Everyone knows this struggle. You’re in the middle of cooking and you need to open a jar of pasta sauce…and low and behold, the jar will not open. No matter WHAT you do. Don’t get discouraged, this isn’t necessarily an insult to your strength! Sometimes, food will get stuck on the inside of the lid and harden, locking the lid very firmly into place. Even more frequently, the vacuum seal on the jar is just super intense. Don’t let this cooking struggle stop your flow in the kitchen. You can open up that tricky jar lid in a snap, and you don’t need superhuman strength to do it.

America’s Test Kitchen has some pretty brilliant techniques for opening up the trickiest of jar lids, and we’re going to share them with you! Never feel like you lost to a inanimate object again, not with these clever tricks.

Tip 1: Improve Your Grip

You need to get a grip. Literally.

Those jar tops are often supper slippery, and it doesn’t help when your hand starts getting all sweaty and tired from the exertion. Getting a firmer grip on the slick jar lid is a fool-proof way to pry it right off.

Try using a piece of plastic wrap, a rubber band around the jar, or a rubber glove that you’d use for the dishes or cleaning, to get a really solid grip on your jar lid. It should make the task at hand much easier!

Tip 2: Wooden Spoon

When the vacuum seal on your jar doesn’t want to give, you just need to break up some of the air bubbles under the lid. Do this by taking a wooden spoon and rapping it around the edge of the lid. This will break up the air bubbles and release that air-tight vacuum seal.

Tip 3: Submerge In Water

For really tricky jars, we need to break out the big guns: a pie plate and water. Serious, we know.

Fill the pie plate with water and turn your jar upside down in the water, so that the stuck lid is completely submerged. This will help loosen up the vacuum seal and allow the lid to easily pop off. Let the lid soak for at least 30 seconds under water for the best results.

Tip 4: Prevent Stickiness

Like we said, sometimes food can stick a jar shut. This happens often with sticky substances, like honey. To keep food fresh and keep the lid from sticking, put a sheet of plastic wrap over the mouth of the jar before screwing the top back on. No sticky situations for you.

Now go forth and leave no tough jar unopened! You have nothing to fear from sticky jar lids, not with these easy-to-remember tips.

Do you open up a tricky jar in a particular way? Share your technique in the comments section below.