In my house, one must know how to put out a grease fire. Click image for details.

Last month I claimed “cooking with stainless steel cookware is a little like learning to cook all over again.” When I wrote that, I had no idea how true it really was. Luckily, my daughter is out of town all summer so my husband and I have plenty of time to practice without the added pressure of filling an eight-year-old’s bottomless pit of a stomach.

“Cooking well is about three things: good ingredients, good and proper tools, and love. Cooking is craft. Respect it and celebrate it!”

That’s what Paula Lewis had to say when she chimed in on the “gone to pot” discussion. That woman might need to go into sign making. Sadly, I’m not sure my methods for (re)learning to cook really honor the art.

Cooking is trial and error.

The internet is a wealth of cooking knowledge. You can find articles, videos, and tips on just about every aspect of food preparation. Sure, surfing the web helps, but so far, nothing has beaten old fashioned trial and error.

Preheating

A lot of web articles recommend pre-heating your stainless steel cookware before food ever touches it (examples here and here). My husband, the super-researcher, came across something adequately scientific that explained how heating the cooking surface eliminates any imperfections in the metal, reducing available areas for food to latch onto (stick). I assume he found something like this awesome article by Talley on Houseboat Eats. Also included are a couple of very clear videos.

“As you might imagine, this ideal window of heat has to do with the atoms in the pan moving around and ‘opening and closing the pores’ in the steel. In this sense, the ‘pores’ almost act like tiny teeth that bite into your meat and cause sticking. At the right temperature, the ‘pores’ are static, and your food doesn’t stick.”

Somehow, I came away from this with the idea that I needed to heat my pan on high heat, then reduce the temp and start cooking. NO! Actually, if you want to test the limits of your patience, this might work for you because it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R for the pan to reach an acceptable (read: non-scorching) cooking temp. We’d had our stainless cookware five weeks before we were able to cook food within five minutes of turning on the stove. The trick, for us, is to heat the pan on medium-low heat (4 out of 10 on our knob) for 60 to 90 seconds. By then, water will usually dance and I can turn the heat down to 2 or 1.

Lubrication

After the heat gets turned down, we get to do a little more waiting. I generally chop stuff for two or three minutes. If you get impatient and start throwing oil into the pan you will be rewarded with smoky, gooey, sticky mess, and a husband that whines about cleaning it up. Actually, my husband never whines. He occasionally throws me a look of disbelief.

In truth, the too-hot oil will smoke almost immediately, giving you time to wipe out the pan before things get too nasty. Butter is far less forgiving, so I recommend you either stick with oil or get yourself a non-stick pan if butter is your go-to lubricant (see LuAnn Poli’s comment on my last post).

Pouring Oil 2. Photo by fdmount. Click image for details.

Cooking Heat

Sometimes it helps to read the instructions. You are all very clever so I’m sure you always read the manual before using a new doodad. I, on the other hand, was too cool for the pamphlet of tips Emeril kindly enclosed with his cookware. The result of being too cool? I made my food too hot. That’s right, we ate blackened meals for about four days. Somehow, I think burning 800 calories in 30 minutes does not mean setting the chicken on fire.

I think day four was when I finally read Emeril’s advice: You’ll have to cook at lower temperatures than you may be accustomed.

Oh. Another place to find such pearls is, you know, THE ENTIRE INTERNET.  Besides the web posts already mentioned, the tip about lower heat is mentioned here and here (and just about everywhere else).

So after I heat the pan on medium-low, then turn it down to low or lower, I cook the food at low, lower, or lowest. Lowest is denoted by the very cryptic “Lo” on the knob for the burner.

It think – think – I am finally getting the hang of it. To date my biggest triumph has been a yummy veggie pot pie with totally not burned onions and fennel.

It looks a little dull, but it smells divine.

Bacon, on the other hand… Someday. In the meantime, I have some Mexican Meatball Soup to make for dinner. While I do that, why don’t you fill up the comments with your own cooking (mis)adventures. Next time we talk we’ll get into the nitty gritty of getting the nitty gritty off your cookware. Feel free to share your tips on that, too.

Bon apetit!

My last couple of posts (here and here) have been serious, so today we are stepping away from topics of emotional heft to focus on a group of physical objects with measurable weight. We’re talking heavy duty tools.

My new stainless steel pots!

Not my cookware or my kitchen, but a nice dramatic photo nonetheless. Click image for real details.

Actually, I believe the proper term is “cookware.”

I realize Never a Plain Jane Designs doesn’t have any relation to cooking, but some of your businesses do. And really, aren’t we all sort of in the business of home keeping? I know it sometimes feels like a job to me…

My cooking credentials
I prepare at least five meals a week for my family of three plus whatever school mates my daughter drags home. I didn’t have much of a cooking education growing up because my mom preferred to do it herself. As a result, my last ten years in the kitchen have included some learning, a bit of trial, and a lot of error.

Bacon preparation, for one, has always eluded me. My ability to fill the house with smoke every single Saturday had become something of a family joke.  That is, until Mother’s Day when my husband and daughter tried to make breakfast. Smoke filled the house and it had nothing to do with me. Turns out, our eleven-year-old anodized pans had been in use about four years too many. The bottoms were no longer flat which caused hot spots, and the finish on every pot and pan had long lost its uniformity. My history with food prep has been so sordid, though, we never thought some of my shortcomings might actually be due to my tools.

The Research Began
I have one place and one place only for researching food-related anything: theKitchn. I searched “cookware,” read about five of the posts, and was ready to burn up my credit card on a full set of All-Clad saucepans and skillets. Luckily, my other half is a more cautious and conscientious shopper. He did his search on Google and read reviews from several websites regarding

• Copper Cookware
• Stainless Steel Cookware
• Caring for Cookware
• Bonded Bottom vs. Tri-ply
• Buying a Set vs. Buying Piecemeal
• Brand Name Comparisons

All-Clad made the list of brands to check out. Also, Le Crueset and Calphalon. At this stage we were looking for two things: heft and comfort.

Weight and Hold Tests
Most of our (his) research indicated heavier=better, but we also had to make sure nothing was too heavy for me to handle it easily.  A heavy pot filled with boiling water and food can be quite the work out, especially when my 5’2” self has to heave that sucker up high enough to drain it in the kitchen sink. We also didn’t want anything interfering with my mad pancake-flipping skills.

You can look at pots online all day, but photos don’t tell you what they’ll feel like in your hand. Despite their high price and excellent reputation, the All-Clad cookware had the most uncomfortable handles! The u-shape design meant narrow steel edges were pressed into my hand no matter what grasp I used. One Williams Sonoma manager confessed this was the most common reason cited by customers who passed on All-Clad.

On the other end of the weight and comfort scale is another caution: a pan that is especially light is typically less durable and/or well made. And never, ever opt to buy cookware just because it has the most comfortable handle in the history of pot grips.

Construction
Non-stick, anodized, tri-ply, bonded, cast-iron, steel, aluminum, copper, ACK! What does it all mean! To be honest, you guys, I still have only a faint idea. Here’s what I got:

• We needed new cookware.
• Our decrepit cookware was “non-stick.”
• Copper conducts heat very well, but requires a lot of maintenance.
• References to “tri-ply with a copper or aluminum core” seemed to be every which way we turned.
• We could not afford top of the line.

In the end, tri-ply was what we bought so that’s what you get to learn about. Also called three ply, tri-ply cookware has three layers of metal.

Some pots and pans are constructed predominately of stainless steel with a bonded base.  This means a layer of copper or aluminum and a second layer of steel are bonded to the bottom of the pan. If you look at it from the side it sort of resembles the sole of a platform shoe in that the bottom is very thick. The three layers make for even heat distribution and this cookware romanced me with its sexy-looking band of copper. Pans in this style are definitely available in our price range. They are also said to have a long life, but buyers are warned the bond will eventually break down causing the bottom layers to separate.

Other pans are made entirely of an aluminum or copper core sandwiched between two layers of steel. The center metal allows for even heat distribution while the outer layers increase durability and reduce maintenance. It also means the pot handles stay cool during stove top use.

Cut-away of Tri-ply construction. Click image for details.

And the winner was…
…All-Clad!

Sort of. We bought a set of Emerilware Pro-Clad cookware, manufactured by All-Clad, from Bed Bath and Beyond. The price was right, the three ply construction was right, the handles were right, and we had a coupon. Also, this stuff is oven safe up to 550 degrees. Awesome!

The learning curve continues
We’ve had our new set for almost a month and it is a little like learning to cook all over again.

Tell you what, I’ll tell you all about cooking and caring for my new pans next week, if you’ll share your cooking adventures in the comments below. Deal?