Being Slowly Dragged Into The Modern Age Of Dishwashing
Many years ago, I wrote a lengthy piece here (like anything I write is less than lengthy) on the proper way to wash dishes. I called it “How To Wash Dishes.” Catchy title, huh? Then a few years later I revisited the topic of hand washing dishes in an article called “How To Hand Wash Dishes Revisited.” Both pieces focused on the primary way I always used to get dishes clean: two hands and lots of hot, soapy water. I only mentioned automatic dishwashing machines in passing. And while I stand firmly by the information I imparted in those original articles on hand dish washing, I'm here today to give the automatic dishwasher its due.
My wife doesn't understand my ambivalence toward dishwashers. That's because she always had one. Dishwashers were not a part of my upbringing. I never had a dishwasher in any of the houses in which I was raised. Never even saw one. My first experience with a dishwasher came when I started working in restaurants. I was well into adulthood before I rented an apartment that was equipped with a dishwasher and, following my mother's example, I never touched it.
See, mom was one of those people who believed that dishwashers were wasteful and expensive. In her senior years she lived in an apartment equipped with a dishwasher: she used it to store her Tupperware. For nearly thirty years that dishwasher held dishes but it never washed the first one.
A wealthy socialite named Josephine Garis Cochrane invented the modern dishwasher in 1886. It seems her clumsy servants kept chipping her fine china when they washed it. She tried washing the dishes herself for awhile but hated the chore, so she was motivated to design a motorized rack and water jet system that she constructed with the aid of mechanic George Butters in a shed behind her Chicago home. She debuted her invention at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, for which she won the prize for “best mechanical construction, durability and adaptation to its line of work.” The company she founded, Cochran's Crescent Washing Machine Company, became part of KitchenAid after her death in 1913.
When I was a kid, dishwashers were still pretty much considered toys for rich folks. By the time adulthood and the 1970s rolled around, they had become far more commonplace and today more than seventy-five percent of American homes have a dishwasher. Of course, as I said, my mom had one, but because she didn't really understand it, she never used it.
Mom believed, as many people of the time did and as some still do, that dishwashers were wasteful and expensive to use because they repeatedly filled and refilled with hot water. Not so.
Dishwashers don't actually “fill up.” Only a small basin at the bottom of the unit fills with water. The water in that basin is heated by electric elements to a temperature of around 150 degrees Fahrenheit. A pump pumps the heated water into rotating spray arms which force the water out and on to your dirty dishes. Food particles and other gunk are either deposited in a filter or chopped up and disintegrated much like a garbage disposal. More sophisticated modern machines have “soil sensors” that help them determine just how dirty your dishes are and adjust their operation accordingly. After the dirty water is drained, the basin refills, reheats, and sprays rinse water over your clean dishes. Then, if you've chosen the “dry” setting on your machine, the heating element activates and dries your washed and rinsed dishes.
So, far from being “wasteful,” dishwashers are actually more efficient and thrifty than hand washing. This is especially so because of a current trend toward hand washing dishes under running water rather than the “old-fashioned” method of filling up a sink or sinks. A running tap uses about a gallon and a half of water per minute. An average sink can take between four and five gallons to fill. So you've got two sinks that you fill with eight to ten gallons of water maybe twice a day. Or you're running water out of the tap for five or ten minutes twice a day and using five to ten gallons of water each time. Most people load the dishwasher up and use it once a day, and modern dishwashers generally use less than four gallons per load.
As far as energy consumption goes, yep, a dishwasher uses electricity and hand washing doesn't. Unless you count the energy required to heat the water in your water heater. But if you only use it once a day or once every other day, it's a negligible expenditure.
And dishes get cleaner and more reliably sanitized in a dishwasher simply because of the higher temperatures involved. There's no way, rubber gloves or not, that you can hand wash dishes in 150 degree water.
All that said, there are some limits to using a dishwasher. For instance, I cringed the other day as I watched my son, a man with twenty years of professional food service experience behind him, throw a bunch of non-stick pans in the dishwasher. Not ever a really good idea. Aluminum, cast iron, copper, non-stick, none of it belongs in the harsh environment of a dishwasher. Even stainless steel, which is technically “dishwasher safe” really isn't. The heat, the humidity, and things just banging around in there in general are never good for the finish on pots and pans. And dishwashers are hell on handles, especially wooden ones. I always hand washed pots and pans in my restaurants and I hand wash 'em at home, too.
Same goes for knives. Never put a sharp knife in the dishwasher. For one thing, because of the aforementioned agitation, it won't stay sharp for long. And the same conditions that ruin the handles of pots and pans do no good whatsoever for knife handles. Always wash knives by hand.
Unless specifically marked “dishwasher safe,” plastics and acrylics should not go in the dishwasher, lest they not come out in the same shape or condition they were when they went in.
Have you got a nice, expensive insulated travel mug or cup? Wash it by hand. The high temperature in the dishwasher can damage the vessel's vacuum seal. And if you have pewter, brass, or copper drinkware, keep it out of the dishwasher, too. The dishwasher pits and discolors such metals.
Wood cutting boards, wooden spoons, things with wooden handles, etc. are all dishwasher no-nos. No quicker way to warp and crack woodware than the hot, hot water in a dishwasher.
And, with apologies to Mrs. Cochrane, don't put your fancy dishes in the dishwasher. Most modern porcelain and china is dishwasher safe, but antique dishware, especially hand-painted or gilt edged stuff, is likely to be damaged.
A lot of the potential for damage depends upon how you load the dishwasher. Too many people just throw stuff in there, shut the door and push the button. And then they fuss when something comes out broken or damaged. Or when it doesn't come out clean.
Remember, your spray arms are squirting water at a minimum of 20 psi. That's gonna make things wiggle and jiggle in those racks. And those arms spray in a set pattern. If you load carelessly, you could wind up with damaged and/or dirty dishes.
The spray arms spray out in a circular motion, so load your dishes in a manner that will face them inward toward the center of the machine. Unless, of course, you want the bottoms cleaner than the tops.
The heating element is in the bottom of the machine, so put plastics and delicate items on the top rack. Glasses go on the top rack, too, to avoid both the heat and the excessive agitation.
And place your flatware in such a way as to not allow it to “nest.” If two spoons nest together in the basket, one of them is going to come out less clean than the other one. That's why there are multiple compartments in the basket. Spread things out, preferably heads up. If you've got a lot of flatware, try alternating pieces heads up and heads down to keep them from nesting together. Better still, though, is to not overload the dishwasher.
And finally, you don't have to wash your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher. Thanks to my OCD mother, this is one I'm often guilty of. Now, you need to scrape off the big chunks of food, okay? This is a dishwasher not a disposal. But modern machines and detergents actually work better when the dishes are dirtier, especially the models with “soil sensors.”
Caveat: if you don't run your dishwasher every day – say you load it up over time and run it after two or three days – the dishes you put in there will need to be a little cleaner going in because if everything dries on the surface of the dishes for several days, it'll be harder for the machine to take it off.
So, after decades of being elbow-deep in dishwater, I'm finally being slowly dragged into the twentieth century world of using the dishwasher. (I know it's the twenty-first century. Don't rush me!) My dishwasher-loving wife is thrilled that I will now load dinner dishes into the dishwasher rather than insisting they be done by hand. I still wash cookware and bakeware by hand as well as all the stuff I mentioned that shouldn't go in the dishwasher. And I'm still just as likely to wash up the breakfast dishes by hand as opposed to loading them in the machine and letting them sit all day. But, hey, baby steps, you know? At least I'm not using my dishwasher to store Tupperware.
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