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Cooking is easier and more enjoyable if you are using the right tools for the job at hand. Here is the information you
need to ensure that you are using the proper cookware for your kitchen task.
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Cookware Sets
The best cookware sets offer basic shapes and sizes that give you the most use from the least equipment. Most sets need to be supplemented with non-matching pieces made for specific purposes: a stirfry pan, for example.
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 What Experts Consider
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Roasting Pans
Roasting Pans are used to cook foods by surrounding them with hot air in an oven. There are two styles: Most roasting pans have low sides but some cooks prefer high covered roasting pans for turkey and ham.
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What Experts Consider
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Sauce Pans
Saucepans are culinary workhorses, used to cook recipes from classic haute cuisine sauces like Beurre Blanc and Bèchamel to simple tomato sauces and frozen corn. Choose a non-stick saucepan for rice, oatmeal, and other sticky ingredients. Flared Windsor pans are best for reducing liquids while rounded sauciers make it easier to stir foods like pudding, gravy or risotto that can stick in the corners of straight-sided saucepans.
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Saute Pans
Sauté pans are wide and flat with enough surface to brown chicken breasts or fish filets, sliced mushrooms or zucchini. The straight sides help when preparing recipes that have pan sauces like Veal Marsala or Steak Diane.
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Skillets and Fry Pans
A frying pan has moderately high, slightly flared sides. It is used for the all-purpose frying of foods like chicken breasts, crab cakes or hash browned potatoes. Nonstick versions are superb for omelettes. Oval Fry Pans are appropriate for long foods like fish filets and shell steaks.
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Soup and Stockpots
Stockpots are tall and narrow; for minimal evaporation while the solid ingredients in chicken, beef and vegetable stock flavor the liquid during a long period of simmering. They are also excellent for cooking pasta and corn on the cob. Dishes like tomato soup, clam chowder and chicken gumbo do not take as long, making a Soup Pot’s shorter and wider shape more appropriate.
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Woks and Stir Fry Pans
Both woks and stir fry pans are used for the quick cooking of cut-up ingredients over high heat: Stir-fried Beef with Broccoli, Shrimp with Snow Peas, Spinach with Raisins and Pignoli Nuts. Larger models can be used for pad thai or to steam dumplings or vegetables.
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What Experts Consider
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