Keeping kitchen gear clean
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- July 10, 2023
- 546
Celebrity chef television shows tease our neat kitchen sensibilities. No matter how many dishes they’re showing off, they’re using spotless equipment — gleaming pots, pristine cutting boards, unscratched knives and brand-new appliances.
I don’t have any way to verify this, but I suspect almost everything that gets used during production is probably, at the very least, inspected carefully for any sign of use. If there’s a stubborn stain or a tiny scratch, out it goes. Using cookware frequently, it’s going to show signs of use, or love, you might say. As humorist author Erma Bombeck wrote, “Never trust anyone with a clean cookie sheet.”
Last year Ina Garten shared a photo online of her loaded dishwasher after filming a show and pretty quickly came under fire for it. She said she hated washing dishes, so everything goes into the machine: cutting boards, baking sheets, silver, everything. And that, more than anything, told the tale. Everything she pulls out of her pantry during her marvelous show is pristine, and much of it would be ruined by a single run through a mechanical dishwasher.
There are some things that should never be washed in any way but by hand, and knowing which is which can keep you from being unhappy about what you’re pulling out of it once it’s been run.
Anything made of wood or with a wooden handle should be hand washed. Knives, pans, spoons and cutting boards all get the hand-wash treatment. The water in a washing cycle gets quite hot. Over time repeated soakings will loosen handles, raise wood grain and generally demolish your wooden tools.
Silver or silver-plated items must be washed in the sink. Sure, they’ll come out of the dishwasher nice and clean, but they’ll also darken in ways that are hard to polish out. Plated items will lose their plating, exposing the base metal underneath. I find silver washed in the dishwasher also takes on an odd, unpleasant smell until it’s been carefully polished again.
Anything made of aluminum also falls into the hand-washing category. Again, you can technically put it in there, but it will come out ashen gray and dull, never to be shiny again. So aluminum pans, baking sheets, mixer attachments and tools should stay in the sudsy sink.
Carefully check your glassware and ceramic cups, especially with any kind of applied design on the outside. If they aren’t clearly marked dishwasher safe, they aren’t. I picked up a set of glassware marked Pawnee Parks and Recreation and didn’t check first. The design was gone with one lazy washing in the machine. Actually, glassware in general, over time, will be ruined by the dishwasher’s heat. The glass becomes fogged and will appear to have a filmy residue. This is called sick glass, and I know of no reliable way to reverse it.
Good kitchen knives will stand up to a dishwashing in a machine, but you shouldn’t put them in there for the same reason you shouldn’t store them loose in a drawer. They’ll get banged around and lose their keen edge, acquiring nicks you’ll have to work to get ride of.
Copper and brass are in the same category as aluminum. The shine will be damaged and darkened, requiring lots of elbow grease to be made presentable again.
Be cautious of plastics. Some are not able to withstand the heat of the dishwasher. I remember many years ago my sister had an attractive set of steak knives with plastic handles. All of them melted and deformed. Most modern plastics can be washed safely in a dishwasher, but it’s best to use caution. Chipping melted plastic from your racks doesn’t sound like a good time.
Finally, neither bare nor enameled cast iron or any carbon steel pan should be washed in a machine. Wash these in warm, soapy water as soon as they’ve cooled. You may have heard soap is bad for cast iron, and that’s untrue. The important thing in the kitchen is everything be clean including your cast iron. A good scrub is necessary.