The Salt Hack That'll Make Your Silverware Shiny As New Again

Silverware goes through a lot each day, whether it's a spoon helping you slurp up tomato bisque or your fork getting tossed into the dishwasher. Over time, you may notice that it's started to lose its gleam. You may be tempted to hop online and find the top rated silverware polish, but these can become expensive and only really serve one purpose. Instead, consider using what you almost certainly already have on hand: table salt. Well, table salt, baking soda, and aluminum foil, that is. This is easily one of the simplest and best ways to clean your silverware. 

Silverware, whether it's solid silver or silver-plated metal, becomes tarnished due to exposure to sulfur-leaden gasses. When put in a foil-lined pot of boiling water with salt and baking soda, the two ingredients trigger an electrolytic reaction, which causes the tarnish to transfer from the silverware to the foil. You don't need to get fancy with the salt either — just good old sodium chloride (aka table salt) will do just fine. Do not use Epsom salt, because, despite being classified as salt, it's not actually chemically comparable. All you need to shine up your silverware easily and affordably are the common household cleaning ingredients and items we listed above, a pot of hot water, a colander, and a towel for drying and polishing. Here's how to try out this silverware polishing method.

First, choose your pot. It needs to be deep enough that your silverware can be fully submerged in 2 to 3 inches of water; you may have to do this in batches depending on how much silverware you want to polish. Take a large sheet of aluminum foil and line the interior of the pot with it, shiny side-up. Place the silverware on the bottom of the pan and cover with water, adding 1 teaspoon each of salt and baking soda, then bring the water to a boil. Allow the silverware to boil for about four minutes per batch, and watch as the tarnish falls off and attaches itself to the aluminum foil. Once the shine is restored, use tongs to remove the utensils and place in a colander so you can easily rinse them in cold water. 

Repeat this process until all of your silverware is done, then give each piece a final dry and polish. Throw away the foil and be sure to thoroughly clean the pot you boiled your silverware in to prevent any possible cross contamination. Thanks to a little chemistry, you can enjoy scrub-free polished and clean silverware with the help of common kitchen ingredients and household items.