Stainless Steel Cookware

I’d had enough, I had enough of peeling non-stick pans.  I had heard SO many horrible things, about how heating it up without food can give you cancer {check}, how the peeling bits can give you cancer {check}, how when you’re scrubbing the pan and you can’t figure out if it’s bits of food or bits of peeling non stick can give you cancer — ok, maybe not, but you get what I mean, right?

So, when our tax return check came (not giving a CARE to that whole budget thing I posted about a few weeks ago) — I marched down to my local Costco (aka, drove — I would NOT carry these pans across any Costco parking lot, they’re heavy!) and had a looksie to see what caught my fancy.  They have a lot of nice pots and pan sets, but the Kirkland Stainless Steel Setwas the one who won a spot in our cart (BTW, it’s only 169 at the store, but I may have grunted 20 dollars worth trying to get into my cart and into the car).

I was really worried about it though {and in case you’ve never read this blog before I tend to over-worry about a lot of things, so don’t let that deter you}.  I knew my mom had sung the praises of manna when non-stick first came out.

But, after reading Jillian’s book and all the bad stuff that are in non-stick I knew I couldn’t buy a whole new set of them (I do find it likely to have a couple of sizes of non-stick still in my cupboard).

Mind you, I was replacing the set we had had gotten from a bunch of ZCMI gift cards when we got married.  One of the MANY perks to inviting 40 ba-zillion people to your wedding.  Oh. Joy.

Anyway, the set had done us well but it was time to move on, to be a big girl, as it were.

Now I am a month into it, and here are a few thoughts:

1.  I had read to get it HOT before you put a protein in it, and I agree.  If you stick a protein in with a cold pan it will be harder to clean then if you get it hot.  I tend to heat mine on high for a couple of minutes, add some oil (either with a spray bottle or just a bit of butter, I do love butter) and then drop it down.  I do prefer my own sprayed oil over Pam.  Not that I don’t use pam on my baking sheets, but it just seems better.  True?

2.  It does cook hotter, but not THAT much hotter.  I had pretty decent pans before (because I had a lot of gift cards and I knew that was something I wanted to last), but I still am cooking most things on medium high.  I feel, in some ways, the pans take longer to cook.  I feel like water takes longer to boil.  I feel like meat goes faster, I am sure it boils down to the same period of time.

3.  It really isn’t that hard to clean, and the MAIN benefit is you feel like you can REALLY clean it.  I get out the ol’ copper scrubby if I need to.  You could never do that with non-stick when food stuck — you were just trying and trying with the ol’ blue sponge.  Of course, before I was sometimes wondering if it was stuck food or peeling non-stick.  No issue with that now.  I just also make sure that I clean it while it’s hot.  I like it hot.  There, I said it.  If it gets cold, it’s a LOT harder to hear, but am sure none of us put off doing dishes, right?

4.  I bought some barkeepers friend.  I hear it gets them good and shiny, and it was pretty cheap at Walmart.  I have yet to do this.  If I dry them off right after I wash them there’s no spotting.  They look really nice.

5.  One of my VERY favorite things is how well meat browns.  I remember watching a cooking show where they talked about how fond doesn’t develop well in a non-stick pan and I thought that was ludicrous because my meat browned just fine.  I was wrong.  These pans do it SO much better, and I can see — when I’m up to making  fancy sauce like that, it will taste better. {fyi, fond is the brown bits at the bottom of the pan that you often de-glaze and whisk into your sauce}.

6.  I can use whatever utensil I want.  I am sick of plastic spatulas just not being up to the sturdy tasks I wish they were.  Darn you bendy-plastic-spatulas, be gone with you!

So, there you have it.  I’m awfully glad I bought it.  I think the Costco set is a REALLY good price compared to many of the sets I have seen.  A couple beefs with it:

• I wish the lids were glass so you could see when your water boils (although these pots tend to make a particular sound when that happens, so the longer I work with them, the better I know them).  I think I may have some old lids I’ll dig out and see if they fit when I need that.
• I wish they had silicon on their handles (but again, I am not sure how that would help/hurt their wear so whatever.  I have oven mits and hand towels easily available).

If you’ve made the change write about it below.  Costco does have a really nice looking set of non-stick which I mulled over a bit, but I think these (in general) will last longer.  And, as I said I still have a couple of non-stick in the cabinet. Most often for eggs, but I did eggs in the stainless the other day and it wasn’t horrible to clean.  And we know I like things clean. 🙂

Looking for a good way to organize your pots and pans, I address this specifically in here. I think you’ll love it!

Not quite ready for the whole class, try my 5 word organization challenge!