What is the best, safest and healthiest cookware material?

flakjak #1 - 7 months ago
View Source I like to cook eggs but I can see the material on the pan is starting to wear away. I bought it about a year ago from Walmart for $5. What is the best material and/or brand that won't cause me to ingest harmful materials that erode away from the pan?
the$aint #2 - 7 months ago
View Source

Short answer: STAINLESS STEEL with Copper bottom (or aluminum instead of copper to save you money)

  • What I bought: T-Fal Ultimate Stainless Steel Copper Bottom Cookware 12 Piece Set, $108 from Amazon - the lowest priced, highest reviewed, and most copper set I could find. And these T-Fal sets have glass lids, which I like because you can see what you're cooking.
  • my 2nd choice: T-Fal Performance Stainless Steel Copper Bottom Cookware 10 Piece Set, now $101 from Amazon but was $120 when I was shopping. Tempting because there's more copper and a more uniform copper distribution on the bottoms, but I couldn't find any other differences between this set and the "Ultimate" set above, so I went with the Ultimate series to get more pieces for my money.
  • my 3rd choice - Cuisinart Chef's Classic Stainless Steel 10 piece set or 12 piece set I considered these because they seem like a good value for the price...also in the $100-$150 price range, but they don't have copper bottoms. They use aluminum as the conductive material. And they have steel lids, so you can't see what you're cooking.
  • If I had a million dollars: a Mauviel Copper Cookware set -- scroll to the bottom of that page to read the story behind Mauviel, which came from "the city of copper"

2 more brands or sets that have religious/cultish followings, but out of my price range:

Oh, and make sure you don't get stainless steel with rubberized handles like this popular Rachael Ray Stainless Steel cookware set, because then it's not as safe to cook stuff in the oven.

Now, the long story: I was visiting my mom over Christmas break and went into the kitchen to boil some water to make some coffee. Every single pot I pulled out of the cupboards was that cheap cookware from Walmart or a dollar store probably, and the bottoms were speckled silver and black. Hmm...I thought...what happened to all that black non-stick coating? WE ATE IT! That's what!

My mom is a strong woman and a great cook and I love her. But while I respect her tendency to just get stuff done, it's not so good that when she made macaroni and cheese or rice a roni or many other dishes and some food was stuck or baked onto the bottom of the pot, she'd just whip out a metal spoon and scrape that junk off.

So, after the ill green feeling from realizing how much Dupont or whatever company's chemicals were in my body already, trying to turn some of my beautiful, precious, healthy cells into cancer cells...whoa, that was a mouthful...after that horrible feeling passed on, I started thinking about all her pots and pans, and all my pots and pans...or, as they apparently call it in the "biz"...all her cookware and all my cookware and how I should get some safe cookware or healthier cookware or whatever you want to call it. Cookware that will do less to kill me faster, etc.

I did several hours of research the next weekend -- and, yes, that entire week before I did the reserach, I grimaced every single time I pulled out my own non-stick cookware to cook something, but then thought...Just suck it up and cook this stuff now. You need to eat. What's another week gonna hurt? -- and here's what I discovered. (And when I discovered this, I bought my new cookware as fast as I possibly could because I thought again...Really, what's another week gonna hurt? Probably more than I want.)

Non-stick cookware is bad...OR PROBABLY bad...OR at least MAYBE bad... Either way, it's way too controversial for me to mess with it. Especially when I think about how it doesn't seem all that easier than "stick" cookware (I guess that's the opposite, right?).

I don't know about you, but when I used my old non-stick cookware, I also felt like I always had to use non-stick pan spray or oil or something to help the food not stick so bad. So if you have to use something extra, it's not like the pan is doing all the work anyway.

I read several places that the government recently found that chemicals like PTFE and PFOA that are used in non-stick coatings have been causing cancer and birth defects and high cholesterol levels and all kinds of bad stuff for a long time. And pretty much everyone agrees -- even the instructions and product descriptions on non-stick cookware warn about this -- that non-stick cookware that gets too hot will emit toxic fumes. NOT GOOD.

Plus -- back to my mom's major problem -- all the non-stick cookware instructions say that you shouldn't use metal utensils because it will damage the non-stick coating. And that kinda stinks because I constantly have to remember not to use a regular fork or spoon when I was cooking with non-stick cookware. Personally, I'd rather just get some cookware that doesn't have all these questionable chemicals in it so I don't have to worry about using whatever utensil I have in my hand at the time.

Cast iron cookware puts extra iron in your food. Some people say this is a health benefit. Some people say it's a health hazard. Personally, I believe it's a health hazard because I get plenty of iron from the foods I eat already. And I even use Centrum Silver (the multivitamin for old people) instead of regular Centrum vitamins because the Silver kind doesn't have iron.

And you have to "season" cast iron skillets, and I saw so many articles and videos around the web with instructions for seasoning cast iron that I thought...hmmm, that must be quite a process and I don't have time to hassle with that.

Then I thought WWJD? What Would Julia Do? Yeah, it's cheesy but I had recently watched the movie Julie and Julia and thought about how it always seems that Julia Child and awesome chefs on TV and movie scenes of nice restaurant kitchens show a bunch of silver and copper pans all over the place. So I investigated copper and stainless steel cookware.

Turns out, most "copper cookware" today is actually STAINLESS STEEL with a copper bottom, or a copper outer shell, or a copper layer inside.

Copper is great for cookware performance because it conducts heat the best of all these cookware materials, so it heats quickly, and you can adjust the temperature more exactly. But having copper in your food is unhealthy, so they use stainless steel inside the cookware.

Stainless steel, it turns out, is the consensus pick for safest cookware material...you want stainless steel touching your food. But stainless steel doesn't conduct heat very well. Copper conducts heat 10x better than stainless steel. Aluminum conducts heat 5x better than stainless steel. Copper conducts heat 2x better than aluminum.

So you want copper or aluminum layers added to the bottom -- or, ideally the bottom AND the sides of your cookware, for ultimate performance -- so the heat actually gets to your food.

Lesson learned...if you want safe cookware and healthy cookware, but also the best performing cookware, think stainless steel with as much copper as you can afford, or aluminum in place of copper to save you money.

Cookware features I decided that I wanted....

  • I wanted stainless steel, because it's safest cookware material, not putting toxic crap in my food.
  • I wanted copper bottoms, because it's "the best" and better heat conduction means less energy required, so it also seems a bit "green" or environmentally friendly.
  • I wanted glass lids, because even though the pros use opaque lids, it's just more practical for me to be able to see what I'm cooking without removing the lid.

So again, here's what I bought and I would buy again.

A few tips and observations from using my stainless steel cookware

  • To cook or fry EGGS, use pan spray, not oil. I use oil for everything else, but I have to use pan spray for eggs or they'll stick.
  • Yes, a little more stuff sticks to my stainless steel pans than my old non-stick pans. So they're a little harder to clean, but not much, and definitely not enough to make me want to switch back to non-stick. For tough stuff, I just put in some hot water and dish soap and let it set for a while. And I use a blue nylon scrubby sponge. Works like a charm.
  • The copper WILL change colors. Don't sweat it. No biggie. Doesn't affect the performance or safety, etc. It's natural. Just a warning because my cookware looked SO beautiful straight out of the box and I was a little disheartened the first time I saw the color change.
  • Get some Bar Keeper's Friend. It's like magic for removing stubborn stains or if you get a little buildup now and then. It's in a container that looks like Comet. I grabbed one from my local Walmart. It's right by the Comet. You can also get it from Amazon. Here's the regular Bar Keepers Friend (the kind I got) and here's the Bar Keepers Friend Cookware version...guess it's specially made for cookware, but I bet the normal kind is just as good.

Wow, that was a lonnnnnnnng post. Hope it was helpful.

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