Everyone has their own cooking needs based on their taste of food. When someone wants to cook the omelet, one will need a frying pan or Teflon made from non-sticky PTFE materials. When someone wants to eat soup, one should cook the soup in a pot made from ceramics, marble, aluminum, or stainless steel. But one of people’s most choice is stainless steel cookware, since it’s known for its anti-corrosion feature. But then comes up an issue that stainless steel cookware can be a toxicant when it is used to cook in hot temperature. Everyone was wondering about this, because it can be guaranteed that almost every house not only in USA (we can say in the world) must have at least one stainless steel cookware. So, if you are one of them and looking for a reliable information about this, you are reading the one. Here comes the truth. What is Stainless Steel?
Stainless steel is made from various metal mixtures such as chromium (at least 10% in every cookware), carbon, nickel, and sometimes manganese. At first, the purpose of making stainless steel ware was to create a material that resistant to stain, rust, carbon dioxide, water, sulfur, salt, and others. This is what makes stainless steel is used widely from a simple cookware or health tools to the vehicles, technology devices, and many more. So, let’s think about it. If stainless steel is used for health tools, it must be safe and healthy, isn’t it? So how come it is dangerous for cooking? One thing we should understand at the very beginning, is the metals composition in the steel ware. Stainless Steel for Cookware There are some grades in stainless steel cookware, such as 304, 18/8 (which means 18% from chrome and 8% from nickel), 18/10, etc. If you have the low-quality of this cookware, it will have more nickel since nickel is cheap. Because of nickel’s malleability, when it is heated the food that you are cooking will become sticky to the metal and at a certain temperature, a little amount of nickel will contaminate your food. Still wonder why we should avoid nickel’s contamination? Because it is carcinogenic, which means something that can cause cancer and luckily, there are some people who suffer from nickel-allergy. So, what’s bad is not the stainless steel, but some certain metals in the steel. Things to Remember About Stainless-Steel Cookware However, if you love to cook using stainless steel cookware, there are some things to remember in choosing it. Choose the sturdy and heavy one, because the light one usually will form hot-spots when it is used, which make the food is cooked less evenly. If you go with the light one, make sure the cookware has titanium and copper composition, they are great heat conductors. And one last thing, it’s recommended if you can afford the nickle-free one, or choose the one with small amount of nickle (less than 5%). So, is stainless steel cookware good or bad? You already know that the truth lies behind the nickle composition.
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Lori R. BoyerHi, This is Lori R. Boyer, A Food lover girl from USA. Love to cook and eat my favorite food. Archives
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