How to Pick a Sauce Pan

Video Transcript

" Hi, my name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today I'm going to take a few minutes to show you what to look for when buying yourself a new set of pots and pans. Alright, next we come up to our sauce pans or our pots as most people call them. This is a one and a half quart right here. I recommend getting something small like a one and one and a half quart. This is good for heating up vegetables for two people. This is also good for making sauces. It's a great little pan. You'll get lots and lots of use out of this. As I showed you earlier, I had one with a dimple on the side for pouring out. I don't really use that one that often. I tend to use this one. This is a little bit bigger too. These are great for heating up canned soups. I'll admit, I eat the canned soup. These are also really good for heating up canned vegetables too. From time to time I do like me some canned corn and green beans. So what are you going to do? But, a really, really great little pan. You've got to have one of those. Now over here, this is going to be a larger one; a five and a half quart. It is basically the exact same thing just bigger. This one has a lid. That small one does too, I just didn't't bring it out. So, lids are nice. You want to make sure your lids fit really, really well. You want to make sure your lids are heavy too. Because if you get really light-weight lid the steam is going to cause it to bobble like this and your steam's going to escape. That's not what you want. You want a lid that's heavy and you want a lid that's heavy and you want a lid that fits. Now be careful! Sometimes you'll see some stuff that's poorly made, where you actually snap the lid down. That stuffs dangerous, because that lid can pop off and cause a huge mess. So make sure your lids are heavy and weighted and fit on but at the same time don't fit on or snap down or lock down unless you're getting a pressure cooker. That's a completely different story. Those are designed to do that. Also, something that I'm seeing more and more are see through lids which are nice because you can see what's going on. On the other hand though they are not as heavy as the old iron and steel lids you used to see a lot. You can steel find those. But most of the cookware that you're going to find is going to have see through lids. It's not a bad thing; it's just hard for an old timer like me to get used to. Something else that's really, really nice is you'll see a lot of the times you'll see these steamer inserts. They go in this. I recommend getting this. I recommend buying them as a set too, Buying them as the same match pieces because obviously this piece was designed for this. These are great for steaming b vegetables. You cans steam some broccoli in here. You can steam corn in here. I've even streamed lobster and crab legs just like this. It's really, really great. You'll usually go to buy one piece, let's say its fifty bucks. And this piece, if you're buying them both together, and then this piece if you buy them together, this piece is an extra ten dollars. It's kind of a 'no-brainer'. I really, really recommend getting the steamer insert whenever you can for whatever pots you're choosing to buy. Once again, when you buy the steamer insert try to buy one that's made to go with the pan you've got. Because if you after-market ones, third-party ones they don't always fit right. That being said let's move on to Dutch ovens."