If your kitchen’s small, a full-size colander is an awkward thing to own. It doesn’t nest with anything, it’s too big for most drawers, and you use it for about forty seconds at a time.
A clip-on strainer handles most of what that colander does while taking up about as much room as a spatula. The AUOON Clip On Strainer is a curved piece of food-grade silicone, roughly 8.9 by 3.5 inches, with a clip on each end. You fix it to the rim of your pot, tip the pot over the sink, and the water drains out through the slots while the pasta stays put.
The good bit is that you never have to pour everything into something else and then pour it back. The food stays in the pot, so you can drain the pasta, put it straight back on the hob and toss in the sauce.
Pasta, boiled potatoes, green beans, rinsing a tin of chickpeas in a bowl, and pouring off grease from browned mince all work well. It’s heat-resistant to 230°C, so boiling water is fine, and it goes in the dishwasher.
The clips adjust to fit pots, pans and bowls of different sizes, but very thick rims or unusually shaped pans can be fiddly. It’s also not a substitute for a fine mesh sieve. Rice, quinoa or anything tiny will slip through the slots. And a very large, full stockpot is heavy to tip one-handed however good the strainer is, so for big batches you’ll still want to take care.
For everyday cooking for one to four people, though, this could easily replace your colander, and the green version is bright enough that you won’t lose it at the back of a drawer.
