Mine generally veer into either nineteenth century and mid-twentieth century cookware, ingredients, or wine shops. Upgrading ingredients is highly under rated.
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@RobinJoy, upgrading may be a sin in someoneās book, but in the kitchen, as long as it contributes to the ultimate quality of cooking and dining.
Nah.
He probably shopped at Wal*Mart.
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I take an even more relax stance. I think as long as the person like itā¦ improving or not, it is not a sin. There are hell of worse things in this world than someone bought an extra kitchen knife. For example, I donāt think an enameled cast iron wok will improve any cooking quality, but if this fancies the person, then that is between the cookware and that person. 
Maybe it is just that I have done far more stupid things than buying an extra kitchen knife or pan, who am I to assign an moral judgement on people better than me.
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Yes, youāre having a terrible time understanding. Iām sorry.
When you braise a ribeye (for your very first time cooking a steak), and āsauteā root vegetables in stock, not fat, yet expound on the tools you use to do those things, I can see why youāre having trouble.
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My read is that Ray is just using something called a braising pan as a tool to cook his steak, with no braising involved.
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I also like hanger and skirt and flap meat in that order. I think all three of these might be derived from diaphragm (?), as they taste like beef cousins. Such good flavor!!
As for sirloin, I like what Costco labels as top sirloin cap. It has a little more marbling than regular top sirloin. Iām not sure what synonyms this sells as outside of Costco. Sorry I fear Iāve drifted way off course.
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Hi Vecch. If my upgrades got me significantly better results then Michelin would be calling round! Strangely I havenāt heard from them.
As Chem pretty much said, the reality is that there is pleasure to be had from owning and using nice tools that work well. Thereās not much more to it than that, for me.
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Hey Ray. I think OPs lose ownership of the direction of a thread the moment they post. Thatās the law, and Iām fine with it.
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Maybe. Thereās doubt, and then thereās a benefit thereof. I know what side I come down on here.
But good luck getting a straight answer.
Hi RobinJoy,
I think the mods look at the OP and the first post. Anyway, I liked your OP very much.
Ray
Hi RobinJoy,
My most recent Upgrade, my birthday Chefās knife, took over five years to happen, and led to a whole series of repurposingsāand a total reorganization of my kitchen knives into three grabbable groupings:
This wonderful Kai Shun Fuji 8.5" Chef Knife, that started as an implausible aspirational dream five years ago, has now, through repurposing, lead to a transformation and reorganization of my home kitchen.
The fuji is now the centerpiece of all damascus hard steel knives on my cherrywood magnetic strip.
my cleavers and debas have individual magnetic slotsāwith one slot remaining for my beloved birchwood.
Knives in the new red container are an alternative grouping of mostly softer steel knives with their own honing steel to keep them performing on the job.
I think that an upgrade purchase is a much bigger deal for me than it is for you.
Ray
I think, at least for me, that an upgrade can improve my cooking, but it is not because of any intrinsically superior aspects of the upgrade. Rather it is because during the honeymoon phase the new tool gets a lot of use, and that use is unusually attentive and analytical. I think even something as polarizing as ECI can have that effect and lead to better dishes.
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Hi Vecchiouomo,
The reason a purchase at least gives me a āpushā is that I was imagining what I would do with it (sometimes for a long time) before I made the purchaseāand the need to test it out once it arrived.
Ray
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I think you err if you believe this in all cases. If you do actually believe this, then your cooking would also improve if you downgraded tools.
I mean, there are countless examples of tools that are intrinsically superior, even if they do not necessarily work an improvement in results for all cooks every time. An upgrade from Mauviel M150 table service copper to 2.5mm Bourgeat not only would improve results for most cooks most times, but would also improve ergonomics, durability, consistency and confidence. I submit these improvements arenāt brought on merely by the attentiveness attendant to a new purchase.
As we see so frequently here, āupgradeā can be in the eye of the beholder (or rather the wallet of the imaginer). Someone whoās never butchered anythingāand whoās literally cooked ONE steak in his lifeāupgrades to a esoteric fish knife to trim that one steak and cut cheese. Did his attentiveness make a better cook? Or was it an exercise in retail self-justification?
Yesterday I passed on buying a salmoniere.
It would have been an upgrade in the sense that it wouldāve allowed me to poach and present a whole small salmon, whereas my existing poacher requires trimming down the same-sized fish to fit, and serving a la Ichabod Crane. Attention or intrinsic improvement?
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I actually do believe it and agree it would be true even if you downgraded. It is irresistible to try to find the best in what you just bought, probably to prove to yourself that your acquisition was a good one and reflects well on you. That sort of attention and effort will invariably help your cooking. In my experience that sort of focus is valuable. Of course if the downgrade (or upgrade) were to a tool unsuited to what you were cooking, all bets are off. In cutting up a salmon to fit into a trout pan, I would contend the trout pan was unsuited to that job. However, if the salmon fit in a large roaster, using that rather than a poacher might well turn out very well. Oh, and I totally agree that buying intrinsically better tools will help a good cook to become a better cook and downgrading from such tools will likely improve nothing. Going from extra forte tinned copper to AC is such a downgrade in my experience.
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Well, if your point is the general wisdom of practice making perfect, then thereās no disagreement. But it sounded like you were claiming that no intrinsic advantage of a tool upgrade could improve your cooking:
No?
Attentiveness is an extremely valuable attribute. Using something new can help me be more attentive. Of course being that attentive with really good tools and ingredients is optimal. And lest anyone conflate really good with really expensive, old heavy tinned copper off of eBay or Etsy is often cheaper than new higher end clad and my old Sabs were not very pricy but, properly maintained, perform very well.
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I think a lot has to do with definition and expectation. Better cookware will improve cooking results but often time that improvement is so small that skill can make up for it or that small difference does not matter. This is true not just in cooking but all things in life. Is there a difference in using a good razor vs a subpar razor? Of course there is a difference. Yet, most people can get on with their life with a subpar razor. Is there a difference to upgrade from a medical mask to a N95 mask? Well, it depends on the expected task. To filter out pollen to reduce allergy? Probably not a big difference between the two. To filter out virus like COVID-19, a big difference.
The other is how mismatch are we talking about too. Are we talking about a small upgrade like from iPhone13 to iPhone 14? Case in point, recently there was a post where a Chinese vegetable knife was used as a true cleaver to cut bones. The end result is that the vegetable knife was heavily damaged and chipped. Upgrading from a non-cleaver to a true cleaver will significantly improve the task. Some tools are so mismatch that no amount of skill can overcome it.
In short, I think it depends how big that upgrade is in relationship to the task, and also the expectation of the ālevelā of improvement.
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I chopped a chicken with my iphone SE.
No more updates for it 
!
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