancelled.

        3. Kbay
          With AOC you need to make tin foil ear plugs as well so the stupid doesnt infiltrate your cranial cavity when she speaks

        4. Thanks Kula, Ear plug of aluminum have thusly
          been attached direct to the ear flaps to facilitate
          rapid protection. Great reminder.

        5. Hahaha!

          Thanks for the information, know I feel much better and a “head” of the game since I have many baseball caps and tin foil already.

  8. I made a tin foil ornament for the garden to scare birds away. After I got it mounted on a rod I went out to look at how it was doing and a bird was sitting on it.

    1. My friend planted some sunflowers a couple years ago. He ran string about two feet off the ground all over the plot. He put little streamers of foil on the string to keep birds from getting the seeds. Even in a very light breeze they would move. It kept the birds away.

  9. We use it to seal exhaust pipe joints on our semi trucks and heavy equipment.

  10. 18″x 500 ft rolls of the heavy duty foil can be bought at sams club for 16 dollars. 1 roll will last us 8-9 months. we have 5 rolls put back and it will not spoil.

  11. Can be used to modify any glasses into snow goggles to prevent snow blindness. Make small slits in two pieces of foil and attach each piece to the glasses- one per eye.

  12. Years ago, on a week long fishing trip, blew the head gasket on my Sears Gamefisher single cylinder outboard motor the second day of the trip. Folded aluminum foil about eight ply thickness. Using the cylinder head and a hammer to imprint all the bolt holes, cylinder, and water journals, I cut the flattened foil to fit. This makeshift head gasket lasted over ten years until I sold the boat and motor. I had bought a new factory head gasket when I got back to civilization, but kept the new one as a spare…….never needed it.

    When I was a teenager, we would use aluminum foil to hide the rust on a chrome car bumper. Wad up a ball of foil, use it like a scrubber on the rusted surface, it will fill in the rust pits and leave behind a veneer of aluminum, hiding the rust spots.

  13. For a fishing lure!!!….?….!!! Life-long fisherman here and I never thought of that but I can’t wait to get out and try it. My hunch is it will be a killer! The reason I say that is that here in Michigan we they used to sell what we called ‘shiners’, either emerald or golden. They were similar to the goldfish that have the flat tail, not the triple triangle shaped, bright silver in color. They were killers! You were guaranteed fish. In the water, the sun would reflect off them like a mirror. Always brought in the predator fish. Then, because of a disease (VHS) that infected all of the great lakes, they had to be “certified VHS free”, which made them not cost-effective to sell.

    This is great. I’ll let you know what happens.

    Also, I wrap my celery in aluminum foil. Will last a month in the fridge. Don’t get it but it works!

    1. How does a head of celery even need to last a month? I’m alone and I go through an entire head of celery each week–it never gets a chance to go bad in my house :)

  14. – Have to agree about the brisket! We used to wrap a meal in a double layer of foil (be sure to leave a bit of room for expansion) and toss the resulting packet into the coals of a campfire for an easy meal. (Ex. Hamburger patty, onions and french fries, about 15 minutes per side)
    – Papa S.

  15. Went to the hairdresser today – first time in months. Gray is growing in unevenly so get a color job every 6 months or so. My hairdresser uses foil to separate color strands. When she was finished applying the color I glanced in the mirror. A custom-made tin foil hat! Took a selfie and sent it to some friends. Looked deliciously ridiculous. Hee hee hee hoo hoo ha ha chortle snort.

  16. My cat likes to play with a loosely scrunched up ball of aluminum foil…I scrunch it up loosely so if I happen to step on it in the dark, it just smooshes and doesn’t hurt my foot.

  17. I use foil under my potted plants when I bring them inside, better than trays because you can make it higher to prevent over flow spills.

    I use foil behind my plants to double the suns power when I don’t get much sunlight growing outdoors.

    I use flat foil behind my lamps in a power outage and it increases the light there too.

  18. My go to favorite these days is Reynolds non-stick foil which I use most of the time when I light the gas grill in order to slow-cook odd shaped pieces of meat like whole chickens, porketta roasts, beef brisket. shoulder roasts with bone-in.

    I cook on top of an old cookie sheet that supports the weight and acts as a heat shield. The foil keeps the juices and spices locked in for low and slow cooking.

    Since foil is delicate and to prevent ripping during turning of the meat, I have also placed the foil envelope on a piece of chicken wire to aid in turning the packet over midway through cooking.

    Foil is used to roast vegetables over a BBQ as well. Very handy stuff around my kitchen.

  19. – Thought this might be the best place to post this. When you are forced to use a smaller than prescribed battery for something (for example, a “C” battery in a “D” flashlight; Hey, it happens) put a wad of aluminum foil under the bottom to fill the space and retain conductivity. Try to avoid smashing it against the side of the flashlight, you might have to use cardboard or tape around the battery, but you can have a working item.

    – Papa S.

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