There is no home cook who doesn’t own at least one silicone kitchen tool. Be it baking molds or utensils, they are incredible for yielding a hassle free cooking experience. But the question is, “Are silicone kitchen tools safe for your health?”.
If you’re also looking for the answer, continue reading on—
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Are Silicone Kitchen Tools Safe
It’s been quite a long time since we’ve started to use silicone products in our kitchen. They have won our hearts due to their versatility & fun colors.
Providing scratch free stirring on nonstick surfaces & having highly nonstick characteristics, silicone kitchen tools are slowly replacing the metal utensils & baking molds.
Still, people are pretty confused to use silicone products since this is a synthetic compound. A lot of synthetic compounds have turned out to be carcinogenic agents, so it’s not rare to encounter such questions.
People are concerned about their health and so are we. So let’s see if silicone products are really safe for cooking.
Well, the answer to this question is, food grade silicone products are absolutely safe for using in the kitchen. But that is safe up to a certain limit. Silicone tends to melt or deform with a temperature over 572F.
There’s a high chance of releasing toxins into your food when silicone reaches its threshold temperature a.k.a melting point. But food grade silicone products are totally safe for using otherwise.
Now, you are probably wondering about the baking molds & silpats that we’ve been using all these years. Well, we don’t bake our food at such a high temperature nor our ovens can reach a temperature this high. So you can safely use these silicone products for baking purposes too.
Is Silicone Kitchen Tools Better Than Plastic
Silicone is more beneficial to the environment than plastic. Plastic is less strong than silicone, so it is more frequently discarded, resulting in more pollution.
Plastic is also toxic to humans because it contains BPA, a substance that can imitate our hormones, inducing endocrine disruption. Since plastic factories faced customer backlash due to BPA, many businesses are now manufacturing BPA-free plastics, substituting BPA with bisphenol S (BPS).
There are reports, however, which show that BPS can be just as harmful as BPA. Silicone is non-toxic and it is not a toxic waste, which makes it the right option as kitchen accessories.
Is Silicone Recyclable
Silicone is not a biodegradable material. It melts at a certain temperature but never decomposes. So Silicone can be turned into new products after processing & remolding. That is why it’s kind of superior to plastics. Because a certain type of plastics can never be reused & remolded after melting.
Can You Use Silicone For Steaming
As we previously mentioned, silicone can only persist up to a certain temperature without affecting the food. The temperature margin is 572 F, which is way higher than the usual steaming temperature, 212 F. So you can safely use your silicone kitchenware for steaming your favorite dim sum or vegetables.
Tips For Buying Silicone Kitchen Products
Here are a few purchase tips that can help you if you decide you want to give silicone kitchen equipment a shot.
- You would like to verify the item’s safe range of temperatures when purchasing bakeware. Or else, your new silicone baking pan could eventually wind up melting.
- To verify that the substance you’re evaluating does not contain fillers, do a twisting test. Keep and twist the silicone tightly between your fingertips. The product is filler-free if the color does not really alter. It has some additives in it when the color becomes whitish.
- Get those that come with a support ring for stabilization when you’re purchasing silicone baking pans.
- Buy silicone baking molds that do not have confined corners where foods could get trapped, making them difficult to wash.
- To make sure they are nontoxic, purchase only FDA-approved silicone cookware and bakeware. They need to have a food-grade rating too.
So there you go, the answer to the question “Are silicone kitchen tools safe?”. To conclude, we can say it’s totally safe for any home cooking usage. I hope this article clears up all the confusion, don’t avoid silicone kitchen tools from now on & enjoy some mess free cooking. Happy baking!