Healthy Kitchen Gadgets, 3 Part Video Series - Marina Buksov and Nataliya Ostrovskaya - Part 2: Best Cookware for Healthy Cooking

Welcome back to the second part of our “Healthy Kitchen Gadget” series (you can see part one here)! Now that you know which items will go a long way towards equipping your healthy kitchen, let’s talk about what materials these items should preferably be composed of.

In the previous installment, we mentioned that plastic or silicone can be useful in terms of cutting mats, but that’s pretty much the only use of plastic we will recommend in the healthy kitchen. The top materials we recommend for most of your cookware are:

Glass
Stainless steel
Cast iron: will add iron into your food, and should not be washed. It can simply be wiped down and “primed” with an oil in between uses.
Copper

Your pots, pans, and kettle surfaces will come in contact with the food and water you drink, and under conditions of high heat, the risk of leaching toxic materials increases. For this reason, we recommend avoiding cookware with Teflon/non-stick coatings, aluminum, plastic (even BPA-free), and enamel glazes. You can use parchment or wax paper rather than aluminum or plastic wrap to cover your dishes (or simply cover with another plate or a lid).

Also, we would be remiss if we don’t talk about the quality of water that you will use for drinking and cooking in your healthy kitchen. In an effort to cut down on plastic water bottles, the best thing to do would be to use filters for your tap water. It may be worth the extra investment to choose systems that will filter out fluoride among other chemicals. Under-the-sink filters or counter top filters can both achieve the job of providing potable water for drinking, boiling, and cooking. Our top picks are: