For cooking. I just put container… because I don’t know what to call it. A vessel is probably better because a container sound like a storage thing.
I do sometimes, but I know a couple of chefs that can give me access to the restaurants own glace and demi glace.
It’s very time consumig to make your own demi glace, so I do it maybe twice a year and freeze it down in cubes.
Do you make your own ?
These arrived in fine condition and look nice. I finally broke down another whole top sirloin and so last night, I decided to cook some petite sirloins (often called “baseball steaks” in the US). The steaks seared beautifully and released when ready quite easily.
Because I was cooking 6 steaks but was using only 2 of the pans going, I had cut these steaks a bit slimmer, right at 1 inch. That way I wouldn’t have to put them in the oven to finish but could hit medium rare with just a few minutes per side in the pan, then move onto the next steak.
After dinner came clean up. The cooking surfaces cleaned easily but the polymerized grease from the steaks that had spattered up onto the sidewalls on each pan (3 steaks each, cooked serially) took about a week’s worth of my elbow grease allotment to scrub off using a 3M/Scotch-Brite sponge.
Is there a secret to clean-up? If one is going to get the pan up to Leidenfrost type temperatures before the meat goes in, it’s not likely to be possible to avoid sidewall spattering.
The only thing I don’t like from a design standpoint is that the smaller (8.5") pan’s handle isn’t well supported by the mass of the pan itself. It easily tips over on my stove grating.
I put it on a flat surface (granite countertop) and found it requires only 22 grams applied at the hanger-hole area of the handle to cause it to tip over.
But I’m also not sure there’s a good fix - if they shortened the handle they’d probably start getting heat complaints.
Leidenfrost usually happens at 350F +/-, so it’s not the heat that warps. Rather it’s the pace of that heating and exceeding that point. Many cooks just blast the heat (especially with induction and disk pans) without considering that the walls and rims need some time to catch up to normalize the stresses in the pan.
Many cooks also don’t cut back the heat as soon as Leidenfrost is reached. This can be because they don’t monitor the pan as it reaches LP, or they just assume that everything is OK as long as there’s some “mercury ball” effect going on. Temperatures actually can go quite high before water droplets all immediately vaporize.
Nothing wrong with this approach. And it’s not much different from the maxim of not heating tinned copper empty. It’s not an absolute though–you just need to be careful. If you can’t touch the bottom of the empty pan, it’s probably hot enough, and time to add oil.
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I cheat and use things like that:
https://www.amazon.fr/dp/B079C5J5NV
I’m sure it’s not as good as yours but sure saves a lot of time!
For stocks and broths, I find Ariake’s are rather better than the rest of the ready to use stuff: https://www.ariake-europe.com/en/
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I’ll say with a tad of embarrassment that two of my most use SS pieces are BHG (Better Homes and Gardens). Yup, like the magazine. I think I was in a TJ Max in the 1990s, needed stainless and saw these two (2.5Q saucier and 10" fry). I still use them all the time. Love to know who made them for BHG.
So, BGH should have been BHG. Might have explained BHG; but not cookware to brag about. Still, 1990 sumthing 'itl today, and they are both is excellent shape despite the wear and tear.
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These Zwilling Aurora 5-ply (based on Demeyere Industry 5, someone above mentioned) are on sale again, even slightly better than last time at US $70 for the set (sale above was $80).
I bought 2 sets last year. I cook eggs in these daily and use them to sear beef and lamb steaks quite a bit as well and really like them. My daughter loves her set.
My only complaint was the smaller pan seems to tip easily with a bit of downward force applied near the end of the handle. I have a gas stove and the gratings are apparently what make it tippy. My daughter cooks on a ceramic electric surface and says she doesn’t have that issue.
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I have some Industry 5, and I really like it. I think the 5 ply hits a sweet spot for most uses, and yeah, I have some proline. Edit: that’s a nice price for 2, although I usually don’t use my teeny pans much, or my honking big ones.
ETA: I throw up my hands at reviews that complain that food sticks to pans which are not sold as non-stick.
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Yeah I laugh at reviews like that, and hope those folks live close by. That way I can get their pans even cheaper at thrift. I got a nice All-Clad 26 cm SS for $10 at thrift and it was in great condition; looks like it had hardly been used. I don’t know whether it’s 3- or 5-ply but it works just fine.
The best ha-ha review I saw was someone seriously complaining about a fat separator. They thought the fat separator somehow changed the physical properties of cooked fats and water, and claimed it made all the oil sink to the bottom. So to them it was worthless as a fat separator and they returned it. The review had the Amazon flag indicating that it was an actual purchase.
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Stupidity has its rewards - for the other people who are quick to spot it.
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They’ve also got some seemingly decent prices on Staub 5 quart talls, from $150-$170, depending on color (never quite figured out why one firing pigment was worth $20 more than another firing pigment).
https://cutleryandmore.com/products/staub-tall-dutch-oven-39402#
I guess I’m a shop-a-holic. I decided that I needed to buy “just ONE more” set of these skillets, so I did. $70 for the pair seems too good to pass up.
I’ve got 3 more kids (adults all now, 19++), surely one of them, right(?), I can lure away from the Dark Side (non-stick cookware) and over to the lighter side of generally using SS.
So I figured $70 was a good investment. The lagging 3 kids are coming up nicely. D#3 is already a really excellent cook and a much better baker than me, but she’s the one who already regularly cooks on SS (the one I got the last set for). But I figure she can propagandize her sibs toward trying SS more often.
Some of the above in jest, but a lot serious, too.
