Why Choose Healthy Cookware?

When cooking rice, there are many concerns you might have, like wanting to make it soft and fluffy, keeping grains separate and making sure all the rice cooks evenly. There is, however, one more thing that is important – cooking it in the healthiest way possible.  

As rice is usually cooked in metal/ceramic pots, there are many ways it renders unhealthy.  First of all, metals are reactive at cooking temperatures, leach into food and contaminate it. These metal ions — toxins from food accumulate in organs and blood to cause serious health problems over time. 

Secondly, their heat is damaging to the delicate nutrients in food. Rice and other grains are made of simple carbs, complex carbs, vitamins and minerals, the more potent the nutrients the more delicate and subject to damage they are.  So, the complex carbs, and vitamins and mineral barely survive the ordeal.  No wonder diabetes is a pandemic of this era.  When the body is provided a depleted diet with an excess of simple carbs, it leads to the mismanagement of the insulin hormone leading to diabetes. 

Lastly, heat is not distributed evenly. The temperature is high at the bottom, so the rice needs to be stirred constantly.  All these factors make cooking rice complex and unhealthy.  

Miriam’s Earthen Cookware’s pure-clay pots are the healthier alternatives. They are made of pure-clay that is proven to be 100% non-toxic as it is free from metals or chemicals. The breathable pot lets excess moisture evaporate. Thus, the rice cooks fluffy, soft and each grain separate from the other!  

The unique far infrared heat penetrates deeper into the grains and cooks them evenly just at medium heat. “The rice cooks even before the water fully boils”, says Alisa, an avid rice eater, and passionate pure-Clay cook. There is no need to add any oil or other fats to get grains to separate or taste better, just cook it in pure-clay and the pot will take care of the rest!  

So when looking to cook your healthiest rice, brown rice, quinoa or any other grain, choose the right grains – not excessively processed, bleached or enriched AND cook it in the ideal rice cooker.  One that will cook without destroying nutrients and without adding its own toxins to the food… Cooks it thoroughly & evenly, making it the best rice you’ve ever tasted! 

Looking at the profit-oriented approach of the cookware selling businesses, it’d be foolish to rely on catchy advertisements and their baseless claims of being the best. You need to keep a few things in mind while choosing the best cookware, irrespective of what is popular in the market.

For the sake of your health and that of your family’s, you need to be very careful while choosing the safest cookware. Following are the things you should keep in mind before you make a choice:

Composition:

Majority of conventional cookware are composed of metals (Stainless Steel, Iron or Aluminum), or ceramic. Most of them are also glazed with chemicals and enamels or coated with non-stick materials like Teflon. All metals are reactive and thus, have a tendency to leach into your food while cooking. Eating such food is harmful to you and your family’s health. Over time these toxins get accumulated in your organs and blood and contribute to sicknesses, allergies and many diseases.

Effect on nutritional value of food:

Few people are aware that metal cookware destroys the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients in your food. If you try to touch a metal pan while cooking, it burns your fingers. It does exactly the same to food (plants, legumes, meat) that is made up of tissues just like we are made of living tissues. The pot’s heat diminishes the nutritional value by damaging these nutritional cells.

Loss of steam-Loss of water soluble nutrients:

Another important thing to keep in mind is what happens to steam during cooking. Steam is essentially water-soluble nutrients (Foliate, thiamin, riboflavin, Niacin etc.,) these support heart health, the bones and other systems important for the body’s functioning. Most of it is lost with conventional cookware and their easy vented lids. Even in the case of a pressure cookware where steam is supposedly locked inside, all of it needs to be released before opening the lid.

Manufacturing Process:

The way your cookware is manufactured plays an important role in keeping it safe for your health and that of the environment’s. Most commercial cookware (ceramic, metal) are usually processed with chemicals as they need to be made in a mechanized process. As discussed earlier, these chemicals also leach into food while cooking. Additionally, the metals are mined, thereby causing great damage to the environment through water pollution and deforestation, etc.

So, which is the safest cookware?

Miriam’s Earthen Cookware is an all-natural brand known for making the safest cookware from 100% tested pure raw material — pure-clay. It fulfills all the conditions of the safest cookware:

1. It doesn’t leach any toxins into food as it is free from metals and chemicals.
2. It cooks with a unique far infrared heat that penetrates deep into food without destroying the nutrients.
3. It has a natural steam-locking property that lets the steam build up gradually rises to the lid, gets naturally condensed and drops back on your food.
4. The manufacturing process doesn’t need any chemicals as it is hand-made from 100% tested pure-clay. The raw material is harvested without causing any negative impact on the environment.

Now that you know which is the safest cookware available out there, go to Miriam’s Earthen Cookware to get what is best for your kitchen and cooking style.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a Dutch oven is one the most flexible cooking utensils in the kitchen. Some even work both on the stove top and in the oven. A variety of dishes can be prepared in it which makes it a must have for every cook’s kitchen.

When it comes to choosing the perfect Dutch oven, the few things that come to mind are the shape and size, to the weight of the utensil so that it’s easier to cook with and while serving. It may surprise you a little but when buying a utensil for cooking, the most important thing to bear in mind is what material it’s been made of?

As cooking is a chemically transformational process, food is bound to react with the material in the utensil, in this case, a Dutch oven. Most of the Dutch ovens available in the market are made up of cast iron, ceramic or other metals. You may also find a few potters who use clay to make Dutch ovens, which is a perfect material to cook safely but only if it is 100% pure. Any kind of impurity in the clay (like ceramic clay) makes it prone to leach metal ions into the food also.

Hence pure clay is the only material that is inert and safe for making a healthy Dutch oven. So why isn’t it popular? It is simply because pure clay is not available just everywhere. There are only certain places from where it can be harvested. Also, the purpose of using pure clay is defied when using machines to make them because any mechanized process, in most cases, mandates the use of chemicals in the raw material.  So, it is not something that’s commonly made.

However today there is a company bent on a sole purpose, that is to make healthy cookware for their customers.  Miriams Earthen Cookware believes a choice of good ingredients cooked in the healthiest cookware is the ideal way to become sustainably healthy.  They make some of the best dutch ovens from 100% tested pure clay cookware.

So now that you are aware of the importance of the raw material used in cookware. Go visit miriamsearthencookware.com to see which size Dutch oven would be ideal for your family and start cooking healthy meals without the interference of toxins and chemicals from the pot.  This is not all, there are many other nutritional benefits to cooking in pure-clay and their website talks about it at length!

Thanks for reading! Hope this article has increased your HQ (health quotient). Until next time…

Miriam’s Earthen Cookware is an All-american company that makes 100% Healthy, Green & Non-toxic cookware.  They are America’s first pure clay cookware makers. Their pots and pans are individually handcrafted and hand finished without using ANY chemicals, metals, glazes, additives, extenders or toxins.  100% of the all-natural clay is from the USA and is harvested only after it’s fully & scientifically tested (in the US) to make sure there are no contaminants in the clay — it’s purer than the food grown today!

Here is an excerpt from their website:

“Each pot and pan we make are a labor of love and they’re made to cook without destroying the foods nutritional cells and without adding any toxins/chemicals into the food (traditional cookware leach heavy metals, chemicals, inorganic oxides all of which are toxic in the body).  Please take a few minutes to browse through the pages of our site to learn more about this fascinating and timeless method of cooking that is very good for you and the planet.” 

For a healthy cooking, there are two main aspects to keep in mind:

1. The food’s nutrients should remain intact
2. The material used should be non-toxic

 It’s a common belief that cooking in a slow cooker is healthier than in a normal cooker and it doesn’t destroy the nutrients as the heat is usually kept low. But scientific research has proven otherwise. A test was done on amino acid lysine found in peanuts. It was found that 20% of it was gone after cooking for an hour and a half at 150°F/66°C heat. After two and a half hours, only 60% of it was left. When cooking for long hours even at low temperatures, majority of vitamins are lost as they have less heat stability than this amino acid. So, it is proven that this low heat for a very long period of time actually damages nutrients.  

 In conventional slow cookers, the pots are made of metal or ceramic. When they are used to cook for long hours, they leach chemicals like Cadmium, Lead, Petalite (Lithium) and metal ions [Al-Aluminum, Ni-Nickel (steel), Ti– Titanium (steel), MO – molybdenum (steel), Cr-Chromium (steel), Fe-Iron (steel)] into your food. Food is a biochemical entity and reacts with these ions while heat acts as a catalyst. This process makes the food toxic. The accumulation of these toxins over time may cause various health problems like common sicknesses, allergies, joint and muscle aches, and diseases like Alzheimer or even Cancer. So, it is very important that the material used in making slow cookers is 100% pure and doesn’t leach in.  

 Miriam’s Earthen Cookware have a healthy alternative that is not only 100% safe but is also more efficient. They make pots from tested and certified pure-clay that doesn’t leach in chemicals or metals and the best part is – they greatly reduce cooking time! Recipes that take around 6-8 hours in a slow cooker, are cooked in just 40-50 minutes in medium heat or less. The unique far-infrared heat in MEC’s pure-clay pots help accomplish this feature.  

 Their pure-clay cookware is scientifically proven to be healthy and non-toxic. This should be enough reason to put them way ahead of a conventional slow cooker. It’d be a good idea to check their exclusive range of cookware and find what best suits your kitchen. While you are there, feel free to browse through their great recipes as well.

Pressure cooker is known to be the ‘ace’ of all kitchens. A number of dishes are typically cooked in it like lentils, soaked dry beans, vegetables, and meat. These dishes usually take a long time to cook but their cooking time is greatly reduced with the pressure cooker.

A conventional pressure cooker consists of a pot made of metal such as Aluminum or Stainless Steel. It has a lid with locking mechanism that covers it perfectly and doesn’t let the steam go out. The food is forced to cook with steam pressure and heat, which reduces the cooking time but with certain consequences.

This extreme pressure destroys the delicate nutritional cells in food, leaving food nutritionally depleted.  Also, when the steam is released from the vent (this has to be done before opening the lid), essential water-soluble nutrients are lost in the steam. This is why the food cooked is so smashed and mushy.  But this is not all, things that go under the hood are even more worrisome.

At such high temperature, the metal body of the pot leach in ions and food being a biochemical entity reacts with them. Some of these metals are pretty harmful and their prolonged ingestion with food causes many chronic illnesses like Diabetes and Alzheimer. So you can see, how harmful a conventional pressure cooker can be to your food and your family’s health.

Now the question is – is there a healthy alternative? Luckily, there is.

A pressure cooker made of pure-clay is a 100% safe and healthy alternative and serves the same purpose. There are absolutely no toxins in pure-clay to contaminate food. They come with steam locker lids that do not let the steam go out. So the steam settles naturally over the food leaving the water soluble nutrients intact. Also, steam builds up gradually inside the pot and doesn’t force the food to cook with high heat and steam pressure. Instead, it coaxes the food to cook and there is no substantial increase in cooking time.

Besides, pure clay pots are easy to clean and work with. They can work both in the oven and on the stove top. To add this, the design is a lot simpler with only two parts to work with – a pot and a lid, no rubber rings, vent pipes, pressure regulators, overpressure plugs etc.

Now, the important question is – where can you get them from? That’s easy.

Miriam’s Earthen Cookware has been working for years to bring 100% tested healthy clay cookware to your families. The raw material they use is pure-clay which is scientifically proven to be safe and healthy. They have done vast research on the subject which is evident from their detailed blog posts. You can read them here:

https://miriamsearthencookware.com/clay-cooking-blog/

While you are on their website, don’t forget to check out their pure-clay pots and cookware. You never know which one might suit your needs.