This is Day 57 of the Green in 365 series!
Today is a super quick and easy kitchen tip for how to grease pans without non-stick cooking spray.
First let’s just talk quickly about why we should skip using non-stick cooking spray.
• They use propellents like nitrous oxide which is a greenhouse gas and depletes the ozone.
• They contain many unhealthy and possibly even toxic ingredients, including soy lecithin, mono and diglycerides, dimethylpolysiloxane, dimethyl silicone, and artificial flavors.
• The oils used are most likely made from GMO sources. And read even more reasons not to use cooking sprays.
So, what should you use instead? Butter papers.
When I was first making the switch to real food and eliminating unhealthy food items from my kitchen, I was trying to figure out how to get rid of cooking spray. I remembered my mom always keeping butter papers folded over in the door of our refrigerator when I was growing up and using those to grease pans.
When you unwrap a stick of butter to use it in a recipe, or to put it on your butter dish, there is usually some butter left over on the paper. You don’t want to let that little bit of butter go to waste, so fold the paper in half – butter sides together, stick it in your fridge, and save it until you need to grease a pan for cooking or baking.
Then, just grab a butter paper and wipe the butter all around on the inside of the pan. Works like a charm! It’s also a fun thing for kids to help with. (I always go over the pan with the butter paper one more time after my kiddos, just to make sure it’s all covered.)
It’s such a simple, easy, and frugal solution, really. Getting another use out of something you would normally just throw away!
Another great option is to get an olive oil sprayer (I have one like this, but mine is plastic). Just fill it with extra virgin olive oil and you can use that to spray down pans that you don’t want to grease with a butter paper. Easy, and toxic-free!
Get rid of your non-stick cooking spray today!
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
More Green Kitchen Tips!
Get rid of aluminum, plastic, and Teflon!
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Another idea, use bacon grease. We save it in a jar by the stove. It may not taste right with all skillet recipes, but will most likely add flavor. I cook my bacon and then cook my eggs in the same skillet each morning.