Tangled Metal wrote:If aluminium gets into your system through cooking in aluminium pans it's through the oxide layer. So is it just the thickness of the oxide layer that affects the amount of aluminium that gets into your system or does anodising really not make much difference to aluminium getting into the system?
I don't know the answer either, but the first time I heated sausages in brine in an (old) aluminium mess tin, the oxide layer looked significantly thicker afterwards.
I've also found that an empty aluminium cooking vessel can easily melt on an open wood fire, and an aluminium pan holds less heat than a steel one, enough to be annoying when cooking pancakes. On the plus side I'm told aluminium restricts at least some bacterial growth - not as well as copper, but better than iron - and unlike copper it doesn't catalyse the breakdown of vitamins during cooking. Not that I see many copper cooking utensils these days.
Back towards the topic, my go-to for boiling water is a ghillie kettle and I find it works pretty well burning methylated spirit instead of wood, though it helps to have a stick or two to act as wicks.
Everyone's ghast should get a good flabbering now and then.
--Ole Boot
