With the height of tomato season comes the joys of thick ruby-red slices drizzled with salty juice that runs up to your elbows and thick tomato sandwiches topped with mayo and salt and pepper. Enjoying these delicacies is undoubtedly one of life’s great simple pleasures but even if you’re a pro at storing your fresh tomatoes there’s only so much you can put away before you have to find alternative methods of preserving the season’s harvest.
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 krishashok | 2024-01-27 15:00:46 |  196,475 Views |
Aluminum cookware: toxic or not?
There are endless options for cooking tomatoes—you can transform them into pasta dishes warming soups and trusty all-purpose tomato sauces. But it pays to know a few basic rules of what to do and what not to do when cooking with your heirlooms your San Marzanos or your cherry tomatoes (both fresh and canned). One important tip is to never mix tomatoes with aluminum—utensils pots or otherwise.
You may not think much about which pot or pan you pull out to can your tomato dishes but you should. Cooking with aluminum—whether it’s aluminum cookware or pots—is considered safe in most cases so there’s no need to line your baking sheets for easy cleanup. But in the case of tomatoes the delicate acidic fruit can react negatively with the metal altering the flavor of the food and potentially damaging the cookware. There are also potential health concerns particularly when mixing aluminum and acidic foods so tomatoes should definitely be kept away from metal.
There’s a bit of science behind why aluminum + tomatoes are such a culinary and potentially health no-go but it boils down to the acid and salt in the tomatoes interacting with the metal causing the aluminum to leach into the food. As a result your lovely tomato sauce can taste a little tinny and the pot or cookware itself can become damaged. You should always do your best to avoid aluminum cookware—as well as utensils spoons etc.—when working with tomatoes but especially in cases where they’ll be simmering for a while like a soup or sauce that’s been simmering for an hour. The longer the two mix the more damage can occur.
