Understanding Your Culinary Needs

Series Summary

Thanks to many modern convinces, we tend to forget how hard everyday actions used to be. For example, let's talk about cooking. Before the days of the gas or electric stove, humans not only had to build a fire pit, they were also responsibility for creating the great mystery that is fire. Once the heat source was secured, we then had to figure out how to hold our food and boil our water in the flames. Thus, the very early stages of cooking vessels emerged. The development of pottery allowed us to create simple bakeware of multiple shapes and sizes. Fast forwarding a few millennia , we now have numerous vessels to choose from when cooking our food. Not only are there different sizes and shapes, pots and pans are now constructed from a variety of material. For instance, metal construction of pots can be made from aluminum, copper, cast iron, stainless steel, and carbon steel. Then, there is composite cookware and coated cookware. With all these choices, it can seem difficult to choose the right cookware set.

If you are finding it difficult to decide on a cookware set, this free video series is perfect for you! Our expert, Brandon Sarkis, has used a variety of pots and pans, and he is confident that he can help you select the right set. Learn about the different materials in cookware. Also, hear tips on what to look for in sauce, saute, stock, dutch oven, and wok pans. So, if you are considering replacing your old pots and pans, take a moment, and learn some tips on selecting cookware today!

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I am going to take a few minutes to show you what to look for when buying yourself a new set of pots and pans. Okay, so the first thing you should do before you go out and look for anything is to determine what you are going to need. So do you do a lot of Asian cooking? Do you need a wok? Do you need dutch oven? Do you do a lot of single pot cooking? Do you need a small little sauce pan with a pouring spout on the side? Maybe you make a lot of sausage that you like a lid on the stuff. Maybe you would find a grill pan you know handy. You know you are probably going to need something like this, a five or six quart sauce pot like for cooking pasta in or what not. Do you need a stock pot? Do you ever need this much room to cook in and also with the stock pot, do you need a pasta insert? These are all valid questions that you will need to ask yourself when it comes times making your purchasing decision because there is no point in buying a wok; for example, if you are never going to use it. Unless you are like some sort of collector completest and want to own every single piece of a set, there is no point in buying a dutch oven if everything you do is you know, sauteed or boiled. You will never use this. Also, there is no point in owning this tiny you know, butter melting pan if you always cook for a lot of people because this won't hardly be enough of anything. Say if you have a large family of eight or ten people, this isn't going to work for you. This is good for melting butter for you and that is about it. Once you have made your decision as to what you need, then you can proceed on to the direction of okay, I know what I need now. I know that I need a wok, I know I need a saute pan, I need a sauce pan here and I need a grill pan. So at that point, you can move forward and make your decision based on what kind, what materials you want. If you want non-stick or not, things like that. Let's get more into the rest of that process and we will take a look at sauce pans. "