Buying and Caring for Cooking Ware
February 19th, 2010Crepe pans, egg poachers, paella pans, tagines - while these types of cookware allow you to cook specialised dishes, they are more suited to those who know their way around the kitchen. Every budding chef should choose to invest in a cookware set that includes the basics; at least one frying pan, a stock pot, casserole dish and a number of different sized sauce pans. Purchase these items and the possibilities in the kitchen are endless.
Need just one piece of cookware when taking a big hike to meet your destiny or simply running away from home? Like the members of The Fellowship of the Ring, you’d probably take a larger fry pan. If there had to be a Big three of cookware, then they would be the frypan, sauce pan and stock potgood, old-fashioned pots and pans. All of this is just to create some sort of hierarchy of utility when it comes to cookware.
When a sauce pan has a capacity over 6 litres (and, amazingly enough, up to 36 litres) it becomes a stockpot and will most certainly feature two handles rather than one. A very large sauce pan or a smaller stock pot will serve you well when producing big batches of spaghetti.
This overview is designed to give you the basic information needed to make an informed purchase of essential cookware. As can be imagined, there are a variety of specialised pans out there: chef’s pans, crepe pans, egg poachers, grill pans and saute pans, to name some of the more well-known ones. The same can be said for saucepans. Among the special-duty pots are double boilers, pasta pots and inserts, mussel pots and wokswhich occupy a space somewhere between pot and pan. Knowing the uses of these items will go a long way towards bringing out your inner chef.
