Dear Lifehacker,
I've had the same pots and pans for years. Some of it's starting to look a little funky. Should I care about that? Is there a good indicator of when a pan is past its prime?
Sincerely,
Possibly Poisoning
Dear PP,
We're no strangers to an oddly stained pot or a pan that's seen better days. While it might seem self-explanatory to decide when to replace your cookware, it's not always as cut and dry as it sounds. In reality, most cookware is pretty easy to clean up like new if you know how to do it.
Try to Clean or Fix Up Your Cookware First
More often than not, your cookware looks gross because you're not cleaning it properly. Thankfully, a number of the most common reasons your pots and pans look destroyed are easy to fix, and that means you don't need to replace them.
In most cases, a good long soaking with water is enough to remove most black residue left over from cooking. For cleaning everything else, it depends on the material of the pot or pan.
Stainless Steel Cookware: For stainless steel cookware, cleaning is a pretty straight forward process, and most damages don't actually affect the cooking quality. To remove stains on the inside of the pot, a little warm vinegar should do the trick. If the stains are on the bottom of the pan, use oven cleaner and follow the directions on the bottle. As for burn stains on the inside of the pan, a solution with vinegar, baking soda, and water along with a little heat will clean it right up. You can even remove rust by scrubbing it off.
Non-Stick Cookware: Non-stick cookware is particularly difficult to rescue from negligence because once the non-stick coating starts stripping away you can't do much to fix it. That said, Good Housekeeping recommends cleaning pans with a 1/2 cup of white vinegar and water solution to get rid of stuck-on cooking residue. A little vinegar on the outside of the cookware should also help remove any stains as well.
Cast Iron Cookware: Cast Iron cookware is incredibly resilient, but you have to treat it properly. If you don't, cleaning up your negligence is a little messy, but still possible. A salt scrub can get out stuck-on mess, vinegar is great for removing rust, and if that doesn't work, a potato might be all you need to remove the rust.
Aluminum Cookware: Removing stains from aluminum cookware is a little trickier. TLC recommends using a tablespoon of cream of tartar, a tablespoon of lemon juice, and a quart of water. As for polishing up scratches on the outside, a little baking soda and a scouring pad should work.
The point is that you can rescue most cookware from even the worst kind of negligence. That said, if you've washed it, and it still looks like it's rusting, it's broken in half, or plastic chunks are just coming off everywhere, it's time to replace it.
When Pots and Pans Absolutely Need Replacement
Depending on how you use your pots and pans, they might end up scratched, stained, rusted and otherwise destroyed beyond repair. If the above tips don't work, then it's likely time for replacement.
I called a couple different cookware manufacturers (Kitchen-Aid and All Clad) to get their recommendation. The general rule of thumb they offered is pretty simple: if any material is coming off the pan and ending up in your food, replace your cookware.
For example, if non-stick pans are flaking off because of scratches, they should be replaced. If nothing else, it's just kind of gross to eat a part of your pan. As The Kitchn points out, when the coating begins to peel off it also makes the pan less non-stick.
As for stainless steel, the representative from KitchenAid recommended that it only needs replacement if a material like copper is showing through after you've scratched or dinged the cookware. So, if the pan is scratched to the point the material beneath the steel is showing, it's probably in your best interest to replace it.
The same basic idea goes for pots with enameling. If the enameling is chipping off a pot really badly it might need replacement. However treating it with the above tips should be fine provided it's not rusted out.
It's also worth noting that both KitchenAid and All-Clad asked me when I purchased the cookware, and if I still had my warranty information. Even if you didn't treat your cookware right, it might still be worth a call to see if they'll replace them.
If you do decide to replace your cookware, don't forget that when you're out shopping it's pretty easy to keep it on a budget if you stick to the essentials. Photo by Dinner Series.
Good luck,
Lifehacker
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Title photo remixed from David E. Powers (Shutterstock), and Ljupco Smokovski (Shutterstock).
Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/erVZDeQUxNw/when-should-i-replace-old-cookware
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