Every family has one person who’s an ace at opening sticky jar lids. It isn’t me! When I was a kid, the go-to jar person was my younger sister, Sue. Everyone in the family, including Dad, would take a turn at a jar lid that wouldn’t budge, and finally we’d hand it to Sue, and pop! — off it would come. “You loosened it for me,” she would always say, modestly.
I had a new jar of crushed ginger recently that I just couldn’t open. I tried using one of those flat rubber disks that companies and organizations plaster with their logos and give away as jar openers. No luck. I put a wide rubber band around the lid, which sometimes helps. It still wouldn’t budge, for me or for my husband. Finally I put another rubber band around the jar itself, and whaddya know, the lid finally popped.
I don’t know if it’s because the rubber band makes the jar less slippery in your hands or if somehow it equalizes the pressure in the jar, but putting a wide rubber bank around the lid AND around the jar can often do the trick when all else fails.
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The rubber bands give you something to grip, that’s why it works. But where rubber bands come from is still a mystery!
My magical ability to open jars as a kid must have disappeared as an adult–for years I’ve been handing jars off to my husband and sons to open! And I have no memory that even my dad would pass them to me–really? Anyway, nowadays I use those rubber grippers, but also find that tapping the lid against a counter top loosens the vacuum seal.
If the jar has a vacuum seal, you can put the point of a butter knife under the rim of the lid and twist it a little. It will break the seal. Sometimes a old fashioned bottle opener will work.
Thanks, Rhonda! I’ll have to try that next time!