Test your metal
Cast-iron cookware had pride of place in the traditional Indian rasois. Today, it’s making a strong comeback in modern kitchen
From Padma Lakshmi the sultry hostess of Top Chef, to chef and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay, from actress Jennifer Garner to celebrity nutritionist Rujuta Diwakar, the good old iron kadai that our ancestors used has a huge fan following across the globe.
Rujuta Diwakar, in a recent Instagram post, said “If you look around, you will notice that waists were slimmer when our kitchens were larger. Now we have homes with bathrooms larger than kitchens, because intuitively, the real estate market knows that people are spending more time in their toilets than in their kitchens.”
Rujuta suggested basic kitchen rules to lose weight while maintaining nutrition and health, and these included using cast iron utensils.
CONTAINER OF GOODNESS
Today, we tend to be so focused on the kind of food we should or should not be consuming that we often forget that the method of cooking has a bearing on the nutrition quotient. “The pots and pans we cook the food in are as important as the food that goes into them. While we splurge on quality local and organic ingredients, it is also necessary that we use cookware that boosts our health and immunity,” says Dr Siddhant Bhargava, fitness and nutritional scientist, co-founder of Food Darzee.
Most of us prefer to use Teflon-coated ‘non-stick’ pans for cooking. When heated to high temperatures, these tend to release chemicals called perfluorinated compounds (PFCs). PFC bioaccumulation is an increasing public health concern.