How to Know If Your Dutch Oven is A Safe and Healthy One?

A Dutch oven is a very useful piece of cookware and can be found in almost every kitchen. It’s a two-piece cooking utensil that includes a pot along with its well-fitting lid. It has thicker walls than a regular pot and some of these can be used on the stove top or in the oven. You can cook a variety of dishes in them – from soups, stews to all kinds of rice and other casseroles dishes. But what’s important is if your Dutch oven is healthy for you. Let’s find out:

All you need to do is perform a simple baking soda test at home to know if it’s safe to cook in your existing Dutch oven. If it fails the test, it isn’t healthy and you need to look for an alternative. This is how the test is done:

The Alkaline Baking Soda Test for Leaching in Cookware:

1. Boil 2-3 cups of water in any pot, when it starts boiling add 2 tsp of baking soda. Boil for 5 more mins. Turn stove off.
2. Wait till cool enough to taste then taste the water (take a sip). If you taste metals, that’s what you’re eating! If water has a rubber/paint taste it’s the chemicals from enamel/glaze.

As a control, stir 2 tsp of baking soda to 1 glass of water and take a sip — you will taste just the baking soda.

Baking soda is a high pH ingredient. For a healthy diet it’s recommended that you eat mostly high pH foods; almost all vegetables, a lot of grains, lentils, beans, are alkaline. If your pot is leaching when cooking the baking soda, it most definitely is leaching into your food as well.

A healthy Dutch oven would be one that doesn’t leach toxins into food. The popular and commonly used Dutch ovens are typically made from metals like cast iron, aluminum, stainless steel etc. and ceramics, that is made from ceramic clay, porcelain, stoneware and the glazes and enamels are used for coating. All of which leach into food.

All metals, chemicals, glazes, enamels etc. leach toxins [chemicals like Cadmium, Lead, Petalite (Lithium) and metal ions like Al-Aluminum, Ni-Nickel (steel), Ti- Titanium (steel), Mo – Molybdenum (steel), Cr-Chromium (steel), Fe-Iron (steel)] into food while cooking, even at low heat. What happens is metals break into ions at cooking temperature and react with food while heat acts as a catalyst. These are then assimilated with food and accumulate in organs and tissues. This toxic accumulation in the body is the foundation for many illnesses, a compromised immune system and the production of weak hormones for the management of the body.

In order to find a healthy Dutch oven, you first need to look for one that’s made of a healthy, non-toxic material that doesn’t leach while cooking. MEC’s certified pure-clay™ is one such material that is scientifically tested for being naturally inert, so it doesn’t react with food. MEC harvests pure-clay from unfarmed and non-industrialized lands in USA and refrains from using any chemicals or glazes while making their pure-clay pots to keep them 100% non-toxic.

“I love my MEC pure-clay pots! It feels good knowing there are no metals or chemicals leaching into my healthily cooked meals.”, says Michelle – an MEC cook who chose pure-clay pots to cook healthy for her family.

In case you are wondering, they do pass the baking soda test which makes it evident that they make the healthiest Dutch ovens in the market. Visit MEC to find the perfect size healthy Dutch oven for your kitchen and enjoy healthy cooking!

Until next time…