Peat Safe Cookware?

[jyb]

I use a regular steel kettle, pour it into a cup of grounded coffee. I then filter the coffee into another cup with a cheese/butter cloth, the same I use for orange juice. The cloth is much better than paper filters. Doesn't take too long to rinse after use.

The only possible leeching of unwanted substance occurs in the kettle. But I only heat the amount of water needed and pour as soon as heated, so I hope its not too bad.

 

[BingDing]

I use a regular steel kettle, pour it into a cup of grounded coffee. I then filter the coffee into another cup with a cheese/butter cloth, the same I use for orange juice. The cloth is much better than paper filters. Doesn't take too long to rinse after use.

The only possible leeching of unwanted substance occurs in the kettle. But I only heat the amount of water needed and pour as soon as heated, so I hope its not too bad.

Cool, jyb. I sort of knew there were some issues with paper filters but never thought of using cheese cloth. I tried it with the chemex carafe and it worked great. Thanks!

 

[AdamCapriola]

Is the Farberware skillet adequate for scrambled eggs? The set looks nice and I'm close to pulling the trigger on it, but a good pan for cooking up eggs is a must for me.

 

[napswish]

Hello, I have a question on the Faberware Millenium series. I've noticed that many stainless steel sets have 18/0 bottoms but not 18/0 sides and innards. For example, the magnet might stick strongly to the bottom of the pan but not to the insides, where the food actually contacts the metal. For those who own the set, could you let me know whether a magnet sticks strongly to all surfaces? I'd like to make sure they're legit 18/0 throughout before I pull the trigger. Sadly, this information has been near impossible to find online on my own.

Thanks!

 

[charlie]

Yes, the magnet sticks strongly on all surfaces.

 

[BingDing]

But, but...the magnet would still stick on the inside bottom even if it was 18/10 as long as the outside is 18/0. Depending on how thick the layers were it might stick pretty well. A definitive test would be to put something like 10 pieces of paper, or a matchbook cover or the like, over each bottom surface and see if it stuck with the same strength. Then try 20 sheets, then 30, until the magnetic force lessens. If it lessens equally there can be no question that inside and outside are both 18/0.

Anybody game?

 

[jyb]

Is the Farberware skillet adequate for scrambled eggs? The set looks nice and I'm close to pulling the trigger on it, but a good pan for cooking up eggs is a must for me.

I've seen some cute glass pans. Glass cookware is awesome. You cook your eggs for several hours, and I'm guessing the ashes still wouldn't be contaminated with cookware iron or nickel or other stuff. Then you could clean it with whatever method without any risk of scratching, but you wouldn't need to scratch hard because glass is easier to clean.

 

[Jenn]

Glass works well for eggs and much easier to clean egg out of a glass skillet than stainless steel.

 

[jyb]

It's been established that a lot of the food packaging or bottle lining leach chemicals that display estrogenic activity. What do you think of the following typical packages:

Milk: HPDE - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/, it find that for some of the liquids tested, even some of the "unstressed" HPDE leach estrogenic chemicals

Orange juice in plastic bottles: PET. OJ is acid, maybe this promotes more leaching than usual. But I think the longer it waits on the shelve, the more it leaks, so maybe the "freshly squeezed" brands should be favored. On the other hand, the concentrate brands might sit on the shelve longer, but there's less vitamin C and maybe the concentrate juice promotes less leaching.

Orance juice in carton / Tetra Paks: apparently the inside lining of these Paks is PET + aluminium foil (doesn't sound good).

 

[charlie]

Poisoned at every turn.

 

[jyb]

Poisoned at every turn.

Not necessarily, need to find out. For example, for OJ, is these packaging worth it or are they so bad that it is much preferable to do fresh OJ? And for milk for example, is it so bad that one should only buy very large bottles (less surface per volume so less leached per cup) and zero fat (more fat can mean more leaching)? It's open to debate.

 

[charlie]

I wonder if thats why people are having estrogen problems with milk.

 

[jyb]

Anyone know about the safety of steel based coffee makers (the percolators type that you put over the stove)? Most of them are steel with nickel (not 18/0), ie non-magnetic. RP has written about how the nickel cookware is toxic, but at the same this allows one to make good coffee (more caffeine and magnesium than drip coffee), so I wonder if its worth it.

I've found one which seems to be 18/0 for the lower part (the one exposed to the flame) and I believe 18/10 upper part.

 

[Jib]

I use a Silit frying pan. It was expensive, but it's extremely well made and is absolutely beautiful. It's non-stick, very easy to clean, and very durable.

Enameled cast iron seems to be another good option.

 

[BingDing]

I found another SS cookware set that I'm pretty confident about. It's a store brand at Kohl's and I could check it out at for myself in the store, link. Magnetic force is the same (as far as I could tell) inside and out and seems to stay the same with spacers under the magnet. Even the gizmos and lid trims are magnetic. Two answers by Kohl staff say there is no nickel in the set.

Also, they have an 8 piece set on sale for $40. They look the same but not in stock in the store I was at.

Going a little overboard prolly but here's an 18/00 SS colander. If you happen to need a colander...

 

[BingDing]

On the coffee front, here's a glass dripper. Thoroughly explained on the site.

 

[loess]

Overstock.com states that this "Cook N Home" set is 18/0 SS and the price is not too shabby:
http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Co ... oduct.html

I may order that one, but I might as well ask if it's OK: would anyone with the Farberware Millennium set be willing to sell me the smallest (1 quart) covered saucepan if perhaps you aren't using it? I will be traveling extensively this summer in my van and I only really use cookware these days for heating small amounts of liquids, frying liver and meat and steaming oysters. I can do all of that in one pot; buying an entire cookware set is kind of overkill for my needs and takes up a lot of space.

 

[djrachman]

I searched the whole internet to find the answer to this, as surprisingly, nobody here gives the full answer. Finally I found it, so I thought I'd come back here and post my findings.

First of all, Peat's information to buy stainless steel that sticks with a magnet is nothing but provacative and is frustratingly uninformative. 18/10 (300 series) and 18/0 (400 series) cookware both stick to magnets (they're made that way to work on induction cooktops), however the 400 series sticks much stronger because of the lack of nickel. Because of Peat's concern for nickel, you'd assume he means to get the 400 series, which has 0% nickel, instead of the 300 series, which is 10% nickel. However, after significant research, I'd get the 300 over the 400.

Here's what you need to know:
Probably the safest cookware isn't Stainless Steel- it's enameled cast iron. Enameled Cast Iron is perfectly safe as long as the interior of the dish is white - the lack of color very likely indicating a lack of lead in the enamal (colored enamels more often have lead). Le Creuset makes a model but it's super expensive. The Lodge makes one that's nearly as good at 1/6 the price. http://www.amazon.com/Lodge-EC6D43-Enam ... ql_qh_dp_t

Second best option is Stainless Steel. Obviously you can't buy the cheapo 200 series, which releases a bunch of metal. So you're left choosing between the 300 (18/10) and 400 (18/0) series. The 400 series can have as low as >1% Nickel, which sounds like a great option. But here's the problem... it's much more corrosive than the 300 series, and although there's no nickel to leach in the 400 series, it has higher total release rates of metal than the 300 series, with the vast majority of the release being iron. (This info can be found in page 30 of the study provided in the forthcoming link.) Lastly, it's very hard to find pans that are 18/0 on the exterior and interior. Typically they'll be 18/0 on the exterior (for induction) and 18/10 on the interior. The only one I found that MIGHT be 18/0 on the inside and out is the Farberware Millenium Set, but honestly I don't care. A good quality 300 series (like All-Clad) is a better option. Once the sets are scratched, pitted, corroded and damaged, the release rates of metals is much higher. A quality 300 series set could last multiple lifetimes with little wear. The 400 series isn't likely to last 10 years without damage.

The remainder of my response is lifted from the comments section of gnowfglins.com's article on The Scoop on Stainless Steel Cookware, written by user Holly Gates. It sums it all up nicely:

300 series stainless is generally speaking more corrosion resistant than 400 series, meaning that less of the metal would get into your food).

Here is a very pertinent survey conducted by the government of Finland in 2010:

http://www.ttl.fi/en/publications/elect ... _steel.pdf

The study, titled “Review on Toxicity of Stainless Steel” is 87 pages long, with several dense pages of references at the end. For each potential area of concern with stainless affecting human health in every situations, the findings of numerous scientific studies are assessed and evaluated in light of EU guidelines for toxic material exposure. Whether or not you put any stock in the EU guidelines, the amounts and types of material which are found to transfer from stainless to food are interesting to think about.

As pointed out by others here, the main constituents of the stainless steels used in foodware are (300 and 400 series) are iron, nickel, and chromium. The materials of potential concern would be the nickel and chromium. In these alloys, the availability of nickel is found to be less than 0.1% of what it would be from a similar proportion of bulk nickel metal. The exception is alloy variants with sulfur added, typically to enhance machinability. These are not used for foodware. Even people hypersensitive to nickel (i.e. skin allergy) experience no reaction from intimate and lengthy contact with 304 or 316 stainless.

The availability of chromium however is approximately equal to what would be predicted given its proportion of the alloy. The question is how much chromium is coming off the metal during typical food preparation and storage activities.

The Finnish report finds that for medium to high pH range, even at cooking temperatures and with prolonged storage, essentially nothing transfers from the stainless to the food. Low pH materials result in some transfer.

One study cited in the report looked at storage of pickled lemon in stainless, which is lower pH than almost anything else you would think of using in the kitchen (pH 2.1). Kombucha is 3-4, pure white vinegar is 2.4. Other studies looked at prolonged boiling of low-ish ph foods in stainless. What was generally the result was that while some chromium and nickel transferred to the food, the actual amount was something like 10 times less than typical intake of these metals from the food itself (25ug/kg food is typical).

Exceptions are with the first few uses of new pots, and with some types of welds.

Many surgical implants and medical devices are made from 316L. This is because it is among the least reactive materials with biological systems that can be produced and worked at a reasonable cost.

To me, knowing that my food itself contains 10x the amount of what is coming off my pot makes me feel quite comfortable with the safety of my 304 stainless.
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I hope this lays this issue to bed once and for all. For those of you wondering, here's the set I wound up purchasing: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00421 ... UTF8&psc=1

 

[loess]

Awesome post, thanks for sharing the results of your research. I, too, went on an exhaustive Google quest a few months ago in search of more concrete details to corroborate Peat's rather vague musings on magnets and cookware and came up mostly empty-handed. In the end I decided to go with a couple of discounted barely-used Farberware 18/10 pots and pans found on eBay, and they have performed quite well. Funnily enough, my PUFA and iron avoidance efforts were thwarted pretty heavily recently while spending two weeks visiting and working at a friend's farm where most of the meals were prepared communally on cast-iron cookware in sunflower or canola oil. Was kind of a bummer at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I relaxed and realized that friends and compromise won hands down over isolation and purity. :)

 

[koganmj]

Would the "Egg Rollie" be considered safe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XILbEZlS0U