Duped by Martha!!!!

I don't. I wash the skillet when, and only when, things start sticking.

Uh-oh! I throw almost everything in the dishwasher... knives, pans, even my small wooden cutting boards. <gasp> My non-stick pans are relatively inexpensive and come from a restaurant supply store. I just replace them every year or so. Roger, you mean your iron skillets, right? I scrub mine with a coir vegetable brush under boiling water. I've been looking for another coir brush for a while... for such a great, cheap product, they sure are hard to find.

Ummmm, what's a coir brush?

No, but the same principle applies. So far as I know, any skillet pricey enough to come with instructions advises you to oil it before use, even the nonstick stuff. I take this to mean that they all need a bit of seasoning, which is pretty much destroyed by washing.

I was visiting a friend on a trip and offered to cook dinner, an offer greatly welcomed. Fished around trying to find a pan... got out some cast iron, yikes. Covered with thick grease, oof. He said, "don't worry, that's just peanut oil to maintain the finish." Mumble, gag, it was really congealed and thick. I found some other way to cook whatever it was.

I guess I am lucky, I just rinse my cast iron pans with hot water and put on the top of my stove, an old fashioned one with pilot lights. They don't grow scummy, nor do they rust, yayyyy.

Well, the French say no frying pan is worth using until it earns its panties and the Chinese are horrified that anyone would wash a pot in which tea is brewed, a practice some of the English have adopted.

I have always cooked with stainless steel and love it. My mother's pots and pans were always a mess and mine look pristene. They are expensive -- All-Clad by choice enhanced by experience.

I have had other stainless steel pans and most of them do not hold up or are too hard to clean. I had very cheap Polish enameled pots in the 60s and I liked them but my former husband thought them not up to his standards and we used his Revere ware when we were first married. Truthfully, the Polish stuff was superior.

Until I worked at WS, I never had any non-stick. Bought a cheap pan for my sons to learn to cook on and thought it a waste of money. Now have two AllClad non-sticks for cooking eggs but use them for nothing else.

I don't have a dish washer and the way things look, I probably never will.

Pffka -- I would never put a non-stick pan in the dishwasher: I don't think the practice is safe.

POM -- Not safe to put them in them in the DW? I'm assuming you mean health-wise here, since I replace them with frequency... Why? I mostly use stainless steel, too, Belgique, which I like. The non-stick finishes are for eggs & small fry-ups. I don't wash my teapot often -- I just rinse it out with boiling water.

CI -- Coir is the heavy brown bristly fiber of coconut husks. My best brush is about six inches long that is bent back upon itself & wired down, so it is really about three inches long -- no handle. Scrubs up a storm. I think it is the same as the Turtle Tawashi - Vegetable Brush. I found an image of one but it was a gif, so here's that website:
Vegetable Brush


Osso -- That coating .... ewww ... imo, if you have that much (which I wouldn't) when you heat up the pan you're supposed to wipe it out with a paper towel to get rid of it all. My iron skillets are old... some older than I am, I think, and they're beautifully seasoned, but I always "wipe on, wipe off" oil before I cook.


Roger -- Makes sense. Heating should be getting rid of any bacteria... but I wash all my pans anyway.

Wasn't it just last week that the info came out about Teflon poisoning? I threw two teflon coated pans out.

eoe -- Must have missed that. Since watching Bowling for Columbine, I no longer pay any attention to American news programs. I am a much happier person.

Whatzis about teflon pans? I've been using them for years. And I know to throw them away when the coating starts coming off. I always run them through the dishwasher... Is there some news I've missed?

Piffka, That's the stuff our mother used to buy when we were kids.

CI -- I thought you'd recognize the brush! I think they're sold for scrubbing wok pans as well as vegetables. I bought my first one for 89 cents... now they want over $3 for one. <shaking head> I'll probably pay it, too. I scrub *hard* on my iron pans, then run the brush through the dishwasher. The one I have is about 3 years old and starting to age a little.

Speaking of Martha, I just came from the Goodwill store where I found some fantastic bargains and a great shelf with a little drawer that I'm going to refinish -- heavy as sin and it is pegged to hold it together. Maybe it's an antique? I also found a little Santa figurine, very heavy and so shiny, like you can look through it. I was wondering if it was mercury glass.

Until it was recently re-issued, Teflon per se was not sold in this country for many years.

That was because Teflon gave off fumes when heated to a very high temperature that killed household pet birds -- like canaries in mines. Although I did not see the report on television, a customer said the dead bird thing was repeated as did a colleague of mine, who is, unfortunately, so stupid that I never give credence to anything she says.

The re-introduction of Teflon has been marked by a series of commercials that feature television chefs being unable to remove food from pans, a totally untrue situation.

piffka -- I do mean health wise. I assume most of the inexpensive nonstick pans are aluminum and although there supposedly is no Alzheimer's-aluminum link that is demonstrable, I do have concerns for both aluminum and non-stick going in the dish washer.

BtW, I should make clear that I watched the baskets in the MS catalog for two years before I bought them and would not have done so without the law suit proceeds.

Will write to MS catalog when I have time.

There is a set of MS baskets selling at KMART, the big one and perhaps some of the smaller ones lined. I didn't look closely as the basket weave looked a little, um, fake; what ever plant material it is made from it is treated in some way. The set sells for 54.99 or a similar number. Forgive me if this is not news, as I didn't scroll back to review earlier posts.

Man! I just got Ms. Martha's latest Holiday catalogue in and she has finally gone beyond even my extravagant nature. Her prices are outrageous!

I looked at her catalogues for ideas, for a while. Prices got ridiculous a ways back, IMO. Now... yoiks.

I bought something, once, over the phone. "Martha prefers Visa!" chirped (well it was via relay, I assume chirped) the rep. Oh, DOES she?

Trader Joe's, on the other hand, I adore.

Lawyers are expensive, eoe. :wink:

I was giggling about that awhile back Eva but with this new catalogue, it doesn't seem so much of a joke.

I agree, it's not funny. When I saw the latest prices, I jumped to the conclusion that she wanted us to pay for her legal defenses. I'm not a big MS fan.

I AM a big MS fan and still, I kinda jumped to that conclusion.