Recipe 52 of 100 · The Country Cleans Mix Book
How to Get Blood Out of Sheets and Clothes, Even Dried
Cold Water Trick
Blood is protein, and heat cooks it into the fiber for good. Rinse fresh blood cold from the back of the fabric, then soak 30 minutes in 4 cups cold water with 2 tablespoons salt. For dried blood, spread a paste of unseasoned meat tenderizer and 2 teaspoons lukewarm water on the spot for 30 minutes. Rinse cold, wash cold, air dry only.
What it fixesFresh and dried blood on clothing, sheets, and towels.
You need
- 4 cups cold water (950 ml)
- 2 tablespoons table salt
- 1 tablespoon unseasoned meat tenderizer, spice aisle
- 2 teaspoons lukewarm water, separate, for the paste, no warmer than about 100°F
- 1 bowl
- 1 small dish
Mix it
- Fill the bowl with the 4 cups of cold water and stir in the salt until dissolved. This is your soak.
- In the small dish, stir the meat tenderizer with 2 teaspoons of lukewarm water into a thin paste. This is your dried-blood step. Body temperature is the target, so if it feels hot on the inside of your wrist it is too hot.
- Every drop of water in this recipe is cold except the two teaspoons in the tenderizer paste. The rinse is cold, the soak is cold, the wash is cold. The paste is the one exception and it never goes above about 100°F.
Use it
- Fresh blood: rinse the back of the fabric under cold running water so the blood pushes out the way it came in, not deeper through the weave.
- Drop the item in the cold salt water and soak thirty minutes, agitating a few times.
- Dried blood: skip ahead and spread the tenderizer paste directly over the dried spot instead. Leave it thirty minutes, then rub gently with your thumb.
- Rinse cold, check the stain in good light, and repeat the step you used if any shadow remains. Cold rinse even after the paste.
- Wash cold and air dry only.
Dale's noteBlood is protein. Heat above roughly 100°F cooks that protein and welds it to the fiber the same way an egg sets in a pan, and once it is cooked in, nothing takes it out. That is the whole reason for cold water, and it is also why the dryer is off limits until the stain is confirmed gone. Unseasoned meat tenderizer contains papain, an enzyme that literally digests protein, which is why it beats soap on dried blood. Papain is the reason the paste gets lukewarm water instead of cold. The enzyme barely moves at cold tap temperature and the dried blood step does nothing, so you want it warm enough for the papain to work and cool enough that you are not cooking the protein into the fiber. Body temperature, right in the middle, is the whole window.
Don'tDo not take the tenderizer paste past lukewarm, and do not use hot water, a warm wash, or the dryer anywhere else in this process, and do not substitute seasoned meat tenderizer. The seasoned version contains paprika and other colored spices that will leave an orange stain worse than the blood.
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