Does anyone have an opinion on waterless cooking?




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After following the thread here for a while I did a little research
on this topic. It's certainly not exhaustive but it seems to me that
the following is pretty well documented.

The term "Waterless Cooker" was an exclusive trade name for a line of
cookware from West Bend in the 1920's. It's primary claim to fame was
that using their cookware and methods - compared to boiling foods
in water - was faster and retained more vitamins.

It doesn't appear that this claim was particularly researched at the
time, although boiling does leach out some vitamins, and it was mainly
marketing hype.

Since then various companies have touted the benefits of waterless
cooking over just about every other method and all kinds of
gimmicks have been added to the cookware, such as pressure release
valves that are supposed to signal you to turn down the heat. As
far as I can tell the addition of that particular gimmick is about
all that differentiates "waterless cookers" from any other well
made stainless steel cookware. It should also be noted that part
of the hype was the safety of stainless steel cookware over
aluminum.

Part of the selling methods for this stuff involves some
"demonstrations" designed to show that stainless steel doesn't
flavor food the way aluminum or cast iron does. They are
pretty dramatic, but still hype designed to scare the hell out
of the ignorant.

As far as the cooking method goes, there's not a thing about it
that I can see after reading a number of waterless cooking recipes
that actually depend upon or require anything other than normal
stainless steel cookware with reasonably tight fitting lids.

Keep in mind that this stuff was originally marketed claiming to
retain vitamins over boiling your food. How many people these days
boil a significant amount of what they cook? When was the last
time you boiled your broccoli?

A particularly suspect part of this whole business is the marketing
of the cookware. As someone else pointed out, it seems to have
about as much legitimacy as Amway.

YMMV.

Jim


Doug Reynolds wrote:
> Does anyone have an opinion on waterless cooking?
>
>
>
>
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"Doug Reynolds" > wrote in message
...
> Does anyone have an opinion on waterless cooking?
>



No. I have yet to see an explanation of how it works.

"Doug Reynolds" > wrote in message
...
: Does anyone have an opinion on waterless cooking?
:
=========

Funny Doug. Really funny.