Sunday, March 8, 2015

Washing Vegetables & Fruits

Couple of month's back I was reading an article related to farming, there, a farmer was suggesting that the best way to reduce / get rid of Pesticides from the Vegetables we buy, is to wash the Vegetables in water containing Salt and Turmeric before using it for Cooking.

We thought, why we shouldn't try Dishwasher to do this; The first challenge we encountered was to reduce the vast gaps, that are inherent to any Dishwasher Basket. So we picked up two Vegetable Bags that the Vegetable Vendors use to transport and spread them first on the Basket and then place the Vegetable on top of them.

We choose the Pre-wash Program for following reasons.
  1. It does only Cold water wash in our Dishwasher 
  2. Takes about 10 minutes to run fully
  3. Doesn't use Detergent and Rinse Aid
After the initial draining, water in-take and after the machine starts running, we stop it and added 2 spoons of Turmeric Powder. As far as Salt is concern,  we have stopped buying / using Dishwasher Salts that have additives / color agents long back and been using good old Crystal Salt (without Iodine) which is a natural additive.

Caution to Readers: Don't try this in your dishwasher straightway, unless you are very sure about the Chemicals you put in. We have stopped using Rinse Aid long back and as far as Dishwasher Salt is concern we use Natural Crystal Salt (the one without Iodine - this is important, as Iodine based Salt would affect the Membrane present in the inbuilt Water Softner). Now-a-days we run the Maintenance cycle every week with Vinegar so I know any Dishwasher Detergent residue in the pipeline would have been cleaned thoroughly before we use it for washing Vegetables/Fruits.