Love your cookware

A word on dishwashers

If you love your cookware they way we love ours, you will not take it near a dishwasher. Dishwashers provide useful additional storage, but are otherwise beastly brutish thugs in domestic kitchens. They are fine for hard sterile things like ceramics and stainless steel, but the chemicals will destroy all really useful cooking surfaces like aluminium, copper, cast iron, carbon steel and enamels. If you doubt this, take a look at your grandmother's bone handled silver plated cutlery after a few years of dishwashing. It is as shocking as looking at a smoker's lungs.

Why can't you put knives in a dishwasher?

There are four main reasons why good quality knives can't go in the dishwasher:

They have a higher carbon content which means the abrasive chemicals in the dishwasher can cause pitting and even rusting.

Because of the higher carbon, expensive knives are softish metal. If they are rattling around in a whooshing dishwasher banging into harder objects, they will become blunt and deeply unhappy.

Most good quality knives are 'mixed material': ie the metal of the blade and whatever the handle is made of. Dishwashers get extremely hot. All materials expand when they get hot. Different materials expand at different rates, metals usually expanding more and faster. The non-metal handle will very soon crack under the pressure.

It takes about 2 seconds to wipe a knife with a wet sponge. Putting it in the dishwasher is an inexcusable laziness.

Wood

While it is true you can't sterilise wood, it is not true it's unclean. Wood has its own antibacterial properties and actually attacks germs rather than breeds them. All it needs is a wipe down with a damp, soapy sponge and not too much soaking in water. If it becomes waterlogged the bacteria in the water will breed and the wood will crack. If your board begins to dry out, give it a wipe with a light oil, such as groundnut or vegetable. Don't use olive oil, as it's far too viscous to be absorbed into the grain.

Seasoning cast iron

Seasoning is simply the process of burning fat into the pores of the metal, sealing it from moisture and creating, over time, the most natural non-stick surface.

Most European cast iron these days has a glass enamel coating inside and out. This is a very hard, glossy surface which doesn't need seasoning. Uncoated cast iron – and steel pans (like woks or 'black iron' frypans used in catering) – do need seasoning.

If your cast iron is black or very dark grey, with a tendency to rust, it is the seasonable sort. The main thing is: don't panic. Get some wire wool and rub off all the rusty bits. Wipe some groundnut oil ALL OVER (the cookware, not yourself). Put it in a medium hot oven for a couple of hours for the oil to burn in. It's best if you line the oven and turn the piece upside down so dripping fat drips out rather than pooling in the bottom of the pan.

Don't use olive oil for this as you won't be able to get a thin enough layer and you'll end up with knobbly bits of burnt oil all over it.

Each time you use the pan, scrape off any food residue, give it a rinse out, dry it thoroughly and give it another wipe round with a small amount of oil. Never ever ever put cast iron in the dishwasher. It will undo years and years of seasoning in half an hour.