Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to determine whether you have any aluminum cookware in your house. If so, seek out alternatives. I’ll give you ideas beyond “replace entire cookware set”!
Level of Commitment: Making Strides
First, figure out what your pots, pans, and cookie sheets are made of. My pots and pans are all non-stick coated…which doesn’t mean they’re safe, but they’re not aluminum. (More on Teflon later!) You may need to make a phone call to the manufacturer to find out what your cookware is really made of. It will take 5 minutes. You can do it!
My cookie sheets are, I discovered after sending an email to the company, made of aluminum with a non-stick coating. The coating is getting pretty scratched, so I’ve made a commitment not to allow food to touch the surface, just in case. When it comes to being a steward of my family’s health, I’d rather be safe than sorry, especially when some of the changes I’ve had to make are quite simple and low on commitment/energy.
If you have aluminum pots…
My mom cooked with that red pot set in the photo above all my life. They’re aluminum. (My apologies that I haven’t finished the Food for Thought on why we’re analyzing aluminum in the first place…it’s coming this week!) I have no way of knowing whether my body has or had a build-up of aluminum because of those pots and pans, but I have to trust God to do His will with me and move on. If I had aluminum pots and pans in my kitchen, however, I would make a big effort to use alternatives!
- At the very least, don’t cook tomato or acidic substances in aluminum pots.
- Try to default to any pots you have that aren’t aluminum.
- Look at garage sales and thrift stores for basic stainless steel, cast iron (or even glass) pots to begin to phase out your aluminum ones. I picked up a few for a buck each this summer to work on phasing on my non-sticks.
- Some sources say the safest choice is enameled cast iron, like I had on my birthday list. You can see a few examples here:
and a really fancy set here:
Disclosure: Those images will take you to Amazon.com, and if you choose to purchase one of the items, I’ll get a small kickback, which helps me justify the time I spend writing this blog. ! 
I don’t have either product, though; they’re just examples of something you might want to replace a potentially dangerous product.
I understand if buying new isn’t in your budget right now. It’s not in mine, either, hence the garage sales and the birthday list! Here is a quote to make you feel better if you’re stuck cooking with aluminum (it did me!):
More than half of the cookware on the market today is made from aluminum. This is because aluminum is a good conductor of heat and is used frequently with non-stick pots and pans. The makers of aluminum cookware warn against storing highly acidic or salty foods in aluminum cookware. Foods such as tomato sauce or citrus fruits that are in contact with cookware for a long period of time will absorb aluminum. Aluminum foil has the same effect and should be avoided for storing acidic or salty foods.
Is cooking in aluminum dangerous? It is unlikely that significant amounts of aluminum are released from aluminum cookware. The amount of aluminum found in foods cooked in aluminum pots is much lower than the amount usually found in foods, medicines and antiperspirant. It is important, however, to make sure the surface of the cookware is undamaged.
Source (emphasis is mine)
If you have aluminum cookie sheets…
Here you’ve got quite a few options. You just want to keep your food away from the surface of the cookie sheets, which is a lot easier with rolls or cookies than with a pot of soup!
- Try parchment paper
I never used parchment paper until a few years ago. Although you are creating waste because you throw it away, when it comes to clean-up on baked french fries, I’ll trade the 10 minutes of dish-scrubbing for a piece of paper in the wastebasket! Terrible, I know.
On the other hand, if I’m baking cookies or bread products, I reuse the parchment paper (storing it right in/on my cookie sheet in the oven drawer) until I can’t reuse it any longer. - Invest in a silicone baking mat to put inside your cookie sheet, like this one:
- Put stoneware on your wishlist. I love the way rolls, biscuits, cookies and pizza dough turn out on my Pampered Chef Rectangular Stone
.
- Stainless steel cookie sheets are also available. Here are two versions:
But for me, the stoneware can’t be beat, so I probably won’t be investing in these.
I’ll finally explain exactly the risks of aluminum in Friday’s post, and next week we’ll peek into our deodorants (mine is stored in the kitchen, so I can do that!).
See the other Analyzing Aluminum in August posts:
- Introduction
- Use less aluminum foil
Baked Potatoes without Aluminum Foil - Why Analyze Aluminum: The Risks and Dangers
I’d love to see more of you! Sign up for an email subscription or grab my reader feed.
If you missed the last Monday Mission, click here.
Kitchen Stewardship is dedicated to balancing God’s gifts of time, health, earth and money. If you feel called to such a mission, read more at Mission, Method, and Mary and Martha Moments.
I LOVE my stoneware bakers. See what other people love by visiting Things I Love Thursday at The Diaper Diaries.
Hungry for more? Related posts:
Twitter: sarahsmusings
// Aug 17, 2009 at 11:13 am
Good post!!
We don’t have any aluminum in our house except for bakeware (cookie sheets and bread and cake pans) . . . our pot and pan set is stainless, and we also use cast iron and enameled cast iron for the majority of the cooking (and I have glass pie pans and casseroles, for the most part.)
I LOVE parchment paper, however, and also re-use it if I can! I’m still cooking directly in my bread pans, but I don’t bake breads that often (and if I do it is often free-form on a baking stone rather than in a bread pan) and, like you, figure the tiniest amount won’t hurt much. I’m just very careful when getting them out of the pans not to scratch them!
Looking forward to reading more!
Best,
Sarah
[Reply to this comment]
We don’t use aluminum cookware (all stainless steel here), but bakeware is a toughie for me. Stainless steel does not conduct heat well, so it’s not good for even baking. (SS cookware usually has a better conductor – like aluminum – sandwiched inside the base.) Personally, I don’t like stoneware, as I think it’s a nightmare to clean, so that doesn’t make it high up on my list, either.
So…for the time being, we have aluminum bakeware. I will have to keep that in mind, though, and try our silicone mats to see what kind of difference that makes (baking-wise). I haven’t been able to find much on silicone (health-wise) in my research, but as best I can tell, it’s supposed to be inert and, therefore, not leach into the food. That might make it the best all-around option for baking.
[Reply to this comment]
Katie Reply:
August 17th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Thanks for the point about conductivity. My husband is always afraid to clean out stoneware, but for things like cookies and bread products, it’s a cinch – you just scrape the crumbs off with the little plastic scraper that comes with the stone, and usually that’s enough. Sometimes I use hot water and a rag, but mostly I just “call it good”. I’ve never made french fries or anything really greasy on them, though…
Katie
[Reply to this comment]
Great info! I use my cast iron and stoneware for almost everything. I love them! I cried when my stoneware casserole dish cracked recently…it was seasoned perfectly and now I have to start over with a new one! I have one nonstick skillet and a couple of stockpots that I use fairly often, but the cast iron and stoneware get the most use. Well, and for my bread pans…they’re aluminum covered with nonstick. I have some stainless ones, but don’t like them as well. I’d love to get some of that enameled cookware. There’s a stainless set (w/aluminum core) I had my eye on too, but boy are they pricey! I love your site! We are definitely kindred spirits!
[Reply to this comment]
I LOVE and swear by my Pampered Chef stoneware. I was able to slowly replace my pans with all stoneware by hosting parties over the years, and now the only metal I have left in the house for cooking are the pots, which I have been trying to switch over to stainless because they are the non-stick coated aluminum.
[Reply to this comment]
We have some major old school cast iron skillets that I love to use. I have aluminum bakeware, but I frankly barely bake. I might have to look into the stoneware.
[Reply to this comment]
Not a shred of aluminum cookware in this house. We purchased our premium grade stainless steel cookware 15 years ago and loved it so much we opened our own business to sell it ourselves.
We even travel with it if we can – it’s just that important. I can’t imagine cooking on anything else ever.
Can’t wait to read your thoughts about Teflon.
[Reply to this comment]
I always wondered if silicone is safe for baking.
[Reply to this comment]