Kitchen Essential

The pots and pans in your kitchen can make or break all future cooking experiments and experiences. If you’re still using your Mom’s or Gran’s discarded pots and pans, you’re going to have to replace them some or other time. On your first outing to buy a pot, you will find that there is such a wide variety that it is quite hard to choose. Here are some guidelines to help you with this treasure hunt.

Don’t let Advertising Decide for you …

You have a sleepless night and stay up watching infomercials all night. The temptation of the really shiny pots ad (that runs for 30 minutes) is hard to resist and you are raring to rush out to buy the complete set. You’ll be able to feed an army all in one go, so they will lead you to believe … But how many people do you normally cook for? If it’s one or two, you don’t need the set that will enable you to cook for an army, so don’t spend a small fortune on seven to 10 pots and pans most of which will gather dust in the back of your cupboard. There is only so much cooking space on your stove. If you buy from a reputable line, you can always add to your collection as your family or your ambition to be the next Jamie Oliver grows.

How to spot A Good Pot…

The most important part of a good pot is its bottom (and we don’t mean it should look good in denim). The base should be thick, preferably heavy and sturdy.

Cooking pots are mostly made from three materials: copper, aluminium and stainless steel.

Copper is the best conductor of heat and is therefore perfect for cooking purposes. But copper pots are very expensive and difficult to maintain. A copper pot must be tin lined and has to be re-tinned every so often. The reason for this is that copper-oxide (that’s the green stuff that forms on copper) is poisonous. This option is therefore not very practical except maybe for professional chefs.

The next best conductor of heat is aluminium. Recently there has been a lot of talk about possible health implications when cooking in aluminium pots. Aluminium also reacts to foods with high acidity, which eats away at the aluminium and causes pitting (small holes). Therefore you’ll find most aluminium pots are anodized. Anodized aluminium pots are a good choice, but can be very expensive.

Your third option is stainless steel. This is your best bet, as it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, yet works well. When you buy a stainless-steel pot, ensure that it has a sandwiched base. As stainless steel does not heat evenly and hot spots occur, manufacturers ’sandwich’ a layer of copper or sometimes aluminium, in the base which allows even heating. If a stainless-steel pot-base is sandwiched with copper, it’s usually heavy. These pots are more expensive than their aluminium-based counterparts.

Does Size Matter?

If you’re single and you normally only cook for yourself and possibly one other person, you need no more than the following:

• 1 medium pot (four or five litres)—for rice, pasta and so on
• 1 small pot (one litre) for sauces, vegetables and so on
• 1 large pan (anything from 20 cm)

This is a good base to which you can add as the need arises.

Ban a Warped Pan

As with a good pot, the base of a decent pan will be thick and the pan will be fairly heavy. Pans tend to warp if they do not have a sufficiently thick base. As we’ve said before, this is the one item you really should get in the non-stick variety. A good buy is a TEFAL pan — an aluminium pan with a non-stick coating. TEFAL offers good quality without breaking the bank.

Stick or non-stick?

We are all tempted at some time or another to buy a complete non-stick set. You will probably find that the only non-stick item you need is a non-stick frying pan.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Pots and pans in your Kitchen, Home Shopping Guide

• Essential Kitchen Cutlery Part 5
• THE ABC OF COOKWARE Part 1
• THE ABC OF COOKWARE Part 3
• Essential Kitchen Cutlery Part 4
• Conquering Clutter (continue...)
• Practical storage in the Kitchen, Pots, Pans, Bags of Groceries and Delicious Comforting Aromas
• Essential Kitchen Cutlery Part 3
• THE Perfect Kitchen Layout (Major Traffic Position)
• THE ABC OF COOKWARE Part 2
• The natural kitchen

Trackback URI | Comments RSS