Welcome to Plastic-Free Kitchen Week on the Strategist, where we’ve been obsessively researching and testing plastic alternatives — for everything from appliances to cleaning supplies to cookware. For more, head to our Plastic-Free Kitchen Week hub.
My almost-3-year-old is a waffle fiend. I am too. Since we’d tossed our hand-me-down Teflon-coated Cuisinart years ago, we were tearing through boxes of frozen store-bought ones weekly: Kodiak Cakes, Birch Benders, Vans, and occasionally fancier ones from Lopaus Point.
I had heard mixed things about the Greenpan ceramic waffle iron when it first came out, that its waffle-making didn’t stack up to the old-school Teflon-coated styles. So when we stopped by a Williams Sonoma store, I initially asked about a style from Breville (I use the brand’s oven daily). But the composition of its plates felt less clear. Breville’s product site calls it “PFOA-free nonstick,” which feels a little sneaky; the Williams Sonoma site is more straightforward, stating that the die-cast aluminum plates contain PTFE. (Teflon is a brand name for PTFE, a synthetic fluoropolymer, though it no longer contains PFOA.) The sales person said that while the Greenpan, Breville, and a third All-Clad style were somewhat comparable as far as waffle-making performance, Greenpan claims its “diamond-infused” sand-based ceramic plates are free of PTFE, PFOA, PFAS, lead, and cadmium. We went with that one. (While brands like Greenpan claim their pans and appliances are “healthy,” the ceramic nonstick cookware category is underregulated and, at this point, still fairly understudied. Other chemicals involved are often undisclosed.)
And now we use this thing every single weekend. It has not left the counter. (It is not small — 12-by-14-by-6-inches and 13 pounds — it’s just in such regular rotation.) When not in use, it stands upright against the wall or stacks easily on top of the Breville oven.
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There are two plate styles, Belgian and a thinner “classic” one. We exclusively use Belgian — it’s just more fun to eat. The machine has adjustable settings for shade (from light to golden brown) and a fluffy-to-crunchy spectrum. We set the texture level to “crunchy,” and the shade level to halfway between light and dark. This makes the exterior crispy and structured but the interior soft. They’re cooked just enough to eat that day but not overcooked to the point where they would char when you toast them straight from the freezer. Our batter changes a bit week to week — a blend of almond flour, sprouted spelt, whole wheat, and a quarter white flour, plus hemp hearts and flax — but we don’t adjust the settings. Once we figured our level-of-doneness preference, we’ve just left it at that. The machine cooks each batch consistently, just be mindful of when the timer goes off.
The waffles dislodge easily — we use silicone-tipped tongs to pop them out — and batter never gets stuck. There’s no scraping involved. The only thing left behind is a little butter residue, which rinses easily with soap. We’ve started to go a few times between cleaning the plates, for a little bit of a seasoned-cast-iron effect.
We make a big batch for our kid every week, 20 at a time, then freeze them in Compostic’s compostable gallon-size bags (Ziploc freezer bags were the hardest plastic thing to pry out of my kitchen). These really are the most delicious waffles. The vintage Teflon and frozen store-bought versions have faded from memory.
Other plastic-free items we use on waffle days
More From This Series
- Ask the Strategist: Your Most Ultraspecific Plastic-Free-Kitchen Queries
- Welcome to Plastic-Free Kitchen Week
- Replace This With That: An Exhaustive List of Plastic-Free Kitchen Swaps
- All the Best Non-Plastic Tableware and Utensils for Kids
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