What Utensils to Use with All-Clad Cookware?
Are stainless steel cooking utensils safe? Your best options for stainless steel kitchen utensils will always be the lighter materials, like wood and silicone. These are excellent for every type of cooking surface, and you won’t have to worry about wrecking the interior of your pots and pans with these utensils.
What Utensils Do You Use with Stainless Steel Cookware?
If you are interested in keeping all of your cookware at home pristine and ding-free, you need to invest in either wooden kitchen utensils or silicone utensils.
Wooden Utensils
There are several reasons why wooden utensils are a perfect fit for modern kitchens. If you are after the appearance, wooden spoons have a warm appearance that fits comfortably with modern aesthetics. Nothing compares to the classic look of wooden utensils, which brings back childhood memories and the yesteryear’s look and feel. Cooks and chefs will tell you that wooden spoons and spatulas have a certain soul that metal utensils don’t have. The best, handcrafted wooden utensils are a treasure in themselves because they are art.
Wooden utensils also do not conduct any heat. Sure they can be hot to touch for some time after dipping in a hot liquid, but that heat will disappear quickly. You can leave any wooden utensil in a pot, and the handle will be cool even after half an hour of being in scalding water. Touch the handle, and there won’t be any accidents in the kitchen. What’s more, is wood won’t affect the taste of what you’re cooking.
Wooden utensils are comfortable to handle, and you can cook all day without having dents on your hand that are so common when working with heavier, metal utensils. The shape of many metal kitchen utensils is the main problem – they’re rarely rounded enough, and the hands take a lot of punishment while gripping the ladles and turners.
If you’re tired of dealing with the hand damage, you need wooden spoons and turners at home. One of the few downsides of working with wooden utensils is they can be a pain to clean sometimes. Assuming that you dipped your wooden spoon in a pot with tomato sauce, that orange/red is not coming off easily, no matter how hard you scrub.
Often, the food stains will stick to the wood as the wood does absorb liquids. You need to be more patient about food stains on wooden spoons and turners because if you scrub too much or use something that might damage the wooden utensils, they might break.
Silicone Utensils
Like wooden spoons, silicone spoons are a good choice when cooking with stainless steel cookware and nonstick cookware. If you have ever used a silicone spatula, spoon, or turner, you would already know that silicone utensils are very flexible, which allows you to get to the toughest corners of a pot during cooking.
If you’re tired of leaving small morsels behind, you must switch to softer kitchen utensils that can bend easily. If you need kitchen utensils for fuller and faster incorporation, then use silicone utensils, too.
And yes, you cannot possibly scratch any metal surface with silicone, for obvious reasons. Silicone is just too soft to scratch anything, so it’s no surprise that people are investing more and more in quality silicone utensils.
Keep in mind that there are also silicone utensils with a metal core. The metal core is added to add sturdiness to the utensils. On the flip side, you lose the flexibility that silicone utensils are known for.
What Should You Not Use On Stainless Steel Cookware?
Manufacturers of stainless steel cookware are generally lenient about what type of kitchen utensils people should be using on their all-clad cookware. Heavy-duty stainless steel cooking utensils are widely available, as well as 18/10 stainless steel kitchen utensils, and it’s not surprising that people prefer these because they do last longer than other types of materials. However, the big issue with these heavy-duty utensils is they are also heavy-handed with nonstick coatings on pans, and they can also damage some cookware if they are especially sharp.
Since stainless steel cookware is not built to be like armor, they are thin and light, which also helps in the quick conduction of heat. Generally speaking, the use of heavier utensils will leave undesirable marks on your pots and pans, and those dings over time will reduce the pristine appearance of your stainless steel cookware.
The polish of your cookware will depend largely on how much you take care of the outer layer. Unfortunately, matching stainless steel with stainless steel will likely result in a battle of “which one is harder.” Stainless steel is manufactured in different hardness levels, and if your kitchen utensils are heavier and harder, your cookware will show it.
And if you want to protect your stainless steel cookware for the long term truly, we recommend that you avoid doing any carving or slicing in the cookware. While this may be convenient in some cases because you don’t have to get another tray or dish for the carving, the chances of damaging your cookware’s interior are just too high for comfort. This applies most, especially if you have branded cookware that is on the pricey side.
Are Wooden or Silicone Utensils Good for Stainless Steel Cookware?
Fortunately, there are alternatives so you can maintain the pristine look of your cookware. A reliable stainless steel cooking utensils set can be made of wood or silicone. We highly recommend that you go for these lighter utensils in favor of the heavier stainless steel ones, especially if you have no idea how hard your stainless cookware set truly is. You can’t eyeball at all because stainless cookware all look the same to the naked eye if you aren’t trained to spot the harder variants from the softer ones.
