Waterless Cookingware - Page 2  

I've got no opinion on the efficacy of this stuff, as I've only seen it sold at a farm conference.

But.....I do want to meet the folks who have 3 grand to drop on something sold only by hucksters at a state fairs and the like. Boy, oh boy, do I have a deal for them......

So true, leeniek.  Invest in basic pots & pans then add as needed for specific cooking needs--boar d laze's point as well.  $2 is a good starting point to mix & match (JustPJ) or spend $200 on a set of quality stainless steel waterless utensils & have yourself a lifetime of dependable cookware.

I spend much of my time helping customers search for replacement knobs & handles for their ware (even tho it's not a brand we represent).  My 'pic' is a photo of the first West Bend 'waterless' utensil to flavor the market (parts no longer available).

I frequently hear from those who've unwittingly paid $thousands for cookware (state fair & home demonstrations) with truly regretable buyers remorse; folks who only research what they've bought after they've bought it.  It's disgusting really, the scam, & gives the whole industry a bitter aftertaste.  It's no fun talking with these folks.  There's just no way to get the money back--sellers won't honor the 36 hour right-of-refusal without a buyer's legal representative contacting them. 

Wojcinski mentioned Maxam as a brand she found online for $227 a set.  That's the brand Lorie & I have used for years.  & boar d laze is right; the sauce pans are truly perfect for the task.  We love healthy, low heat methods of cooking without excessive oil, fats & water.  Just makes good cents (sense).  

Wingfanjim, what kind of stove are you cooking on?

All non stick cookware or waterless cookware eventually becomes sticky as deposits and residue build up.

On cheap non stick cookware the coating eventually gives way. To that end I bought a ScanPan (ceramic-titanium nonstick technology) skillet at more expense about 3 years ago and still have it. It has held up better than most but after a couple of years it was just another pan, at least the coating has never pealed. We recently moved on to Tri-ply stainless which cooks better than anything we've previously owned but I may get one good non-stick again as sometimes I just want to be lazy about the clean up.

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Ps. The Diamond Waterless guy hits our local fair every year.  

We will be attending the local fair again this year where these pitchmen will be pawning off their cookware.

Do you think we should make a comment about our experiences after the pitchman does his shpiel to warn others?   I mean, the word HAS to get out that this men and women are robbing people.

My first post here was inspired by reading comments that seemed to be associating over-charging for cookware, and the process of waterless cooking itself.  My appreciation goes out to Sldeningo for trying to made sense of these two separate issues.

Forty years ago when I first got into cooking (during the "health food" craze in the US) someone showed me how to cook vegetables without boiling them.  Now, I'd been raised on boiled vegetables, and that was why I disliked them.  Overcooked, flavorless, slimy, colorless, limp . . . are a few adjectives that come to mind.  But my mentor at the time had me choose one of my least favorite vegetables which, as a challenge, she claimed should could get me to like.  

I chose green beans.  After tasting her method of cooking them with just the barest coating of water on the bottom of the pan, my attitude toward vegetables were forever changed by how much more flavor there was, how bright green they appeared, their al dente perfection.  I've read the studies that point to the advantages of steaming over boiling, but even if there were no health advantages, one can still, without doubt, taste the difference -- and that should be more than enough reason to apply a waterless cooking method and abandon boiling them (plus food cooks faster).

Does one require official "waterless" cookware?  Hell no.  I cook waterless with all my All-Clad pans, and they seal just fine (but if I did want a bit more pressure inside I'd put some weight on top of the lid, as I used to for rice before I began using a pressure cooker instead).  I've also visited friends where I had to cook with very cheap pans, and I still was able to cook waterless (even when I've had to come up with a make-shift lid for one that was missing on a pan).

So basically my point is, waterless cooking is awesome, paying a fortune for specialty pans to do is unnecessary, and these are two completely separate issues. 

Go read On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Vitamins are lost for many reasons. Water solubiity is one and steaming doesn't stop all of that nor does so called waterless cooking. Heat also breaks down certain vitamins. The waterless technique is no better than vegie steamers.

Here I thought it was summertime and yet they have been giving you snow.DON'T BELIEVE a thing they say it;s all BS . Stainless steel goes by the thickness or gauge. Their is no surgical SS . I am not going to go deep into this as BDL has said it all. Stainless pots inside tend to burn and develop hot spots. Me, I would go Caliphon ,or All CLad and lastly Circullon. I have all of these brands and have had them for years. Stay away from Teflon  go with the Ironstone 2nd generation non stick surface. The only pan you really need with a coating is a fry pan for eggs.

25 piece pot set is a lot of pots and pans unless they are counting the ladles,spatulas, slotted spoons etc In fact with 25 pots I could do a party of 200 easy. Also stay away from American as they to are way overpriced. In fact one of our arena's down here is named for them. Save your money, but buy a good set or individual pieces . I have wearever rest quality  sauce pansfrom the 1950s and they are still shiny , not warped and heavier then any I can buy today. If anything buy them by their weight. Cheapest prices around go to a Homegoods store I believe Marshal's owns them. Cheapest I have found. Happy Hunting

[to Phatch] Did you read my entire post? I did not recommend waterless cooking because of nutrition, even though there are studies that support that; and McGee doesn't say all damage done by all cooking methods are equal, so I don't see how relevant your point is that steaming damages.  Studies published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture discusses the amount of damage done by by various cooking methods:

"The first study found that the simplest cooking method [microwaving] was also the worst when it came to preserving nutrients. Broccoli lost 97 percent of flavonoids, 74 percent of sinapics and 87 percent of caffeoyl-quinic derivatives (three different types of antioxidants) when it was microwaved.  When boiled the conventional way (i.e., not in a pressure-cooker), this green lost 66 percent of its flavonoids; when tossed in a pressure cooker, broccoli lost 47 percent of its caffeoyl-quinic acid derivatives. Steamed broccoli, on the other hand, lost only 11 percent, 0 percent and 8 percent, respectively, of flavonoids, sinapics, and caffeoyl-quinic derivatives." [my emphasis]

However, I emphasized the advantage of TASTE (and color) in my comments.  For those of us who like to taste our food (and prefer veggies bright and colorful), waterless techniques are distinctly better; if anyone says differently they simply haven't tried vegetables cooked that way versus boiling (or, if they have, then their taste buds/eyes are really screwed up).  If a cooking method at the very least produces better tasting food and more colorful food (without additional loss of nutrition), then why would that not automatically be preferable?

Waterless cooking (as I described it above) is essentially steaming.

Yes, I know it's steaming. Thus my stating that a vegie steamer is the equivalent. Yes, I've had food in this technique and for a few things, it's OK. Not better than other tecniques for flavor and down right horrid in many ways for texture where they pack the whole meal in there and cook it as long as the item that needs the longest cooking.

Since I am a vegetarian, all I can speak to is how utterly superior waterless cooking is to boiling veggies. I assume we are not including frying or saute as cooking options, at least I'm not; I just am being negative about the damaging, and needless, practice of boiling veggies.  I have never in my entire life tasted a boiled vegetable  (except a tough one like corn) that doesn't suffer in taste and color (and corn still cooks faster using the waterless method).

But I'd also say that waterless cooking is far better than typical steaming (having tried it many times) because whether with a little insert stuck in the bottom of one's pan, or a dedicated insert such as the All-Clad I have, the insert gets in the way of the rising steam and so cooks both unevenly and more slowly.  But using nothing but a film of water on bottom of a pan avoids the leaching factor, uses less energy because there's less water to heat and steam cooks faster, and yields a vegetable that looks and tastes better.  So why would any ever boil a vegetable???

I didn't argue to boil a vegetable, and even among classic cuisine about as close as you get to boiling a vegetable in the general case is blanching.

Sorry, but I couldn't tell why you answered my posts as you did.  It seems like you are a busy person and so not carefully reading posts (which I can understand), but I kept at it because I wanted to stand 1000% behind waterless cooking, and you seemed to keep pooh-poohing it.

If you read my first post, I came out in support of waterless cooking of vegetables, but also agreeing that one doesn't need special cookware to achieve it.

You answered "Go read On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee. Vitamins are lost for many reasons. Water solubiity is one and steaming doesn't stop all of that nor does so called waterless cooking. Heat also breaks down certain vitamins. The waterless technique is no better than vegie steamers."

I don't know why you answered that way since my point wasn't about the loss of vitamins, but even if it were, boiling causes more damage than steaming.

You then said "Yes, I know it's steaming. Thus my stating that a vegie steamer is the equivalent. Yes, I've had food in this technique and for a few things, it's OK. Not better than other tecniques for flavor and down right horrid in many ways for texture where they pack the whole meal in there and cook it as long as the item that needs the longest cooking."

Okay, I thought, maybe I didn't make it clear enough I was talking about boiling versus waterless cooking (not versus saute, for example).  But then, you also tried to say steaming and waterless cooking are equivalent, and that's just not true for a number of reasons which I cited.

It seems to me you don't know about waterless cooking.  I'd guess that is likely due to, like most chefs, preferring to saute or roast veggies plus vegetables are not your main focus in cooking (as they are for me).  Not faulting you for that if that's the case, but a person living on veggies/grains is more focused on extracting and preserving every bit of flavor possible, and waterless cooking is the best way to achieve that sans oil cooking.

So I am not trying to be difficult about all this, but I am trying to HIGHLY recommend waterless cooking!  As I have already said a couple of times, one doesn't need special pans to cook that way, and we shouldn't let scammers detract from the great benefits of the waterless technique itself.

Guess I have a "problem", "waterless" means "no water" to me, not a little water, NO WATER, period!

Second, the last time I even saw a "boiled vegetable" was over 55 years ago, at least in the sense of cooking a vegetable in boiling water until it is "mush". Now, I WILL admit to "simmering" a wide variety of vegetables for vegetable stock and a variety of soups.

ANYONE who advocates a specific cooking technique as being the "ultimate" or the "best way" is, in my book, suspect as to ulterior motives, most generally to buy something or proselytize.

Like politics and religion, believe whatever you wish but don't tell me what you think "I" should believe, thank you.

Les,

Look pal, you cited steaming in several of your posts implying as a beneficial cooking method equating it with "waterless cooking."

Phil ("Phatch") did not say you should use a multi-rack steamer (AS SEEN ON TV!) to cook a multi-course meal in a single pot.  That false association is one you projected on your own.

Waterless cooking is steaming, no different than normal steaming with the following twists:  (1)  The lid is tightly fixed to the pan, so that no moisture is lost; because (2) Only a bare minimum of water is used. 

There is nothing magic about the method or in any way different from steaming above a rack set in a closed vessel.  "Waterless cooking" is simply steaming either done well or poorly.  What makes it waterless is that the food is steamed and not boiled. 

As far as I can tell the reason it even has a name is as a marketing gimmick for hugely overpriced cookware.  Which, by the way, we all understand you neither use nor endorese -- so no reason for more denial.  We get it.

The huge secret you endorse seems to be to remove the item when it's fully cooked, and neither under nor over cooked.  Again, we get it. 

Great. 

Please understand, no one with the slightest sophistication believes the "waterless cooking" hooey about "nutrition" anymore than about a "mucousless" diet. 

The sixties are over my friend.  Time to let them go.  If they were still here, they'd tell you to move on with your life and fall in love with a more current decade.

BDL

Pete McCracken:

I don't understand this site in the slightest. Are you all a bunch of angry cooks? Or is this supposed to be a fellowship of those who like to cook and learn about cooking? Who knows all there is to know? 

The term "waterless cooking" has been around for a long time to describe the bare-minimum use of water to cook vegetables so that nutrients are best retained.  That scammers jumped on the idea and tried to rip off trusting consumer, or that "waterless" isn't perfectly descriptive of the process, is utterly irrelevant to the issue of if the waterless technique has value.  

I am not advocating anything "specific" except that boiling (which you seem to agree isn't so hot) is inferior to steaming (in terms of nutrient, flavor and color retention).  So why are you, or anyone here, giving me sh*t??????  In my experience as a vegetarian chef, I have found most cooking enthusiasts are not as up on (or care about) the preservation of veggie potentials.  I only posted in this thread to stick up for minimum water cooking since it seemed to be unfairly associated with the specialty-pan scam.

Boar_d_laze:

Again, I must ask why the hostility?  I am not a "pal," I don't need to get out of the sixties, I don't need to move on with my life. 

I don't think cooking with a bare minimum of water is well-known with most people even if cooking geniuses like yourself understand it perfectly.  I posted in this thread to clarify to those less brilliant than yourself that there is no need to link the scam of selling over-priced pans with the process of cooking with very, very, very little water.

Now tell me, why would you object to that?  Is it that you think the only people who read, or should read, at this site are mega-genuis, all-knowing, omniscient chef beings like yourself?  Do you think it just might be that some of us come here to learn and help, want to contribute and share, and don't feel like they have to exhibit their massive egos on every occasion by trying to demean contributers?

Most quality restaurants do not steam vegies. We blanch them. Dropping into boiling water then ice water shocking. Then at service time saute in butter salt pepper and a pinch of sugar. Thus improving tast over 100 %. My customers are interested in taste and texture as well as overalll quality and presentation. I am not running a health care facility or hospital, if I were then I would act accordingly and steam and waterless cook everything.

Originally Posted by les3547 

In a word, no.

My problem with you isn't with your technique or your opinion.  My problem is that you seem compelled to keep putting it forth despite the fact that there's no there there.  All you're saying is that it's possible to steam with very little water in cookware which isn't advertised as "waterless."   If you have something to say about why that's superior to normative steaming, you haven't said it.

My feeling was that your several references to the nutritonal benefits of steaming as opposed to other methods of cooking, and implying "waterless" cooking was steaming, but was also not steaming was both poorly taken and misleading.

I used the "sixties" because the term itself "waterless" is child of the junk nutritional "science," so prevalent at the time. Your technique is not in fact waterless cooking.  It's called "steaming."   Whether steaming conveys significant health benefits as opposed to other techniques where the vegetables are neither overcooked nor cooked with unhealthy (and delicious!) additions, is another set of questions.  For instance,

is a piece of steamed eggplant cooked a point so much healthier than one similarly perfectly cooked on a cast iron grill pan?  How about a "waterless" baby carrot as opposed to one blanched in vegetable stock then briefly sauteed in olive oil?

I'm actually pretty selective, and try to reserve demeaning to arguments rather than people. If you found me calling you "pal" and referring to the sixties to problematic, I apologize.  Clearly, you are not my pal.

You clearly mean to be offensive and insulting.  Congratulations.  You succeeded.  

BDL

Les,

We're off to a very bad start.  What do you say we start over?

BDL

While I stand by most of the factual arguments made in the original version of this post, I certainly could have been friendlier.  Since most of the arguments are made elsewhere anyway, in the spirit of good fellowship I'm leaving it at this.

BDL

Quote:

Originally Posted by boar_d_laze 

Les,

 

We're off to a very bad start.  What do you say we start over?

 

BDL

Good Idea. I got irritated before you ever responded because I simply wanted to distinguish between cooking with a tiny amount of water in the pan, and the cookware scam.  It seems this site has a lot of professional chefs who respond from the point of view of what it is like in a restaurant setting.  I assumed since when I signed up there was  "home chef" choice, this site was for people cooking in all varieties of situations (plus the OP didn't seem to be from a pro).  So I answered as I did for people who cook at home, and possibly who didn't know about the advantages of cooking with a few tablespoons of water in a pan with a fitted lid.  And I did, by the way, explain why that kind of "waterless" cooking method is better than normal steaming methods (because in the home at least, most use a steaming insert that interferes with steam circulation).

Anyway, I tend to get fierce when I know something is true (that waterless cooking has value), and it seems what I am saying is being rejected out of hand.  Sorry for unleashing my frustration at you!

IMHO, low-water (waterless) cooking definitely has its place. However, it is NOT the "end-all" solution for cooking anything, including vegetables. And yes, it is preferable to "boiling" vegetables into mush, however I think I will still "boil" my potatoes

It is but one of many cooking techniques that might be utilized, depending upon the desired end results, IMHO.

EVERYONE is entitled to their own opinion, whether or not it is well-founded or otherwise.

As far as many vegetables go, I happen to prefer roasting for some, sautéing for others, steaming for some others, blanching for many others, and yes, even boiling for some.

I like how this post went from one extreme to another and not at one point mentioned what brand was being sold.  AmeriCraft is a brand that I recently purchased, and yes it was pricey.  You should research your products before choosing, and you should know who you are buying from.  KitchenCraft/AmeriCraft have been around for quite sometime and my family has had pans almost 40yrs old purchased from them.  They are true to their lifetime warranty if somehow you warp a pot or pan, they replace it.  My grandmother had one of their pans and recent sent it in just because she wanted the newer model, they gladly replaced it with no questions asked.  

I'm almost surprised that no one from the company has said anything on this site about how people are spouting their opinions and no truths.  I personally have spent thousands of dollars on cookware that has ended up in the garbage because of warping, burning on the inside and outside, handles falling off etc... and to me, investing in a cookware that can be replaced at anytime was the catch for me.  Call me silly ... but it's sorta like buying a $1000 car every 6months, instead of buying a $15,000 car that is more reliable.  Of course we can't take that back but you get the idea.  

Oh well, I don't feel bad for my decision, and I still say that cast iron is the best cooking utensil of all ... **high five**

As this was just brought back up again, i think I'll lock it down this time just to end it.