Looking after enamel: five habits and one thing never to do

Enamel is a skin of coloured glass fused to steel at 820 °C. That tells you almost everything about how to look after it. Glass does not stain, does not hold a smell and does not care what you cook in it. Steel rusts if you give it the chance. The care is the meeting of those two facts.

The five habits

• Let it cool before it meets water. A kettle straight off the flame, plunged into a cold sink, asks the glass and the steel to shrink at different rates. Over years that is how a chip starts. Give it a minute.
• Wooden or silicone tools inside. A metal spoon will not scratch the colour off (the glass is harder than your spoon) but a hard knock on a rim can chip it.
• The dishwasher is fine; drying is better. Everything we make is dishwasher safe apart from the beech handles, which unscrew. Enamel dries in seconds if you wipe it, and a dry piece never rusts at a chip.
• A soak beats a scrub. Burnt-on porridge lifts off glass after ten minutes in warm water. You almost never need a scourer, and never an abrasive powder.
• Store it dry, not stacked wet. Two damp mugs nested overnight trap water at the rim. Nest them dry and they will outlive the shelf.

The one thing never to do

Do not heat a pot or kettle with a chip on its base. The bare steel will rust, and the heat difference across the chip will make it grow. A chipped mug is a fine pen pot for the rest of its life. A chipped kettle should come back to us: we will tell you honestly whether it can be re-fired, which costs £12 including return postage.

Why a chip is honest

Plastic hides its age; it goes cloudy and brittle and you throw it away without ever seeing why. Enamel chips, and when it does it shows you the steel. It is not pretty, but it is honest, and it is repairable in a way almost nothing else in your kitchen is. That is the trade you make for glass fired onto metal instead of a coat of paint.

Questions about a piece you already own? Write to us with a photo.