Why Waterless Cookware?

When cooking foods in water, less is better! This is especially true if interested in healthy eating that preserves the nutritional value of your food. What does waterless cooking mean—it just means adding extra water is not necessary, for most meats and vegetables already contain water naturally. In fact, adding water actually removes nutrients from your food. With waterless cooking method, only 2% of your vitamins and minerals are lost in the cooking process, whereas with conventional cooking methods, there is about a 42% loss in nutrients when cooking in water.

Key Advantages of Waterless Cooking:

• Higher nutritional value of foods that are cooked. Nutrients are not lost or diluted in water.
• With waterless cooking, you don’t need to add oils or fats in the cooking process. When vegetables are sautéed in oil, they do not properly caramelize and release the aromatic flavors into the dish being cooked.
• Cleanup is easy and fast. An easy scrub with a high-quality stainless steel cleaner, using a damp cloth, and a good rinse in hot water is all that is necessary to keep your pans bright and shiny and to keep foods from sticking to the pan.
• Quality stainless steel waterless cookware disperses heat evenly—there are no hot spots. This type of cookware has a flat bottom that keeps more of the surface in contact with the gas burner or electric heat.

Most waterless stainless steel cookware sets are either 7- or 9-ply. The key difference between the two is that the 9-ply has more bonding agents between layers. However, the difference in weight between the two is negligible. For cookware to be considered waterless, it should be at least 5 layers or 5-ply. Most stainless steel cookware sold in department stores is only 3-ply, not meeting the waterless requirement.

Tight fitting lids are also a critical part of waterless cooking. Vegetables have high water content. For that reason, it is unnecessary to add additional water when cooking. All you need to do is rinse your vegetables in cold water, drain, and place in the pan. When cooking vegetables the waterless way, it is important to select the correct size pan. The vegetables should almost completely fill the pan. Once in the pan, follow these steps:
Cover vegetable with lid. Start cooking on medium head (never use high heat).
When the valve begins to whistle, close the value and turn the heat to low. Cook vegetables according to times given for that specific vegetable.

One of the most economical waterless cookware sets that offers all the required features of waterless cookware is the 17 pc. 9-element Surgical Stainless Steel Waterless Cookware Set by Maxam. This set include:

• 1.7 qt. Covered saucepan
• 2.5 qt. Covered saucepan
• 3.2 qt. Covered saucepan
• 7.5 qt. Stove-top covered roaster
• 11 3/8” skillet
• Double boiler unit with capsule bottom so you can use the double boiler as an extra 3 qt. Pan
• 5 egg poaching cups
• 5-hole utility rack for egg cups
• High dome cover for skillet or roaster
  

This waterless cookware set has several special features:

• Easy to clean and dishwasher safe
• Energy efficient
• Heat-resistant phenolic handles and knobs
• Warp-resistant bottoms
• Special Water-seal covers that lock in moisture and flavors
• Handy hang-up feature that allows hanging cookware to save space
• Self-storing lids that invert for easy storage
• 9-element construction consists of chrome, nickel, manganese, silicon, aluminum, iron, copper, molybdenum, and vanadium–these elements are located in the capsule bottom of the cookware
• 9-element construction allows you to stack cook. You can begin by cooking on individual burners. Then you can stack the pans to finish cooking—an energy savings!
• Handles stay cool and are resistant to heat and detergents.
  
  We hope you found this information helpful. Check out our site http://www.thegourmetscookware.com/for great cooking tips and recipes! We have also included some great waterless cooking recipes on our site http://www.thegourmetscookware.com/healthywaterlessrecipes.html This month we are featuring a fantastic Father’s Day Menu.