I don’t know it I would trust a pre-seasoned cast iron skillet. Besides, seasoning them is half the fun. I’ve had one of mine for (crap!) 32 years now, and it is just as good as the day I got it. Cook, wipe, done.
If you want another testimonial on the destructiveness of dishwashing detergent:
We had ‘inherited’ a bunch of pots and pans from Hubby’s grandmother when she had to go into a nursing home. Now, they were nothing special, just everyday pots.
There was a set of stainless steel pots. Dutch oven, large, medium, and three small skillets of cast iron. And five sauces pots of that latest wonder metal, aluminum.
The stainless steel and aluminum stuff was used and washed in the dishwasher, the cast iron by hand.
The cast iron is wonderful. We’re trying to decide who to will it to, since it will obviously outlive us.
The stainless steel has held up perfectly for almost twenty years, excess the composite handles went from shiny to a sort of matte finish effect.
The aluminum stuff? It all died a grisly death. :eek:
Seriously, the detergent just ate through it. The first thing we noticed was that the pans were getting lighter weight. One got so thin that it wouldn’t stand up when it was empty: the handle (some sort of steel) was heavier than the rest of the pot and it just tipped over!
The sauce pans had had incised lines to mark 1 qt, 1.5 qt, etc. The pans started leaking – those marks were enough thinner that the detergent ate completely through them there.
The pot lids died, too. They got that thinner/lighter feeling, and then became so flimsy that they were coming out of the dishwasher bent and warped.
Out of morbid curiosity, we held onto one lid long after we’d tossed all the other aluminum pieces, and let it ‘live’ in the dishwasher. It got thinner and thinner and more and more mashed out of shape. When we finally ended the experiment and tossed it, the metal was no thicker than a double layer of aluminun foil!
Anyway, count me as another vote on following the given directions. If you INSIST on putting pots in to the dishwasher, buy stainless steel with stainless steel handles. They’ll take the abuse better than anything else.
I believe you’re mistaken here. I’m pretty sure nearly all modern Henckel knives have composite handles, except for the ones with steel handles. I have 5-stars, which are ergonomic and composite.
When I got married I had the same dilemma. I took the view that I should put them all into the dishwasher and let the strong survive.
I still do that. This summer I got some acrylic poolside tumblers with little fish on them. When I peeled off the price tags, underneath was the “hand wash” instructions. Didn’t care. They washed fine about 4 times then crazed like crazy. But they still hold liquid so I expect to use them again next summer.
Life’s too short to have your things make you their servant- that’s backward.
Wow, I just read all the other posts and realized Debaser and I are the only ones who don’t feel like catering to our tools.
I can’t imagine wanting “name” knives. A name car, perhaps. A name flat screen TV. But if you’re knife-proud you have too much social climber in you. Just try to remember that the truly rich people don’t cook and don’t see the knives their cooks use.
I feel sorry for the rich folks that don’t cook. Cooking’s fun!
I also feel sorry for those that don’t have the “tool appreciation” gene. Yes, I could hack my way through the kitchen with cheap stamped knives bought from the supermarket. I just prefer how the good stuff feels in my hand, and how the right tool makes the task easier and safer.
In case you couldn’t guess, most of my pots are Calphalon, and my knives are Henckels 5-star. (There’s little, if any difference in the blades in their 4-star, 5-star and Pro-S lines. The primary difference is the handles.)
Huh. See, now we’ve had T-Fal non-stick pans for about 5 years, and they get use 4-5 days a week, and they go into the dishwasher every time (except when I cook pasta, then I just do a quickie hand wash). They look like they’re 5 years old, but the finish is fine overall, and they perform as well today as they did when we got them.
That said, I’m developing an affinity for finer cooking tools. I’ve got a Furi and 2 Global knives, which are the best investment I’ve made in the kitchen besides the Kitchen-Aid mixer. I’ve got my eye on some All-Clad pots and pans, which are now in my budget, and with the cooking that I’m doing these days, I need something that will go from the burner to the oven, and the plastic handled t-fal’s won’t make the trip.
FWIW, I handwash the Globals and the Furi. 5 minutes of washing, drying and honing is worth it to me.
I don’t care about the name on my knives, but I do care about quality. Give any cook a decent-quality chef’s knife and a good cutting board, teach him a few basic knife skills, and in a month he’ll wonder what he ever did without it. The reason most good cooks will spend money for knives is because there really is a jump in quality from the basic to the better ones–they’re easier to use, easier to take care of, and provide better results.
Every guy I know has at least a couple of $50-60 tools in his garage that he uses maybe once a month, or a few times a year. I use my $80 chef’s knife every day.
I have to concur with Doctor J. The jump from my Farberware set of days long ago to my first quality knife…it was like night and day. Definitely worth the price. Even the general purpose knives one can buy in a restaurant supply store are muct better than the cheap sets found in kitchen stores. If you are serious about cooking, or anything else, it pays to go with quality tools and materials (ingredients in cooking).
j2browning, I’m with you on plastic tumblers. They’re disposable. My “company’s coming over, break out the good stuff” crystal is not.
No kidding. Yeah, I’ve spent a fair bit of cash on nice knives and a good set of pots and pans. But y’know what? I use 'em. Every day. And in the long run, I’m willing to be that I spend less than most people on cookware, because I’m never going to have to replace anything.
High quality cooking things really do matter. I probably spend less money on food because it’s more fun to cook with my good stuff. (I did get the Cook’s Illustrated Best Buy knives, because I couldn’t afford the good ones right away - they’re from the Swiss Army knife people and they’re really quite good, for a very reasonable price, FYI.) I’ll never have to replace my cast iron frying pan, or my Le Creuset dutch oven. I’ll probably never have to replace my All-Clad stainless pans. Now, the non-stick, that I’ll have to replace, but I accept that as a part of life and got the “best buy” brand instead of the “best” one. But on the whole, only people who either don’t cook much or have never cooked with good tools think nice knives and pots are a status symbol.
Do you throw cashmere sweaters in the washing machine with sweatshirts?
If you owned a Rolls Royce, would you let Pedro’s Auto Body Paint Shop do maintenance?
Would you use Windex on a $5000 plasma screen television?
Nicer stuff needs some care and attention - and if you do it correctly, your great-great-great grandchildren will be able to use it.
Yes, but there is a problem with your analogies. Cashmere, high end cars, and plasma TV’s aren’t supposed to be stronger or tougher than a cheap alternative. In my mind, high end cookware should be. That’s what I’m paying more money for.
An anology that illustrates this is buying a Humvee and then being afraid to take it off road because it’s so expensive. (A real one, not an H2.) You buy the Humvee because it’s better built than a regular SUV and can do things they cannot. If it was more fragile, or if it say, couldn’t drive in the rain, then it would be a waste to spend the extra money on it.
I’m not getting higher quality cookware and knives because I want fancy, expensive, elitist stuff like a Rolls Royce. I’m getting them because they are supposed to perform better, last longer, and be tougher than the cheaper alternatives.
In any case, I agree with the sentiment most have expressed in the last few posts. I’m glad to have high quality stuff. Good knives are a world of difference better than cheap ones. Henckels are great, and you pay for that. They keep their edge longer and feel better and work better than most others. But, they aren’t priced so high as to be in the diminishing returns area that you can get into with some of the stuff that’s out there.
I’d like to steer this thread back to the specific question of dishwasher detergent. It seems clear that it’s not the dishwasher itself that damages dishware, but the detergent. However, regular dish soap does not have this problem. There seems to be an obvious solution to me: Dishwasher detergent that can go into the machine, but doesn’t damage dishes. Does such a thing exists? If not, why not? If so, where can I get it?
Can we invent it and make a million bucks here in this untapped market, or what?
I can’t use regular dish soap in the dishwasher because it creates too much suds, right? Is there maybe a way around this?
The root of the problem, I believe, is that the detergent has to be strong (aka ‘harsh’) enough to get the absolutely dirtiest pot clean in a single cycle.
You see the commercial: someone burns mac & cheese into a baking dish, lets it sit until the remains are totally dry, then bungs it into the dishwasher with no rinsing – and if it doesn’t come out completely spotless it’s a failure. No wonder the stuff eats through metals.
By analogy, that’s like insisting that a clothes detergent must be able to get a load of greasy mechanic’s overalls clean without any pre-soaking or pretreating.
Which some detergents can, given hot enough water and a long enough cycle. But no one expects they can toss their silk blouses into the same load and have them come out perfect, too.
Since the problems seems to be with 1) the dishwasher detergent, and 2) things banging together in the dishwasher – Then assuming you could load the dishwasher sot hing do not bang together, why doesn’t someone intent a dishwasher detergent that doesn’t destroy Cephalon, etc??? You’d think there would be a market for that. Why does regular dishwasher detergent have to be so destructive?
When you wash dishes in the sink, you rub the dirt off with a cloth. In the dishwasher, you can’t do that, so you need an abrasive to scour the crud off of the dishes.
Not necessarily true. High-end cookware will heat better and more evenly. It will hold it’s heat because it is heavier. It will resist warping. Handles will be rivetted to prevent coming loose. It is stronger and tougher and will last longer, but it requires slightly more care.
Article dated December 7. I don’t know how long it will be available (and it might require free registration or bugmenot).
I have a small set of Henckel knives too and they have the composite handles. I love these knives. It’s the only one I use in the kitchen. If it’s dirty I’ll stop and clean it just so I can use it. It has also seen the inside of my dishwasher once. The rest of my family knows better now.
All excellent reasons to avoid those products. My great-great-grandchildren can sort through the rubble of civilization for their own damn stuff.
I hand wash the Henkels knives and calphalon I got for my wedding, but I resent it.
(You’re supposed to clean television screens?)