Culinary Kitchen Must Haves

Every cook fantasizes about having a state-of-the-art kitchen like those on TV, complete with the hanging pot rack filled with shiny cookware in every size and shape. While this dream isn’t realistic, attaining part of it is. Having a well-stocked kitchen that meets most of your culinary needs is possible. Before heading out to buy pots and pans, find out cookware is best suited to your cooking needs. Use this checklist to identify what your kitchen needs.

Skillets: A skillet, or a frying pan, is a long handled pan with low sides. They are usually available in four sizes; 12 inch, 10 inch, 8 inch, and 6 inch. Cookbooks will often refer to the size of the skillet to be used; therefore it’s important to know the size of each one. Sometimes a recipe requires that you place the skillet in the oven, so buy skillets with handles designed not to hold the heat. Skillets with removable handles are also available in many stores.

Saucepans: Typically saucepans are available in three sizes; 1-quart, 2-quart, and 3-quart. It is wise to have a couple in each size since you often have to make more than one thing such as make a sauce and heat soup at the same time. Make sure that the saucepans you choose have a tight fitting lid and a long handle.

Dutch oven or cast iron kettle: A Dutch oven or cast iron kettle is a large, heavy pot that has lid that fits tightly. Unlike a saucepan, these pots have two small rigid handles on opposite sides of the pot. Dutch ovens are the perfect pot for stews, braising meats and soups. When you are making a pot of stew or soup or doing some home canning, a kettle pot is ideal.

Vegetable steamers: A steamer is a perforated basket that food is put into and water is boiled below the basket. Steam is able to rise through the perforations and the steam cooks the food. Vegetable steamers come in a variety of designs including bamboo baskets with lids, collapsible metal baskets and rigid metal baskets.

Double boilers: Double boilers are incredibly handy pots. They are two pots that work as one. A double boiler consists of two pots, one fits into the top of the other and the top has a ridge to keep the pot well of the bottom of the other. They have a lid for the top pot. Water is put into the bottom pot and set to simmer and the steam will melt or cook the contents of the top pot. This is the ideal cookware for melting things like chocolate and preparing milk based sauces. Things seldom stick or burn in a double boiler.

Griddles: Griddle are flat, rimless pans that convert your stove burner into the ideal surface for cooking crepes and pancakes. The lack of a rim makes flipping pancakes a breeze.

Omelet pans: The slightly sloped sides of an omelet pan help form your eggs into the perfect shape. The pan usually has a nonstick surface that makes it easy to fold your omelet and slide right out of the pan and onto your plate.

Grill pans: Grill pans are a skillet that is designed to have meat cooked in it. These pans have deep groves in the bottom so that the fat is away from the meat. In addition to draining fat away from the meat, the ridges add grill marks to the food and make it look as if it was seared on the grill of a barbeque. Some grill pans come in the rimless, flat shape.

Woks: Woks are an extremely versatile piece of cookware. A wok is a deep, almost bowl shaped pot that allows you to stir-fry, deep-fry, or braise food. The deep, sloping sides keep pieces of food pieces in the pan when stir-frying. They come with either flat or rounded bottoms, and can be found in electric models.