Keep Your Beeswax Wraps Wrapping For Years To Come With These Simple Tips!
Beeswax wraps bring us joy! It's such a simple thing, but the feeling of using a natural, reusable option for covering leftovers or storing food (like cheese, bread, fruit and more) in place of a disposable plastic option is just so good. Plus, with cute, fun and bright options from companies like BeesKnees, it makes us happy just looking at our beeswax wraps!
These wraps are easy to care for! Read on to find out the best ways to care for and rejuvenate them at every stage of their life.
Regular Cleaning
You’ll find that your beeswax wrap will usually not get too dirty, in which case a rinse with cool water is more than sufficient before hanging or laying it out to dry. When needed, you may use a bit of dish soap, lukewarm water and a sponge, cloth or gentle scrubber to clear debris from the wrap before rinsing with cool water.
Refreshing Your Beeswax Wrap
After a certain amount of bending, creasing and wrapping (often after about a year), a beeswax wrap will have lost quite a bit of its stick. It will be soft, a bit powdery, and most noticeably, just won’t stick to itself around food the way it used to. Don’t despair! It's so easy to refresh a wrap that’s in this state.
Here’s how: set your oven to its lowest temperature (usually this is around 150F). Lay your beeswax flat on a baking sheet and place in the oven. After a minute or two, check to see if the wax is starting to melt. Once it’s melted, remove from the oven and hold the wrap up by its corners until it re-hardens. You can then lay it out on a flat surface. Voila! You’ve got a sticky wrap again!
As an alternative to the oven, you can use a hair dryer, or even lay the wrap out on a cookie sheet in the sun on a hot day.
HOT TIP: To keep the wax from getting on your baking sheet, place a sheet of parchment paper underneath. If you use the same parchment paper each time, you can even get the benefit of a wax residue building up on the paper. If you do dispose of the parchment paper, remember that it, and the wax, are compostable.
Replenishing the Wax
Eventually, your wrap will wear out even beyond the non-sticky state. Yes, this is sad, but take a moment to reflect on how many different types of food, leftovers and containers this one wrap has covered and picture the plastic wrap that would have gone into the waste system if not for this wrap!
Even if your wrap is looking quite worn out and wax is flaking off, you can replenish it to use for quite a bit longer!
First, if the wrap is stained and you feel its warranted, this is the time to either soak your wrap in a sink of cool, soapy water, or take the opportunity to scrub the wrap with hot, soapy water. Don’t do this second option any other time, as you may notice some wax come off, but since we’ll be replacing that shortly, now is an appropriate time to do a deep clean. Another option for stains is to hang the wrap in bright sunlight for a couple hours.
Next, follow the steps for refreshing your wrap, but before heating, grate a small amount of natural beeswax (using a regular cheese grater) onto the spots where new wax is needed, or all over. Just remember that only a little grated beeswax is needed! Simply follow the steps for refreshing as usual, and your beeswax wrap is ready to use for a few more months!
You can follow this cycle of care indefinitely — beeswax wraps can last for years when cared for properly!
