I’ve been working in the kitchen for a really long time. My kids contend that my first recipes were on stone tablets, but I hate to burst their bubble: They were on Papyrus in hieroglyphics!
Seriously, I have been cooking for a really long time…almost as long as cooking sprays have been available in the US. In fact, PAM Cooking Spray was introduced to the US market in 1961, just a year before I was born. I’m not sure how popular it was to begin with, but I do remember when my grandmother used it for the first time. As a replacement for solid shortening, cooking spray was a huge upgrade.That first time she sprayed a baking pan she came this close to doing a happy dance.
Eventually I began to assimilate other usage ideas into my lexicon. Here are the 3 Things I’ve Learned:
Prevent Sticking During Cooking
The most obvious use for cooking spray is to keep things from sticking while cooking. I use a lot of oil and butter to do the same job, but those are calories that can be avoided. Sure, oil and butter can impart a delicious flavor to many foods, but it is prudent to consider whether those calories are necessary. If you’re looking to cut back on calories without having to work really hard, substituting cooking spray in place of oil or butter is a great place to start.
Other times there’s nothing that works as well as cooking spray. There isn’t any better way to prep a broiler pan so food doesn’t stick. Don’t just spray the slotted top of the broiler, consider spraying the lower pan too. That puppy gets just as hot as it’s upper brethren, and food sticks there just as readily. Spraying both surfaces will do wonders!
If you’ve got older non-stick pans, or pans that were never non-stick to begin with, a light coating of cooking spray will make your cooking so much easier. Having to scrape your food off the bottom of the pan is a surefire way to get ticked off in the kitchen. A bit of cooking spray can make that irritation evaporate!
If you’re grilling, consider spraying either the grates or the food. Either way do not spray around a lighted grill. We’re talking about aerosol deliver of a flammable product. Let’s just avoid the America’s Funniest Home Videos moment and not spray around the burning grill. But if you spray the rack before lighting, your food will keep from leaving little bits on the grill. In one of my favorite grilling books (Weber’s Real Grilling) they mention spraying your food before putting it on the grill. I thought this was patently weird and avoided it for years. Then one day I lit the grill and got it really hot…only to realize that I hadn’t sprayed the grates. I figured “What the heck, I’ll spray my steaks directly”. Sure enough, it worked like a charm. Over the years I’ve also discovered that if you spray your food and then apply the seasonings they adhere better. This was probably the biggest thing I’ve learned vis-a-vis cooking spray.
In addition to the grill grates, broiler pan, and saucepans you should spray your casserole dishes. Having to soak and scrub a casserole dish might be a form of therapy to some, but it typically brings out my four-letter vocabulary. Same goes for the slow-cooker pot. Spray that guy and cleanup is a breeze.
One thing you should never spray is your cast-iron cookware. Cast iron cookware needs to be properly seasoned with cooking oil. Then that oil needs to be heated over and over. Add a bit more oil. Heat it again. You don’t do this all at once, but rather build up a polymerized coating of oil over time. If you use cooking spray in this mix everything gets confused and the food you try to cook in your pan decides that it’s going to bond to the cast iron for life. Cleaning cast iron isn’t all that hard…until you’ve managed to indelibly adhere some eggs to it. Then out comes that four-letter word vocabulary. To avoid teaching the kids new words…don’t spray your cast iron!
Use Cooking Sprays for Easier Cleanup
While I often think of keeping the food from sticking to the pan, the underlying reason for spraying the pan is to make it easier to cleanup. Food that doesn’t stick doesn’t leave residue. That means you don’t have as much to chisel off after you’ve let the pan sit for days on end with the slow fossilization and bonding that occurs. The only downside to this is if you cook at a really high heat, sometimes the cooking spray will turn a golden brown and coat everything in a sticky layer. Then you have to use extraordinary measures to remove it. My favorite is Dawn dishwashing soap and a Brillo pad. Of course, a bit of elbow-grease is also required…but that’s ok. All the calories I burn mean I can eat that much more dessert.
That’s how it works, right?
Prevent Sticking During Prep
Up to this point, we’ve talked about preventing sticking during cooking and making cleanup easier. Those are the obvious uses for cooking spray. But there are some other uses that you might not have thought of…
Have you ever sprayed your hands before making a meatloaf or meatballs? You know that icky layer of fat that gets slimed all over your hands when your forming the ground meat…gone! The fat washes off your hand in nothing flat. And it’s much easier to work the other ingredients into the meat because you don’t end up with five pound hands that require constant scraping to remove the mixture.
What about when you’re cutting something sticky…have you sprayed your knife? The main culprit around here is dried fruit. I’m not sure why I find myself chopping dates and raisins quite so much, but I seem to be doing it all the time. I start working away and pretty soon have a glob of chopped fruit stuck to the knife. Then I remember that I should’ve sprayed the knife with cooking spray first. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve taped a photo of cooking spray to the box of raisins as a reminder. To answer the obvious question, “No, it doesn’t work all the time”, but it works often enough that I feel like I’m learning. Slowly, but I’m learning!
Did you ever see a recipe that called for corn syrup, maple syrup, honey or molasses and just skipped the recipe because you new that measuring into the measuring cup would mean a veritable wrestling match to get it out of the measuring cup. Once I discovered you can spray your measuring cups and spoons with cooking spray to release the sticky pourable I quit avoiding those recipes. It opens up all sorts of new things to try. It’s amazing how the honey just comes right out of the measuring cup like magic!
Finally, have you ever sprayed your grater? We eat tons of cheese at Hectic Manor, and honestly I have trouble keeping shredded cheese in the house. We buy 5 pound bags of the stuff, yet I’m constantly asking where the cheese is. The silly grins on the kids faces are dead giveaways that they ate it by the handful directly from the bag! I’m better about keeping blocks of cheese around, probably because that actually takes work to consume. Since cutting the cheese (no, not that “cutting the cheese”) takes effort, we’ve usually got a block in the refrigerator long after the shredded cheese is gone. But I honestly hate shredding cheese. The recipe calls for half a cup, yet I have to shred way more because so much is stuck on the grater. Then I forget to rinse the darned thing before it hits the dishwasher and hours later I’ve got cheese stuck to the grater as it comes out of the dishwasher. When I heard the tip about spraying my grater I was overjoyed. It really works!
Wrap-Up
So there you have it, the 3 Things I Learned about cooking spray over the years. Hopefully you found a couple that you didn’t know. What did I miss? Do you have any tips that will help everybody make it a great day in the kitchen? I’d love to have a conversation in the comments…so post away!