Anodized Extreme Cookware

Cooking on the sea coast is sometimes as challenging as the effort to get there. Not just the cooking, even, but the transport and storage of pots and pans, cups and coffeepots, not to mention the elbow grease required to scrape burnt food off fire blackened metal, maybe cleaning up by water's edge in the dark with a pesky surf soup chasing us around and snatching unattended pots. At some point, for some of us, those freeze-dried meals that cook in the pouch they come in, aren't looking so bad…and truth be told, they aren't. After a few of these meals though, we begin to crave natural foods again, and, in particular, those food items that we ourselves have gathered, chased or otherwise outsmarted: nettles, fresh salmon, wild onions, steamed Dungy crab, salty kelps. And back out come the pots and pans.

I've had a long road coming to the cook set I use now. During my free years as a hippie adventurer, a pan for the backcountry was something you picked up at a thrift shop, a hand me down from Mom, or the lid of an old Boy Scout mess kit. And frankly, I was a very slow study in this department. Sleeping bags, tents, boots and high-powered stoves were always the focus and sexy enough to sacrifice a week's paycheck for. Slowly did I morph from thrift store to aluminum to stainless, and even then it was ill cared for, mismatched and never given a second thought. The only epiphany I had in this department was how a Frisbee made a sweet a dinner plate. It was not until a kayak expedition in Northern British Columbia a few years back, that I got religion.

GSI makes a line of cookware they call Hard Anodized Extreme. It's good looking stuff, nests well and is sturdy. It won Backpacker magazine's Editor's Choice Award in 2001. It enjoys the high heat conduction index of aluminum (triple that of steel or titanium) to avoid hotspots and cook efficiently. The stuff, we'll call it HAE, is hard as garnet. The process of anodizing is essentially a matter of electrocuting the aluminum in an acid bath to remove the carbon molecules from the surface, leaving behind an extremely impervious shell of aluminum oxide totally surrounding the soft, conductive aluminum core. From this you get the benefits of aluminum without concern about leeching metal, the weight savings of titanium and a much kinder price point. With regard to detailing, lids are designed to use as fry or sauté pans, the removable handle uses an exterior bracket to avoid pan scratch, and a spiral design machined into the bottom of the pan helps keep it from vibrating off the stove. GSI went one step further and put a Teflon coating on their pans, not one actually, but three…and no doubt this is where I'll lose some of you on principle.

For the rest of you, let me say that this is written from a greener's perspective. We all live as green as we can here in the islands and Teflon is anathema in our social circle. We use cast iron and stainless at home, but I will take a set of coated cookware on kayak trips. Doing some homework recently on the issue, I've been in touch with the engineers at GSI and the peeps at the EPA, and have a pretty good handle on the issues involved. Here's what I found out.

Cookware coatings, such as those used in the HAE line of cookware from GSI, have three associated concerns. The process of creating fluoropolymers such as Teflon, involves a substance called PFOA, or C-8. While PFOA is present in Teflon and other high performance plastics used to coat everything from clothing to car parts to flooring, it is virtually not present in the final Teflon coating on a pan. Reason? It is burned to a white powder residue and removed during the application process. I contacted the EPA directly for a better take on "virtually" and Ernesta Jones, a PR spokeswoman, told me, "There are likely going to be extremely tiny trace amounts of PFOA in coated cookware and unlikely to migrate into food. Therefore, based on the information the agency has available currently, we do not believe that PFOA poses a risk to people or to the environment."

Dupont's position in regard to the residual PFOA is, "Studies using FDA standard testing methods found no detectable level of PFOA in Teflon non-stick cookware… A published, peer-reviewed study (April 2005) in Environmental Science & Technology found no PFOA in Teflon cookware. No PFOA was detected even when the cookware was scratched with a knife. Studies using FDA standard testing methods also found no detectable levels of PFOA in non-stick coatings used for cookware sold under the Teflon brand. The Danish Technical Institute and China Academy of Inspection and Quarantine tested Teflon cookware and did not detect PFOA." Call me naïve to trust a company like DuPont (or, for that matter, a governmental agency), but I accept the above statements at face value and are enough "evidence" to put my mind to rest on the PFOA issue.

Secondly, it is possible to ingest small particles of Teflon that can scrape off rather easily. The FDA claims that there is no health risk involved, while DuPont tells us the particles pass through the body without being absorbed. We can avoid the issue by being careful with Teflon coated cookware, using wood or plastic implements and cleaning without abrasion.

The third issue is fumes from pan overheat, or what is referred to as "polymer fume fever." Basically, this occurs when you torch your pan. Above 500 degrees the coating will begin to morph. As will whatever you're cooking. All evidence suggests that the flu like symptoms pass quickly with no long-term effects. It sounds noxious to me, but in 40 years of coated kitchen accidents there have been no long term problems reported with such exposure. Cooking outdoors would disperse fumes far better than our kitchens, and again, if we are careful and minding our cooking, Fume Fever can be avoided.

In conclusion, it seems reasonable to me that judicious use of a quality coated anodized aluminum pan during the relatively few days that I cook in the field each year should not pose a problem. I won't expose the pan to scorching heat and I will use plastic or wood utensils to protect the surface. On the plus side, I'll have some versatile, quality cookware on the beach with me, and, not in the least, when it comes time to cleanup, well, that's where this story started. Now I put away the food and wipe out the pans with tissue paper. Then I toss the paper in the cedar fire and find a comfortable spot of warm sand to burrow into. Then I'll dig out my pipe and crack a can of Old Chubb Ale. Meal over.

I like tips, they're like hors d'oeuvres, and here's three to help with outdoor cooking:

1. Cook before dark. HUGE.

2. Rotate the chief cook and bottle washer on a daily basis. On shorter trips, have each person plan and be responsible for a meal they will prepare when their number comes up. This invests the chore of cooking with the excitement of a presentation. Assign a clean-up crew on the same rotational basis. Knowing ahead of time who does what/when goes along way towards preventing hard feelings from the more work ethic-active members in the group.

3. Drill everyone about where kitchen supplies are. Label boxes/bags with group gear and food if necessary. Finding a particular pot or pan should not be an adventure unto itself.

GSI: gsioutdoors.com