Cooking in Earthen Pots – More than A Thousand-Year-Old Practice

While cooking in metal and ceramic pots is quite popular these days, you’d be surprised to know that it was not even in practice until a few decades ago. Different civilizations in the whole world relied on only one type of cooking for more than a thousand years – clay pot cooking.

Why Was It So Popular?

This ancient type of cooking was far better than what is popular today. The conventional metal and ceramic pots are known to leach toxins into food while cooking. But there is no such problem with earthen pots. Their raw material, pure clay is naturally inert. The cookware made from pure clay without using chemicals doesn’t leach while cooking and maintains the nutritional value of food.

The heat from metals and ceramics is near infrared – this harsh heat destroys delicate nutrients. On the contrary, the heat from pure clay is far-infrared – it keeps nutrients intact. Even your fingers don’t burn while holding a clay pot as they do with metals and ceramics.

Another health benefit of using clay pots lies in the way they manage steam. While steam escapes freely when you cook in conventional cookware, an ergonomically designed pure clay pot and lid make sure the water-soluble nutrients in the form of steam stay within the pot. Once the cooking is done, it settles back on the food instead of escaping. This is the reason grains cooked in pure clay are extra nutritious.

Read: How grains cooked in pure clay can heal diabetes.

We may be ‘better’ than our ancestors in ways we do many things today but cooking just isn’t one of them. Their choice of cookware was not only healthier but also more effective for cooking food. Pure clay pots are great retainers of heat – no need to re-heat food again and again. Also, the slow cooking recipes that take a whole day to cook in conventional pots take only a few hours with clay pots.

These are probably the reasons this ancient and healthy way of cooking was in practice for more than a thousand years. For some reason, we deviated from it a few decades back and invited all sorts of life-threatening and so-called ‘incurable’ diseases.

It’s never too late to make a change in the right direction. Being enlightened health enthusiasts, it is not just our duty but also an obligation towards our future generations to switch to healthy cooking with pure clay.