Those Forever Chemicals are in more than just the soil and your nonstick pans.

PFAS, the category of Forever Chemicals, is in nearly everything, including most Americans. Where are they and how to at least reduce your exposure? Nonstick pans might be a source, especially if those pans are in bad condition. Your food might also be a source as well as your drinking water.

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Jason Bassler episode

Jason Bassler on those forever chemicals

Articles mentioned

Maine Farms and PFAS

The Rational Kitchen page

Very Well Health on Kale

Dann’s Cookbook on Amazon

Cooking For Comfort

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Some of the work I do is writing freelance. One particular job was to write about nonstick pans. What I learned was both amazing and a bit concerning because it involves PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals.

Back in July 2023, I spoke with Jason Bassler about Forever Chemicals. One main topic was how the state of Maine was having some pretty serious issues with those chemicals in the soil and everything coming from the soil was contaminated with forever chemicals. That also meant anything eating those plants, chicken and cows and goats, to name three animals, was contaminated with forever chemicals.

That’s the starting point. I’ll add the article link to the show notes page, culinarylibertarian.com/276.

PFAS, which stands for per fluoro alkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances has been around since the 1940s. PFAS is a bit of an umbrella term that has more 4 letter compounds. Teflon, the brand name nonstick substance, is known as PFTE. There are also PFOA and PFOS and a few more.

Already it’s dizzying.

PFAS, as the category of chemicals, is very stable. That sounds good. The chief problem is, that due to the strong chemical bond, they don’t break down. The Cancer dot org website has this, “PFAS have the potential to be a health concern because they don’t break down easily and can stay in the environment and in the human body for a long time (which is why they are sometimes referred to as ‘forever chemicals’). Studies have found PFAS worldwide at very low levels in just about everyone’s blood. Higher blood levels have been found in communities where local water supplies have been contaminated by PFAS. People exposed to PFAS in the workplace can have levels many times higher.”

We’ve moved from a state, Maine, to worldwide. But, there are more states with PFAS problems. 

The Environmental Working Group website has a post from 2015. The article is pretty long and rich with lots of information about a class-action lawsuit against DuPont over contaminated water supplies in West Virginia and Ohio. The culprit is PFOA, Perfluorooctanoic Acid. The CDC website writes that “Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has been a manufactured perfluorochemical and a byproduct in producing fluoropolymers. Per fluoro chemicals (PFCs) are a group of chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. PFOA was used particularly for manufacturing polytetrafluoroethylene, but since 2002, manufacturers have used a new process not requiring this chemical. PFOA persists in the environment and does not break down. PFOA has been identified in bodies of water and in a variety of land and water animals.”

That’s a lot of alphabet soup. The first thing to know is PFOA has been phased out of production. PFOA was a DuPont product. The similar-sounding PFOS, perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, which did basically the same thing, was a 3M product. Both companies have phased out the use of those specific chemicals.

I mentioned Teflon earlier. Teflon is a trade name for PFTE, poly tetra fluoroethylene. The Rational Kitchen website writes, with emphasis, “We should repeat here–just to get the point across–that PTFE and Teflon are the same thing. Teflon® is Dupont’s original trade name for PTFE, and many people still today refer to PTFE pans as Teflon pans, regardless of the brand of PTFE on the pan. There are hundreds of different trade names for PTFE, but ‘Teflon pan’ has come to mean a nonstick PTFE pan in general.”

You might be wondering what does each one have to do with the other. PFOA was, somewhat ironically, the glue that held the PFTE on the pan. The PFOA was dumped in water supplies in West Virginia.

The ban on PFOA is for use in nonstick pans. As stated in that Rational Kitchen post, “As of 2015, no PTFE cookware sold in the US contains PFOA, regardless of where it’s made. This is true for many other parts of the world as well, so even nonstick cookware made in China and other countries with lax environmental policies rarely contains PFOA; there is simply not a market for it. 

However, PFOA is still found in other consumer goods made overseas, including carpeting, upholstery, apparel, floor wax, textiles, fire fighting foam, sealants, food packaging containers, and more.”

So, PFOA is gone. And what was the replacement? A chemical called GenX. Ironic, huh? It seems that the GenX chemical is not much better than the PFOA it replaced. GenX chemicals are used specifically in cookware.

I’ll link the Rational Kitchen article also to the show notes page. It has a lot of in-depth content.

All nonstick pans no longer have or use PFOA. That’s the good news. If you shop for pans, you might see the label proudly boasting that the pan is PFOA-free. Of course it is. Now. That’s like saying water is gluten-free. Because labeling is tricky business, what they are telling you isn’t there is no comfort to what they are concealing about what IS there. It’s almost like those drug ads that list all the things that might happen if you take that pill. You might be made more sick by taking the medicine.

The conclusion I came to after writing that article was that nonstick pans are to be avoided. If you have them and they are scratched, they should be thrown away. If they show obvious wear, throw them away.

I threw one pan out and one is next. I have a few more that are in line to go.

Aside from being a problem when the nonstick surface is scratched, the nonstick surface is not high heat safe. How high is high? 500 degrees which is very easy to reach on a stove top. An empty pan on medium-low heat can reach 500 degrees pretty easily

Getting rid of your nonstick pans is one way to reduce exposure to PFAS. Those water-repelling sprays for upholstery are probably PFAS. Dental floss might have PFAS. That’s alarming. It is important to know that forever chemicals are inert below high heat. PFAS are also used in machinery and medical products. 

I mentioned I’ll link to the rational kitchen page and I urge you to read it. The content there is worth knowing.

The issue in Maine used biosolids, which they called sludge, to fertilize the soil. They didn’t know it was PFAS-rich rich so it contaminated the soil and the food that grew there and the animals and people who ate that food.

PFAS in soil is not limited to Maine. The Very Well Health website posted an article in 2023 about PFAS in kale. Researchers found PFAS in 7 of 8 samples, both organic and conventionally grown.

It seems bleak. If PFAS are in nearly every US citizen and half of the drinking water sources in the US, how to stop it or reverse it? That same article suggests the need for strong federal regulation to eliminate all 12,000 PFAS chemicals in use. That’s ambitious. Maybe foolish. I’m skeptical that it can be done and I’m also skeptical that what comes as the replacement, the cure so to speak, is better than the disease.

You probably feel overwhelmed. Is there light at the end of the tunnel? From a mitigation standpoint yes. Is it easy? Probably not. Grow your own food. Buy whole foods and make your own stuff. Avoid processed foods in slick slippery packaging. We may not be able to avoid PFAS entirely. We also don’t have to run to more of it for the convenience. 

To the pan issue. Cast iron and ceramic and stainless steel are good replacements. Cast iron will last your lifetime when seasoned well and treated properly. Stainless steel pans, with good thick bottoms, usually a copper core for heat distribution, are excellent. I also have some of those. Mine are probably 35 years old and look nearly brand new. For stainless steel, the key is a good SOS pad and lots of elbow grease.

The Escoffier Series continues with meat pies, pâtès, and terrines

We continue Chapter 11 with some of the best parts of the cold kitchen, the pâtè items. My favorite to make and to eat. There’s a lot of room for innovation and imagination.

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The Escoffier series continues in cold preparations.

In the last episode of chapter 11, we discussed galantines. One detail Escoffier mentions that seemed new to me was pressing the galantine. I checked with my friend Chef Todd and he’s never done that, either. That tells me at least that it’s out of favor.

The galantine was a forcemeat of the thing, chicken or duck most likely today, with garnishes, put back into the skin of the thing, rolled, tied, poached, and cooled.

The next part of Chapter 11 is meat and fish pies.

The pies are a bit like you might be thinking. Round with crust on the top and bottom. That’s mostly right. Ovals or oblong dishes were preferred by Escoffier.

For a fish pie, make a forcemeat of the fish, pike or sole or salmon. Spread the forcemeat on the bottom of the pie on the crust, add alternating layers of fish and garnish and forcemeat, seal the pie with more dough, which he called short paste, egg wash, and bake. When cool, fill the pie with the appropriate fish aspic.

Simple, right?

I don’t expect you to make a fish pie. It’s doable and would make one heck of a Valentine’s presentation.

Meat pies are similar. Pork forcemeat is the main vehicle for meat pies with garnish being the featured meat. Ham or veal are two specific pies he mentions.

Not to be left out there are birds. Here Escoffier gets a bit tedious, particularly with the game birds. In some cases, woodcock and thrush are two examples, he writes to bone out the birds, leaving the meat on the skin, add pork forcemeat, reshape the birds, place them in a forcemeat lined oval pie dish, add foie gras and more forcemeat to cover the birds. Cover the pie, eggwash, and bake. When cooled, add woodcock aspic jelly.

I can visualize all of that and I still struggle with it.

Escoffier calls these pates. That’s a term you probably have heard me use and might have seen or heard on TV food shows or at a restaurant.

A look through the book’s index does nothing to get clarification on the term. Pâtè is followed by the name of the principle ingredient.

Now, to make this easy. Pate is basically a sausage just not in a casing. Something we make at home is similar, even though the fat-to-meat ratios are off, is meatloaf.

The pies, by name, are pâtè de jambon or pâtè de veau et jambon.

The pates seen in restaurants or Dean and Deluca catalogs are pâtè en terrine. The terrine is the cooking vessel. Often it’s an enameled dish, but it doesn’t have to be. Country pâtè can be and has been, made in bread pans.

The basics are the same for the pies and galantines. A forcemeat is basically a sausage by ratios. One part principle meat, one part pork meat, one part pork fat. Escoffier adds eggs to his; we almost never did. Then add the garnish, usually some of the meat of the animal seared, dried fruit or nuts, and seasonings.

For the pâtè en terrine we made, we ground the meat through a fine plate. The smaller the grind the better the texture and large pieces of meat show up as garnish better.

Let’s invent a pâtè.

Sanitation is key so everything has to be cold, including the grinder attachments if you are working in the summer or your house is set to sauna. The key thing with the forcemeat is that we are emulsifying the meat and the fat. To achieve that, we’ll use the mixer. I’ll get to that.

For our pâtè, let’s use venison. You can use any meat, but generally, beef is avoided. It’s very powerful and will only ever taste like meatloaf. Venison is also potent but tastes like venison. In any forcemeat, the fatty, sinewy cuts are preferred.

I’m going to sound like I’m not following the rules. This venison pâtè recipe works and it doesn’t follow the rules.

2 # venison

½ # pork

1 # bacon

½ # foie gras (chicken livers can be used and add ¼ # pork fat)

¼ onion

6 juniper berries

2 eggs

1 oz red wine

1 oz brandy

4 ounces heavy cream

2.5 ounces AP flour

Salt and pepper as needed.

Toast the juniper berries over low heat till you smell the aroma.

Grind the meats, the fats, the juniper berries, and the onion through a small plate.

Place the mixture in a mixing bowl and paddle to combine. Add the eggs, the wine, the brandy, the heavy cream, and the flour.

Now, the emulsion part. Paddle at a brisk speed to make sure the meat and fat combine into a homogenous mixture. Taste test the pâtè by cooking a small portion in a saute pan on the stove. Add seasoning as needed.

While you are taste-testing, store the bowl of pâtè in the cooler.

Garnishes can be nearly anything that goes with venison. Pistachio nuts are pretty. Diced pieces of ham. Chives taste good. Dried cranberries or cooked diced carrots or parsnips. You can paddle your preferred garnish into the pâtè.

Line a bread pan with slices of bacon. The bacon will, or should, overlap the pan. That’s good. Carefully place the pâtè into the pan. You’ll probably need two tools, one to scoop from the bowl, and one to scrape the mixture off the spoon. The pâtè will stick to the bacon and lift it from the pan. That’s maddening.

When the pâtè is in the pan, fold over the bacon. Add more bacon lengthwise in the pan to cover the space missed.

The tricky part of baking pates is the need for a water bath. Usually, a roasting pan will work. You need something big enough to hold the bread pan and some water to come about halfway up the bread pan. If you have an oven-proof instant-read thermometer, place that in the middle center of the pâtè and plan to leave it there till the pâtè is cool.

Bake at 350 in a water bath until the temperature reads 145° F. It is not done. The pâtè will easily carry up 20 more degrees. If the pâtè is overcooked, the emulsion might break and the texture of the pâtè will be grainy. It isn’t poison, but it’s not all it could have been. A bit more mustard and shots of bourbon will help.

Escoffier recommends pressing terrines. It does make a difference. For our country pâtè, we’ll forego that detail. It’s messy if you aren’t prepared for it and it takes some space.

Let the pâtè cool completely before taking it out of the pan and slicing it.

Let warm water run on the outside of the pan to help loosen the fat then tip it out onto a sheet pan to catch all that comes out of the pan.

Slice it about a quarter of an inch thick, serve with excellent whole grain mustard and cornichons, and good toast points or crackers. And beer. Or bourbon

The timeline is short, but it is also excellent game day nosh.

Now, the king daddy of terrines is the pâtè en croute. That’s a cross between the pâtè en terrine and the pie. There’s both skill and art to a pâtè en terrine. It takes the pâtè skills and pastry skills and saucier skills—there’s consomme involved—and makes it all amazing. Beyond amazing when done well and less so when done wrong.

When Todd and I were at the Governors’ Club, Chef Shoop required a pâtè service of 5 different terrines and one had to be pâtè en croute.

Next up in Chapter 11 is salads, salad dressings, and composed salads. I’ll bet you didn’t know Salade Waldorf is a Classical French salad.