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Comment by xmodem | Hacker News Reader

Wood is not dishwasher safe, metal will damage the cookware's non-stick coating, which may be worse than the plastic I'm trying to avoid. I guess that leaves silicone.

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I have wood spoons that go in the dishwasher multiple times per week for years and they're fine.

It's why I like wood. You don't need to baby it, and if it breaks down, you throw it out and it returns to the earth.

For what it's worth, I stopped using non-stick cookware in favour of carbon steel and haven't missed it.

My carbon steel pans are essentially non-stick and a fraction of the weight of my cast iron ones. They're cheaper than their stainless All-Clad counterparts. They're a pleasure to cook with.

Sure, you can get a cheap non-stick pan that may or may not give you cancer, but why? I'm in my 40s and since I can remember thought it made no sense to cook with plastic anything. My parents still cook with the same wooden spoons my dad brought back from Algeria before I was born. The pans will last multiple lifetimes. The same can't be said for their plastic and non-stick counterparts.

I spent some time fiddling with seasoning, etc. but at this point I just cook like normal, use a bit more oil with eggs (still not much), and keep steel wool handy. Some people decry steel wool but for me it works great and the pan is a delight.

If we're talking about health and cookware, you're not going to want nonstick cookware.

Didn't read the whole comment did you?

It's fine if it's not scratched and you don't overheat it.

> don't overheat it

Good luck with that. Temperature isn't perfect and hot pockets of higher temperatures form.

The problem temperature is 260°C which can easily be avoided by not heating an empty pan (oil/liquids will distribute the heat more evenly) and you'd be unlikely to want to cook at that kind of temperature.

Teflon is not very thermally conductive, so the bottom contacting the metal substrate may be at a significantly higher temperature than the top. Chemistry reactions have activation energies, and you can generally always trade temperature for time. If it happens in a minute at 260 C, it will still happen at 200 C, just slower.

> If it happens in a minute at 260 C, it will still happen at 200 C, just slower.

I don't think that's particularly accurate unless you're considering the action of individual atoms. e.g. Water is considered to boil at 100°C but there will be some water evaporating at lower temperatures but this is a different process that only occurs at the surface. I don't think it's accurate to say that water is "slowly boiling" at low temperatures unless you're reducing atmospheric pressure.

Well yes water does evaporate at lower temperatures, it just takes a lot longer. But you’re right we don’t call that boiling.

The result is the same though. The water leaves the container and enters the atmosphere as vapor. You can call the former "decomposition", and the latter "leaching", but you are eating the degradation products either way.

Because of the way toxicity works happening slower is quite relevant. Similarly if you drink a bottle of vodka slowly enough you will have no significant health effects but if you drink it in 2 minutes then it’s not going to be great.

Different poisons have different accumulation characteristics. The relevant part here is that perfluorocarbons are fairly persistent in your body. Your body needs a few hours or a day to process the vodka, but the PFAS in your blood takes months/years to leave your body.

Diamond coated ceramic should be fine.

Wood is technically not dishwasher safe, but I have wooden spoons that I’ve inherited from my grandma and they still hold up despite being in the dishwasher regularly.

The anecdata of this thread alone might be enough to re-categorize wood spoons as dishwasher safe.

Sincere question - my mom always told me to never put wooden utensils in the dishwasher, but I never got a great answer as to why. I put my wooden spatulas in there. My question is, is it just because it's destructive to the wood? Or is there something else that I should be concerned about?

The wood dries out and cracks.

Just to echo this comment. I don't put my wood cutting boards in the dishwasher because they dry out and crack. Wood utensils have been fine in the dishwasher. They seem much less prone to cracking than cutting boards and, when they do crack, I just throw them out and replace them with cheap new ones. I see wood utensils as a wear-item.

It really depends on the wood used. Some should absolutely, under no circumstance, be expose to a hot + wet environment. Some, you can put in the dishwasher and they are fine. I do use a lot of wooden cooking utensil and most of them go in the dishwasher. But I do have some nicer wooden spoon that are made from a more precious wood that I would always wash by hand.

Another thing is that a loot of wooden utensil are made in several piece stick together with glue. A lot of cutting board are made that way for example (especially the cheap ones). Most glue are not very dishwasher safe. It might be fine for a few wash, and then you end up with pieces of a cutting board.

What is your opinion on food-grade mineral oil for helping with wood that is starting to get dry (and dramatically extending the useful lifespan)? I've been told that it's fine, but who knows these days.

No clue honestly. I usually use something like sunflower oil to maintain wooden utensil. This is what Opinel recommend for their knife, although it is more for the metal locking mechanism.

> glue

plus side, it's very clear when the piece is damaged beyond repair.

Within the last 20+ years one of about 5 wooden spoons in our household has cracked even though they're always cleaned in the dishwasher. I don't see the problem.

A lot of wood is dishwasher safe. But you should ask / check before hand. If it is made a several pieces glued together, it will probably not be.

For cookware with PTFE non-stick coating, it is basically the only solution, with silicone, but I personally don't like silicone utensil.

In any case, I also started to avoid PTFE coated cookware, because no matter how well you treat them, the coating will eventually get damaged (and PTFE is supposedly not very good for you). Now I just use stainless steel for anything that is not too sticky, and carbon steel for everything that need a bit of a non-stick surface to be cooked properly. They are not too hard to maintain and they don't get damaged like PTFE non-stick pan.

> Wood is not dishwasher safe...

Maybe, but they're so easy to clean without a dishwasher. And even easier to clean later if you rinse them off immediately after cooking so stuff doesn't stick.

I have a disability which makes hand-washing cookware impractical, regardless of how "easy" it is for a "normal" person.

After you have finished cooking and have transferred the food to the plates or serving dishes or wherever (and your cookware is still hot!), add some cooking wine or tomato juice (anything that is a bit acidic) and deglaze the cookware. You can use the result or discard it, but the end result is cookware that is far, far easier to clean.

Some other options include getting a spouse that will do it for you, or to use the dishwasher and just accept that you will have to replace things more frequently.

> Some other options include getting a spouse that will do it for you

Listen to yourself man. Get a spouse because you can't personally wash cookware by hand? If you make decisions in your own life how you're suggesting I should then I shudder to think what a horror show it must be.

Use a carbon steel or cast iron pan and learn how to season properly. They are very nonstick if you cook correctly in them, and their surface is incredibly durable (I use metal spatulas and I primarily cook on carbon steel and a cast iron griddle.) you can also incorporate stainless steel pots, although stainless pans are not nonstick and very hard to use for beginners.

question since you obviously know the topic!

a cast iron or "stainless" steel pan will get some gruff from cooking since its nonstick. It regularly goes to the dishwasher, some stuff won't get cleaned. Mostly oil burn stains it seems ("stainless" hardly!) .

Is that completely safe/expected ?

We obviously diddn't get that with the nonstick pans. We got rid of that stuff for a reason, now i'm not sure what is worse: nonstick pan surface OR hard-stuck burnt oil on a stainless steel pan. Thoughts?

Not the person you're replying to, but here's my $0.02. We have a couple stainless frying pans that we've had for a long time, and I've never been much a fan of them. I find they stick pretty bad no matter what procedures you use. Our main pan is a 12" cast iron that I smoothed out the bottom cool surface with a flapper wheel on an angle grinder. It's been used thousands of times over at least a decade and never gives me any trouble. I usually clean it with a stainless steel scrubber and hot water, and then either wipe it clean with a paper towel, or just put it on a burner on low to dry out. I'm not afraid to use soap if needed, but I find it rarely is. We also cook anything in it, including tomato sauce or whatever, and have never had a problem related to that. I find that most of the conventional wisdom around cast iron is just a bunch of voodoo. Just use it and don't worry about it. Beyond the cast iron, we have some ceramic coated cast iron dutch ovens/pots (including a real Le Crueset and a couple knock offs) and stainless steel pots. I'm real happy with our setup. No teflon, no grief, lots of thermal mass for even cooking. I don't feel like we've had to make a tradeoff. With the right equipment, it's really all upside from my point of view.

thank you, i will follow this advice

I can second your advice about the cast iron. A lot of people are too precious about these things.

I use mine daily for anything and everything. I wash it with Dawn. It continues to work as well as any cast iron I have ever seen.

Apparently the "don't use soap on it" advice stems from the era of harsher lye based soaps.

Cast iron is intentionally seasoned with oxidized cooking oil to make it non stick, and that should not be cleaned off.

Stainless is pretty easy to get totally clean with steel wool and/or scotchbrite pad sponges.

And Barkeeper's Friend makes it easy to polish up stainless if you like it to look fresh. I find it's mostly cosmetic, but I still do it a few times a year.

Stainless, when used properly, won't have hard-stuck burnt oil on it. They clean up nicely by just boiling some water in it and then a light scrub-- no need for dishwasher.

Worst case-- you've gone too high in temperature for too long and you need some bon-ami.

Not a cooking enthusiast but you should not put cast iron in the dishwasher. Heat some water in the pan, add a tiny drop of soap and use a spatula to scrape off any residue. Once dry add some oil (otherwise it will rust)

I have never been able to figure out stainless steel on the other hand. Apparently the trick is getting to the right temperature but I have never gotten it to work.

On the health side, Teflon pans used to be considered totally safe until they were not. Now they are considered safe again as they no longer use PFOA. Burnt oil and iron oxide might not be ideal either but at least it isn't novel to humans as it has been used for thousands of years. Unfortunately, difficult to get hard science on such subjects as it would have extremely large studies conducted over large periods of time to overcome the noise. In any case there are probably far more impactful decisions in life than which kind of pan to use.

A weak acid (tomato paste, dilute vinegar, ...) will help with burned-on stuff, but the real trick is just good, hard scrubbing with an abrasive (steel wool or similar).

A properly seasoned cast iron pan can be non-stick but the temperature has to be right, you need shortening, and you can't just put any amount of food in it at any temperature.

Stainless is can do the job too, but temperature and shortening is even more important. There's a much tighter window of temperature that it works at. You do the "water drop test" to determine that it's ready. See youtube for an infinity of videos on how to check the stainless is at right temperature!

I've given up on non-stick pans. They're semi-disposable because the don't last very long and you don't want to use them at high temperatures. All it takes is a little bit of skill to never have to use non-stick teflon pans.

I use cast iron for everything I possibly can, but there is one use case I still need non-stick pans for: frying eggs. The only way to get them to not stick in even the best seasoned cast iron pan is copious amounts of oil, which seems like it's probably worse than a few molecules of PTFE derivates.

I've been frying eggs in my cast iron every morning for years, works like a charm! I use a small slice of butter and it's nonstick. The eggs don't freely slide around like they would in a non-stick pan, but after frying on one side for a moment I can easily move them with a metal spatula.

My trick though is that I have a cast iron only for eggs... if I cook other stuff in it the smooth buttery coating gets lost and the eggs start sticking again. After a few days of eggs-only it becomes nonstick again.

Just get a normal stainless steel pan. And leave it alone. It never sticks.

I’m guessing your cast iron pan isn’t polished. If it is, you can get it to be non stick.

Stainless steel also works very well. You just need to preheat it to get the Leidenfrost effect.

I did actually polish this one, and to be fair it works mostly OK in that I'm not scraping the eggs off with a metal spatula, but it still sticks enough to be annoying, and for a teflon pot to be a measurably superior solution.

I haven't played much with preheating though, I'll have to try that - thanks for the suggestion :-)

I think you will be surprised how well stainless works when it has thin layer of fresh oil and preheated to the right temperature such that it passes the "dancing drop" test.

Really? I fry eggs in a cast iron pan almost every day, with just a little cooking spray or wipe of oil (like, put a little oil in, wipe it out with a paper towel, painting the whole surface with oil in the process). I mean, it's not no oil, but it's far from copious amounts.

Just gonna throw this out that as a long time seasoned cookware junkie:

There isn't really any clear data on what exactly the seasoning on our pans is, and what by-products are also formed. It seems somehow no one has done an academic deep dive on cast iron. Heating oils to the point of polymerization is very likely to have byproducts.

Now for the conspiratorial part, it seems likely that large manufacturers (Lodge) have done the research internally, but they haven't released anything along the lines of "We have research backing the safety of our pans!".

In some ways I really would not be surprised if it comes out that the seasoning process creates all manner of nasty byproducts.

I could be wrong but I thought it was well known and studied that the seasoned part of oil in cast iron were types of trans fats. Not great for you in any amount but also probably very tiny amounts are actually consumed.

Personally I make a lot of pressure cooker stews and things with more liquid which is less hassle and less chance of burning. If it needs to be seared in the outside then that can be done quickly without needing to cook the whole thing (pan or oven)

I'm with Kenji Lopez-Alt on this one. No matter how nonstick your cast iron or carbon steel pan is, it's not as nonstick as Teflon, which is so nonstick that we had to come up with new methods to get it to bond to surfaces. Carbon steel pans are great, but they simply are not a replacement for nonstick.

Silicone's flavor leaches into your food, which some people can notice.

I'm one of those people. Absolutely can't stand it

isn't it more that silicone absorbs lipids and soaps? so you are tasting the dishwasher or last meal. I bake silicone cookware in the oven on broil, as it removes absorbed food. Fair warning, this is a terrible idea if the cookware isn't 100% silicone.

This is why I never put silicone in the dishwasher

Lots of things can also absorb dishwasher detergents which is probably not great for your health. But for non porous things dishwashers are great !

The only unsafe thing I've ever experienced with wood in the dishwasher is a fire risk from a spoon getting blown off the top rack onto the heating element at the bottom.

Silicone is not rigid, which is sometimes a problem.

Glass...which is silicon I guess.

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