This came up because of some comments in my other thread from this morning: Do you wash the handles of your pots/pans? A few people noted that they always do because they put the pots/pans in the dishwasher and so the whole thing gets washed. The idea of the pots/pans soaking in a tub of soapy water was also brought up as a reason why the handles get washed by default.
Both of those things made me go “oh! Huh!” because they’re so foreign to me.
First off, I never put pots/pans or the good knives in the dishwasher. There are a few reasons for this but the two biggest ones are that they take up too much room and that the chances are high that I’ll need them again before the dishwasher is run. The knives don’t go in because it’s not good for them.
As for hand washing, I always forget that some people fill a tub with soapy water and soak everything and wash it out of there. (I don’t think about dishwashing at all, generally, so it just doesn’t occur to me. If I spent lots of time thinking about it, I’m sure I’d quickly realize that a lot of people do this.) I hate putting my hands down into a tub of soapy water filled with food debris. And I hate dishwashing gloves. So this method of dishwashing doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Instead, I run the water, put some soap on the brush, and wash each piece, rinse it in the running water, and then put it in the drainer (which is in the other sink of the two-sink setup). It doesn’t take long enough to really waste much more water than it would take to fill up the sink or a tub with water, then do a rinse.
So I’ll make a poll with both questions in it. Answer for each question please.
I sometimes put pots and pans in the dishwasher. In fact I almost always do–only the nonstick skillets and the really big soup pot get hand washed by default. I find that putting the saucepans in the dishwasher is a good way to fill it up, so it’s time to run it before I cook again.
I wash pots and pans by first giving them a thorough rinse with hot water, then leaving them on the counter with a bit of water in them to soak, if they’re really dirty. Then I run a sink of clean water and hand wash the cleanest things first and the dirtiest things last. Sometimes an item with lots of crusted-on gook gets your treatment–washed under running water without the stopper in. If it’s going to get the water filthy, there’s no point in washing it in a sink of water.
I answered the other poll (linked in the OP) saying that I only washed a pot’s handle if it was obviously dirty, saying that this is largely because 90-95% of my pots go into the dishwasher anyways. (The other 5-10% being pots I only used to boil water; they get a quick rinse and go on the drying rack.)
I was raised to do put pots and pans in the dishwasher (after handwashing them) so it’s kind of second nature to me. My cast iron pans and my wok are the only ones that never go in the dish washer. I’ve never really had a problem with running out of space in the dishwasher when doing pots and pans along with plates, bowls and the like.
Good knives certainly never go in the dishwasher.
I don’t soak my dishes before washing, though if a pot or pan is going to be a pain to clean, I’ll usually fill it with soapy water to soak before I scrub it out.
I don’t have a dishwasher, so I put the dishes to soak in soapy water before scrubbing them with a plastic scrubby. Then I stack them in the other side of the sink until it’s full, and rinse them in batches under running water.
I wash pot handles, but just half-assedly unless they actually have something on them.
We hand-wash our Calphalon pans because it’s required in order to keep the dish soap from corroding the aluminum. So we do. Handles also; while not necessarily caked with food, they still need to be cleaned up regularly.
My wife is opposed to using the dishwasher for whatever reason (probably a combination of the perceived cost, the perceived poor quality job it does, and the long time it would take us to fill the dishwasher). We apply dish soap to a sponge, scrub + suds up the dishes, then rinse them off.
On the rare occasion that we use our dishwasher (e.g. we have guests visiting), we’ll sometimes put pots and pans in.
I put the Farberware pots in the dishwasher, but I don’t use the “Heat of a thousand suns” drying setting because it’s hard on plastics, be it the handles or Tupperware or whatever.
I handwash the Calphalon and the good knives, always.
Only the cheap shitty little saucepans from the set I bought when I got my first apartment go in the dishwasher. The dishwasher is bad for them, but we don’t really care because they weren’t exactly all that to start with. Our other cooking gear is generally pretty nice, and we want to keep it that way, so it all gets washed by hand. In a sink full of hot soapy water. If you’ve scraped and rinsed before running the water, there’s typically not significant food debris to worry with.
I would never consider buying anything for my kitchen which can not go in the dishwasher.
Note: I was friends for a while with guy who was a curator for the Smithsonian. He said the kindest way to wash expensive china is actually the dishwasher. Rubbing with even the softest sponge (and most folks use cellulose) will eventually wear away any gold or silver striping. Using the dishwahser, no heat cycle, with the right soap and setting things apart so they don’t rub is actually much easier ont eh china than hand-washing.
Food hitting me grosses me out too, but 1) we scrape and soak the dishes before hand and 2) all the gunk falls to the drain so I don’t have to touch it (the handle of the plug sticks up above so I just grab that, toss it so it lands upside down in the drain of the other side and run water over it so all the bits go down the drain.) But there usually isn’t much. Maybe some starch from pasta or rice.
Our current set of pots and pans has curvy sides and handles, so they don’t just take up a lot of space in the dishwasher, but in addition they also fit really badly. It just isn’t worth the trouble of trying to wedge them in. The lids fit OK, though, so we’ll wash the lids in the dishwasher.
I never put pots and pans in the DW. Nonstick can be ruined, wooden handles will deteriorate, stainless steel can be scratched by the abrasive powders or other items in the DW. I will often put glass lids in there, though.
I don’t have a dishwasher but if I did, I probably wouldn’t put pots in it. My mom never does and I have helped her wash pots and pans plenty of times. As goes mom, so goes JJ…
I have an old set of pots that’s due for replacement, they go into the dishwasher. When their replacements arrive they will not go into the dishwasher. The frying pans, knives and kitchen aid pieces all get handwashed in a sink of soapy water.
