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Silpat Alternative


palo

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I did a search before starting this topic and the only one with relevance was back in 2010.

 

I've been using silpats (or knock-offs) for many years and cleaning was always a bugaboo. I purchased this:

 

 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0899TH9H6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

a month or so ago and have nothing but praise. There are a few different iterations, but this is what I got based on price and description.

 

Cheap, can be cut to fit, 15.75 x 13 inch, good up to 500F, most drips/spills pop or wipe off, no staining, no "teflon" material and nothing sticks.

 

I have cooked chicken parts, pork loin roast, bread, vegies all with good results. The material looks/feels like a "plastiic" but it's not, I'm not sure of what it is but it works.

 

I have cut these to fit various sheet pans I have, even circular sizzle pans and have used them in the CSO, BSOA and APO. In the APO @ 482F for broiling.

 

I sound like a salesperson for these but just wondered why no one else seem to have picked up on these.

 

p

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42 minutes ago, palo said:

I did a search before starting this topic and the only one with relevance was back in 2010.

 

I've been using silpats (or knock-offs) for many years and cleaning was always a bugaboo. I purchased this:

 

 https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0899TH9H6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

a month or so ago and have nothing but praise. There are a few different iterations, but this is what I got based on price and description.

 

Cheap, can be cut to fit, 15.75 x 13 inch, good up to 500F, most drips/spills pop or wipe off, no staining, no "teflon" material and nothing sticks.

 

I have cooked chicken parts, pork loin roast, bread, vegies all with good results. The material looks/feels like a "plastiic" but it's not, I'm not sure of what it is but it works.

 

I have cut these to fit various sheet pans I have, even circular sizzle pans and have used them in the CSO, BSOA and APO. In the APO @ 482F for broiling.

 

I sound like a salesperson for these but just wondered why no one else seem to have picked up on these.

 

p

 

Apples and oranges.  I have some teflon sheets obtained last century from King Arthur Flour Baking that I have cut to size.  Nothing wrong with them.  But they are not the same as Silapats.  Your mileage may vary.

 

Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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I'm pretty sure they were discussed, at least briefly, in the context of grilling.

 

Wouldn't have occurred to me to use one on a baking sheet, but...it never occurs to me to use my silpats/knockoffs either so that doesn't count for much. :P

“Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.” - William Cowper, The Task, Book Three

 

"Not knowing the scope of your own ignorance is part of the human condition...The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.” - psychologist David Dunning

 

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I tried them to bake macaron shells, they worked fine but they did not tolerate much of professional kitchen abuse. Meaning the dishwasher handled them without much care, so they came back with many folds and could not lay perfectly flat anymore (becoming useless for macaron shells).

The only improvement over parchment paper is that you can reuse them, so it's more of an environment choice (if at all, since you need paper to clean them).

Most of the reasons why you choose silpat are absent with these sheets. You choose silpat over parchment because it's much thicker, it adheres to the pan without moving when you form something over it, it keeps its shape with runny batters. This is the view from a pastry side.

 

 

 

Teo

 

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15 hours ago, palo said:

, no "teflon" material


Not sure why you think these don’t have Teflon. Says they do directly and also with the abbreviation PTFE. What it doesn’t have is PFOA, but no commercial non-stick does these days. 

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15 minutes ago, mgaretz said:


Not sure why you think these don’t have Teflon. Says they do directly and also with the abbreviation PTFE. What it doesn’t have is PFOA, but no commercial non-stick does these days. 

My apologies, you're correct. PTFE IS teflon - I didn't know that.

 

p

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I only use alternatives to silpat - I mean, I'm not doing any pro baking, so I guess it doesn't matter much. But I have silpats and I just don't like the way they feel. I actually put a small one through the dishwasher the other day just to check it out, and it came out cleaner than I can ever get it. Less greasy feeling, if you get my drift.

 

For me, it's parchment all the way. 

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i have a few silpat clones and i like them; i'd use them more if they weren't that expensive in larger sizes. more recently, though, i found a chinese company on amazon selling large precut sheets of parchment and whooo boy am i never going back to a roll in a box.

 

with that said if you want to get silpats (or literally anything else; this works great for clearing up vitamix et al containers, nonstick skillets, etc) clean without using a dishwasher, soak them in a tray with some hot water and a measurable amount of pure sodium percarbonate (e.g. unscented oxy clean). just let it sit in there for a few hours.

Edited by jimb0 (log)
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11 hours ago, jimb0 said:

i have a few silpat clones and i like them; i'd use them more if they weren't that expensive in larger sizes. more recently, though, i found a chinese company on amazon selling large precut sheets of parchment and whooo boy am i never going back to a roll in a box.

 

with that said if you want to get silpats (or literally anything else; this works great for clearing up vitamix et al containers, nonstick skillets, etc) clean without using a dishwasher, soak them in a tray with some hot water and a measurable amount of pure sodium percarbonate (e.g. unscented oxy clean). just let it sit in there for a few hours.

I always washed them with a sponge with some soap/water in the bottom of the sink.  Then I put them on a rack in the oven and turned the oven on to dry them...

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sure, i think it's just that one issue with silicone is that it holds onto fats really well and sometimes i find even with a good scrubbing it can be pretty difficult to completely remove the grease manually

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3 hours ago, jimb0 said:

sure, i think it's just that one issue with silicone is that it holds onto fats really well and sometimes i find even with a good scrubbing it can be pretty difficult to completely remove the grease manually

Indeed - I worry about some of the warnings on that sodium percarbonate I looked at; but then again, I probably shouldn't ingest oxyclean or laundry detergent either.

 

I always have trouble with getting my nonstick pans as clean as I'd like, but yesterday I soaked one in hot water and Dawn for a few hours, and it actually got cleaner than when I stand there and scrub away right after using it. So there is something to leaving it soak.

 

 

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I have one Silpat that I was gifted with a few years ago. I don't use it often, just once in a while, since I don't bake sweets that much. It works. I agree that it never feels truly clean, but I think it comes out of the box with a creepy greasy texture to begin with. Can't swear to that, but it has never been a feel-good object.

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7 hours ago, weinoo said:

Indeed - I worry about some of the warnings on that sodium percarbonate I looked at; but then again, I probably shouldn't ingest oxyclean or laundry detergent either.

 

I always have trouble with getting my nonstick pans as clean as I'd like, but yesterday I soaked one in hot water and Dawn for a few hours, and it actually got cleaner than when I stand there and scrub away right after using it. So there is something to leaving it soak.

 

 

 

i'm not sure what the specific warnings were but it's probably mostly because it makes a relatively strong peroxide solution when mixed with water. not something you want to eat, exactly, but not at all something you need to be worried about in terms of something that's poisonous and will stick around after a rinse. it's safe and often used to clean various food machines.

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A few months back, I started a new after dinner dishwashing routine.   I wash all dishes, glassware and silverware, and any very lightly used pans, but just leave well used pans on the stove, filled with water and Dawn.    In the morning, regardless of what was stuck on the night before, they wash clean with just a swipe of a sponge.    How come I've been fighting stuck-on pans at night for all these years???

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46 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

A few months back, I started a new after dinner dishwashing routine.   I wash all dishes, glassware and silverware, and any very lightly used pans, but just leave well used pans on the stove, filled with water and Dawn.    In the morning, regardless of what was stuck on the night before, they wash clean with just a swipe of a sponge.    How come I've been fighting stuck-on pans at night for all these years???

 

This would only work if I didn't want my kitchen prepared for business upon turning the lights on in the morning. Without having to clean anything.  But yes, for thsoe who can deal with that, Dawn is great. Even cold water, which I use for starches so as not to set them further.

 

Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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1 hour ago, weinoo said:

 

This would only work if I didn't want my kitchen prepared for business upon turning the lights on in the morning. Without having to clean anything.  But yes, for thsoe who can deal with that, Dawn is great. Even cold water, which I use for starches so as not to set them further.

 

 

There's a reason it's called Dawn.

 

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Cooking is cool.  And kitchen gear is even cooler.  -- Chad Ward

Whatever you crave, there's a dumpling for you. -- Hsiao-Ching Chou

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