Tired of your electric slow cooker gadgets taking too much space and looking for a way to slow cook right on the stove top and in the oven? Then you are not alone: modern slow cookers are not only complex to use, but they also pose some serious health risks, which is causing healthy cooks to look for better alternatives. This article explains the criteria for choosing the best slow cooker that can conveniently slow cook healthy food on a stovetop.
If you have arrived here, you must be someone who is aware of the distinct deliciousness of food cooked in clay and are perhaps looking for more recipes and information on this amazing cooking method. Maybe you tried a claypot chicken dish at a friend’s party, or bread made in a clay oven…
Whatever be the case, we have some delicious recipes from around the world cooked in clay, wise tips on choosing the right clay pot for cooking, and not to mention some delicious claypot chicken recipes!
Continue reading How to Cook Clay Pot Chicken? – Useful Tips & RecipesBeans are protein-rich legumes that can be added to a variety of dishes to give them an extra protein boost. For example, you can combine beans with fiber rich whole grains to make a wholesome meal. The most popular types include black beans, pinto beans, kidney beans and garbanzo beans; and these come in dried, canned, fresh, roasted, or pre-cooked versions. However, preparing beans in a healthy way can sometimes be a challenge, given their long periods of soaking required in order for them to cook faster & healthier.
If you have experienced trouble with bean preparation, this article acts as a guide for soaking and cooking dried beans. In addition, it presents the best way to pressure cook beans, with less overall hassle and better health value.
Continue reading How To Soak Beans Before Cooking?You just recently got yourself one or more of MEC’s 100% non-toxic clay pots, the safest pots and pans for cooking. But how do you take care of it? How do you make it last? Thankfully, if you follow these useful tips for cleaning and maintaining your MEC unglazed clay pots, these pots can last you a lifetime. Here is a quick guide for taking care of your healthy cookware:
Continue reading Maintenance Tips for Your Clay Cookware: How to Clean Your Clay Pot and More!Clay pot cooking might not be the primary method of cooking in our civilization anymore, but it used to be so until a few hundred years ago. This primary method of cooking changed only recently, when people started mining metals in excess and found a way to repurpose them into cookware.
Making cookware was a good way to reuse these metals, right? Unfortunately, no, because when this happened, we lost touch with the numerous health benefits that comes from cooking in an “all-natural” and “pure” material offered.
Continue reading Clay Pot Cooking: The come back of an Ancient Art & Science in Modern KitchensYour best yogurt can be made at home, you know why? Because you can make it in the most healthy and non-toxic way! The commercial prepared store bought version of yogurt pales in comparison to the taste, thickness and flavor offered by homemade yogurt in this method that we are about to teach you! And of course this is achieved without the use of artificial thickeners, pectin, and whatnot. Also, you can forget about getting your food close to plastic (most store bought yogurt are prepared and come in toxic plastic containers). So, without further ado, let us dive into the best way of making yogurt that has been practiced from time immemorial.
Continue reading An Easy and Foolproof Way to Make the Best Yogurt at HomeRice has been a staple for countless generations as a grain that provides nourishment for the body. Rice is an excellent source of complex carbohydrates, which acts as a source of energy for our body. Our body’s ability to convert the carbohydrates in rice into energy is why rice serves as a great addition to many meals.
Looking for a completely non-toxic rice cooker that can cook delicious rice without needing to add unhealthy additives? When looking at conventional cookware, you often find that the rice cooker is never truly non-toxic, with its material, glazes, or other additives leaching toxins into your food. Additionally, you often find that you have to add unhealthy substances to the rice itself to compensate for the rice cooker’s inability to prepare rice, like adding unhealthy cooking oils, fats, and greases. It may seem hopeless, but Miriam’s Earthen Cookware (MEC) has you covered! Making rice in MEC’s pure, primary clay pots is simple, easy, and especially healthy. This article details out the benefits of cooking rice in MEC, compares MEC to other common conventional cookware, and provides some quick tips on cooking rice and some healthy rice recipes for your everyday use.
Continue reading Cook Rice and Grain Dishes from Around the World in this Non-Toxic Rice Cooker Made in USAMaking yogurt at home is much healthier than the store-bought yogurt, but some still go for the store bought yogurt because of the difficulty involved making yogurt, and understandably so! This article aims at focusing on the homemade yogurt benefits, while providing solutions that make yogurt-making far more convenient. With yogurt-making made easy, you can say goodbye to store bought yogurt and embrace the wonderful healthfulness of homemade yogurt!
Continue reading Benefits of Making Yogurt at Home over Store Bought YogurtRice is a staple for most of the world’s population, which makes rice cookers one of the most popular cooking pots around the globe. There are different types of rice cookers available in the market today, and rice cookers with a stainless steel inner pot are very common. Stainless steel pots do not corrode as quickly as other cookware and are durable, making it a generally preferred choice for a rice cooker insert. But what if we told you there was a cookware that acted as a better insert than even stainless steel, or could operate as a better rice cooker altogether? This article will highlight the pros and cons of common stainless steel inserts on the market, and provide the healthiest option for rice cooking.
Continue reading Healthy Rice Cooking in Stainless Steel Pots: Pros, Cons and a Better AlternativeBiryani is a delicious Indian seasoned rice dish and is also known as biriyani, biriani, birani or briyani. It has both vegetarian and non-vegetarian versions as it can be made with meat, fish or vegetables. The word Biryani is derived from Persian word for rice, Birinj, and another Persian word Birian, which means ‘fried before cooking’.
This famous dish owns a special place in people’s hearts because it is a perfect mix of everything that tantalizes the taste buds in every which way. Meat or veggies, rice, ghee, and spices when mixed in the correct proportions, and cooked to perfection produce a dish that satiates foodies like no other.
The exact origin of this great dish is not certain, but most theories claim that it came from the royal kitchens of the Mughal Empire (1526-1857). It is a mix of the Persian pilaf and the Indian spicy rice dish. It is widely believed that the modern biryani is the result of culinary experiments aimed to create a delicious and nutritious wholesome dish by Mumtaz Mahal – the legendary Mughal queen wife of the emperor Shahjahan.
Biryani is best cooked in a Dutch oven, for it is a sturdy and versatile piece of cookware. It can team up with any heat source and bring your flavors to life by cooking with steady heat. A Dutch oven comes in many varieties, but the design is often kept simple. This is because its primary purpose is to preserve the natural flavors in your ingredients and offer a tasty aromatic dish like Biryani. Dutch ovens can be made from different materials like cast iron, aluminum, stainless steel, ceramics, or natural clay. Keep reading to discover which one among these makes the best cooking pot for biryani.
Metal pots have been on the market for quite some time now, but there is unfortunately a health risk that comes with them. All metals are innately reactive, which means cooking food in a metal pot can contaminate it with metal toxins. The biochemical reactions during cooking must stay in an inert environment, so there are no toxic ions leaching from the cooking vessel to form toxic compounds.
Some brands tried to overcome this risk by coating the cooking pot with another material like glazes; enamels; or coatings of Teflon, ceramics, etc. These keep the reactive metals from coming in direct contact with food, and these can also sometimes make the pot non stick. This coating seems like a great solution because food will not stick to the bottom and the pot becomes easy to clean. However, such a solution is not fully viable for a variety of reasons.
These coatings are made from materials that have safety concerns. Studies have shown that materials like Teflon emit toxic fumes when heated. Of course, some try to overlook this issue with claims like “the fumes are only formed at really high temperatures” or that “the serious health effects of such materials are rare”. Despite these claims, the fact remains that not enough research has been done that can guarantee the safety of these materials.
“Ceramic ware” is a term used to classify things made from a raw material that has some clay with many additives. Many of these additives are toxic. This unfortunately means ceramics is also not a healthy and clean material for cooking.
Some seasoned and enlightened cooks stick to a cooking pot that has been trusted and relied upon from even before the time Biryani was discovered – a pure clay pot. Natural clay in its purest form is innately non-reactive, thus making the perfect vessel for cooking food. Some modern clay pots come glazed with chemicals or toxic materials, and they are not safe for the reasons explained above. Therefore, the best clay pot for cooking Biryani is a healthy Dutch oven made from pure and natural primary clay without any additives, glazes, or enamels.
Miriam’s Earthen Cookware (MEC) is a US-based cookware brand that offers pots and pans made from lab tested primary clay without additives. They make cooking pots by throwing all-natural clay on a potter’s wheel and using skillful hands to shape it into pots. In contrast, any machine-based process essentially call for the use of additives and/or chemicals.
MEC avoids using any toxic material and makes sure the pots turn out as pure and non-toxic as the raw material, natural clay. Cooking Biryani in MEC’s clay pot is simple and yet comes out healthy, flavorful, and aromatic.
A pure clay pot (such as MEC pots) cooks with unique far-infrared heat: penetrating deep into each grain and cooking evenly and thoroughly at low heat. This gentle heat cooks your ingredients while keeping their natural flavors intact, which also preserves even the most delicate nutrients. Therefore, biryani cooks healthily, nutritiously, and flavorfully in a pure clay pot (link to home page) with each ingredient cooked to perfection.
Additionally, MEC pots become naturally non-stick once they are fully seasoned (used 5-6 times for water-based recipes like lentils, soups, etc.). This prevents food from sticking to the bottom and makes the pot easy to clean. These features make MEC the best clay pot for biryani.
One thing that discourages people from cooking biryani often is the lengthy process of cooking it. However, cooking it in MEC makes it so much easier and involves only 4 main steps! Here is a Biryani recipe from MEC’s kitchen that demonstrates how convenient it is to cook biryani in a clay pot:
Marinate chicken for about 30 minutes in:
You can use either bone in or boneless chicken. We prefer bone in chicken!
Start stove on low heat.
2. Stir, cover, and cook on low for 5-7 minutes covered.
3. Stir and cook for 5 more minutes
4. Stir thoroughly with spices in the pot.
Add water and salt to taste. Stir, cover, and cook until rice is cooked (20-25 mins).
Your aromatic biryani is ready to serve!
As discussed in the beginning of this article, there are many variations of biryani – both vegetarian and non-vegetarian. Here are some great recipes for this spicy, hearty, and zesty dish:
Yes, biryani can be cooked in stainless steel. The pot must be made from best grade stainless steel with a heavy base that enables quick and even heating of food. As mentioned above, stainless steel is not as healthy as clay because it made from a combination of metals. Also, the harsh near infrared heat from stainless steel damages nutrients, and your ingredients lose their natural flavor and aroma. Despite this, stainless steel is still a better option than most other conventional cookware like aluminum pots, or pots with non-stick coating.
Aluminum is a soft metal that is used to make inexpensive cookware. It comes in anodized, hard-anodized, and coated forms. These pots are widely used because of their comparatively low prices, but aluminum exposure causes serious health problems.
This reactive metal is a known neurotoxin. It accumulates in brain, bones, and liver and can cause various disorders like dialysis encephalopathy and bone disorder. Some studies have also associated aluminum with Alzheimer’s disease. Other ill effects pertain to the central nervous system.
There are some who defend aluminum cookware with arguments based on “safe levels” of aluminum that the kidneys can easily filter out. However, it is unwise to let a known toxin enter our body even in small quantities when we are aware of its potential health hazards. This is why using aluminum cookware for biryani is not recommended.
Making Biriyani in MEC clay pots is so much healthier and also easier as:
a. Only 1/6 of the oil is needed,
b. There is no need to marinate the chicken for a long hours,
c. There is no need to cook rice in a different pot/pan. Rice is cooked to perfection in the same pot, without getting mushy,
d. the biryani can be cooked in 4 easy steps vs. 10 to 12 steps in other pots.
and e. The biryani recipe overall takes less time to cook!
And of course the fundamental benefits of cooking in MEC: your food is not contaminated with toxins, and nutrients are not damaged so the food is nutritionally dense.
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