How to Select Gourmet Cookware For All Your Cookware Needs
What makes for good gourmet cookware? Is it simply the price tag? Does it have something to do with what you are cooking? The answers to questions two and three are usually yes and yes, but not always. Good gourmet cookware generally has several characteristics, once of which is the longevity of the cooking implements in question.
While numerous different brands of cookware abound, only a small group of metals can be realistically used in cookware. Most metals simply do not conduce and spread heat well, making for a poorly cooked meal.
The five most common metals used in cookware include carbon steel, aluminum, copper, cast iron, and stainless steel, each of which has certain properties that will make the gourmet cookware better for some tasks and worse for others.
Let's start with carbon steel. What benefits does it have? From the perspective of many chefs, only one: it heats unevenly. In most cases, this is decidedly not useful, but when it comes to cooking certain foods, such as crepes, gourmet cookware made of this material may provide some benefits.
How about aluminum? In contrast to carbon steel, aluminum does heat evenly and quickly; however, it also can react with certain foods to alter the taste.
Gourmet cookware made of copper is often more expensive than cookware made of other metals. It is also considerably heavier, but it will cook food faster and evenly-distribute the heat, making it one of the most popular forms of gourmet cookware available. Copper cookware is often covered in a sheet of some other metal to prevent taste contamination. This technology has improved in recent years, yielding stronger, more durable gourmet cookware.
Cast iron cookware is excellent for witch cauldrons, but it doesn't make great gourmet cookware. It heats far too slowly, is quite porous, and often has unexpected and atrocious chemical reactions with certain types of foods.
The last metal used for gourmet cookware is stainless steel. While stainless steel is excellent for making other cooking implements, such as knives, it doesn't make very good gourmet cookware. While it resists dents and corrosion and does not contaminate flavors with bad reactions, it also conducts heat poorly.
All things considered, what type of gourmet cookware should you purchase? Copper cookware is probably your best bet by a long shot, but you will also want to make sure that you purchase it from a reputable brand. So what do you have for brand choices?
If you plan to purchase stainless steel cookware, you may want to look into Judge Vista cookware, which offers a 25 year warranty on all products they sell; however, as we mentioned previously, stainless steel is good for sanitation and other applications, but not as great for cooking applications.
In contrast, if you are looking for aluminum cookware (or aluminum lined cookware), you may want to check out All Clad, which produces a number of non stick pots and pans that are some of the best in the industry for frying. Additionally, they are relatively inexpensive.
For more expensive cookware, you may want to look into KitchenAid, which sells various types of enamel coated cookware sets. These handle wear and tear far better; and can last several decades without the need for replacement. Additionally, they distribute heat well and avoid unattractive flavor mixing. A ten piece set, which includes pots, pans, and lids, will cost you as much as $150, but if you shop online, you may be able to find stores selling KitchenAid gourmet cookware at a discount.
An even more expensive set of gourmet cookware is Calphalon, which retails for as much as $50 for a single pot, but is constructed of heavy metals that are well suited to distributing heat evenly and slowly cooking to avoid burning in certain sections.
If you want to purchase an inexpensive, heavy duty set of gourmet cookware, you will want to consider cast iron from Lodge Cast Iron. You can get a pot or a pan for as little as $15 per item; and you can get an entire set for as little as $75. There is only one problem: cast iron wears off in food and can mix to produce a nasty taste in some instances.
Regardless of what you end up with, first determine your set of goals and then match those goals with a brand and material of choice.
Visit Mary's site The Cookware Den http://www.cookwareden.com for other valuable tips about Gourmet Cookware or other different types of cookware.
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