10.31.06

Looking for new cookware?…

Posted in Other Fun at 5:51 pm by Chef Matt

OK, today I expected it to be a post about Butternut Squash soup as today was supposed to be the day that we make it in the kitchen. Alas, we didn’t get the butternut squash, which is kind of a key ingredient. The reason for this is that ordering in the restaurant world is really a game of habit. For example, every Monday, you call the bread people and tell them how many loaves of bread you need for the week, and on Tuesday you call the fish people to inquire about weekly specials as well as place your regular order for salmon, and so on.

The thing is, when Sarah called the vegetable people, she went over all the things she usually gets, but totally blanked on the butternut squash because that is not part of the “routine” when she calls those people. So it looks like we will give it a shot next week.

So instead for today, I thought I would include the text of an email I wrote to a friend in reply to her mom asking me (through her) about buying new cookware. I thought it was kind of funny, and hopefully it will help any of you out there who are considering buying something new:

“OK, so for your mom’s question about cookware:

Testing pans for quality is important. And FUN! Kids, try this at home!

“My thoughts on the subject really are as follows: There are two main kinds of cookware out there, good and bad. The way to tell the two apart is really quite simple. I wish I could take credit for this, but it was Anthony Bourdain in Kitchen Confidential who said “If you take a pan and swing it at someone’s head, and there is ANY QUESTION as to which will suffer more damage – the pot or the person’s head – then throw out that pan.” He is really quite right – pans and cookware first and foremost need to be heavy, solid and sturdy. This will promote even heating of the pan which will give quality cooking results and help prevent spotting and scorching.

“After that has been determined, then the other features just fall into place as far as preference:

“Non-stick vs. “stick” – I would recommend non-stick for a grill pan (the kind with ridges in it for stovetop “grilling”) and an omelet pan, but the rest I would keep with “stickyness” myself, but pick the pans that have what you like.

“Handle feel: This is a good point your mom brings up – the pan should be comfortable enough when lugging it around. It may be hard to tell when you first lift it, but when you have a rolled lamb roast in there surrounded by roast potatoes and assorted winter vegetables, man, you are going to want something that is good for you hand then! But, just like when I gave you the advice about the knives Carrie, there is ONLY one way to tell if the handle feel is good: you gotta go pick it up for yourself and see if it works for you. All-Klad is a great brand with great pots and pans, but if I picked one up and it wasn’t comfortable for me, then it is not the right pan for me – no matter how good Consumer Reports rates them. It is a personal thing that can only be determined by testing.

“The handle issue that is most challenging here is the fact that you want one that is both oven safe AND cool to the touch on the stove top. Those two features I have found usually stand in stark contrast to one another. See, the cool to the touch handles are usually wrapped in some sort of plastic that makes it so you will most likely not burn your hand when you pick them up after reducing a stock down into a demi-glace for the past half hour, however, that same plastic coating makes the same pan no good in the oven (let alone under the broiler. My suggestion: get sauce pans with cool to the touch handles, while your bigger sauté pans and straight-sided pans (the things over 8 inches in diameter) have the metal-oven safe handles. Yeah, you will have to be careful with those on the stove top, but if anything is going in the oven, it is them (unless you are doing a rice pilaf…) My point being, this is a feature that will be hard to find – it is usually a “one or the other” proposition here.

“Material: This is where the rubber really hits the road in my estimation. You want to make sure your cookware is non-reactive, otherwise you can forget about ever making anything with tomatoes in it. So to me the choices really are: anodized aluminum or stainless steel. Personally, I find the aluminum, while it doesn’t look as good, does heat faster and more evenly. (You could do stainless steel with the copper bottoms – that helps spread the heat around better, but is much harder to care for if you care what it looks like. If you don’t care, this is a great way to get the “best of both worlds” from these materials…) Anyway, I personally like the anodized aluminum cookware, and I personally am a fan of Calphalon, which is what I have a set of myself. (They have made great advances with their handles in recent versions as well…)

“But as far as the other brands making “new innovations” and so forth, no, they don’t. They are vessels that hold food and allow you to apply heat to them. That’s about it. All the brands you list pass the most important test - “the skull test” if you will – so they are all fine brands. The key thing after this is to ignore the brand names, and think about the features I mention above, and any others that you may think of – and go with the one that gives you the best combination of those features for the best price. (Look at features first, price second… don’t cheat yourself out of good features to save $50 on a set of pots – the good ones will more than pay for themselves very quickly…)”

Magically makes any handle cool to the touch. Also magically makes any chef look like a dork when using them.

Sure, there are some metal handles that heat up less slowly than others, but I have generally found that all the oven safe ones eventually get hot with time. Anyone who knows of an oven safe handle that doesn’t, I would love to hear about it. I personally don’t need this feature, as I use this great invention called a “towel” when I handle hot pans, so it is kinda moot.

And remember, so long as you buy normal pans with all the right features, and stay away from the truly weird innovations, you should end up being just fine.

Matt

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