Cookware

The pans that earn their space

• Start with three: a 12-inch stainless steel skillet, a 5 to 7 quart Dutch oven and a 3-quart saucepan. Most dinners need nothing else.
• Stainless steel skillet, 12 inch. Searing, sautéing and pan sauces. Food sticks a little at first and then releases, and the browned bits left behind (the fond) are the start of every great sauce.
• Dutch oven, 5 to 7 quarts. Braises, stews, soups, stock, bread. Stove to oven in one pot.
• Saucepan, 3 quarts. Rice, grains, sauces, boiled eggs.
• Add three more when you’re ready. A bare cast-iron skillet, which holds heat like nothing else, for burgers, steaks and anything that wants a hard crust. Two half-sheet pans for roasting. A small nonstick pan for eggs: medium heat at most, no metal tools, and replace it when it scratches.
• The full set adds four: an 8-quart stockpot, a sauté pan with a lid, a carbon steel pan or a wok, and a roasting pan with a rack.

Heat, and what metal does with it

Preheat the pan before the oil, and the oil before the food. A drop of water should skitter across a stainless pan; oil should shimmer and move like water, not smoke. Cold pan plus food equals sticking.

Do not crowd the pan. Food gives off water as it heats. Too much food at once and that water pools, the temperature drops, and you are steaming instead of browning. Cook in batches. Gray, soggy chicken is almost always a crowded pan.

Thick and heavy holds heat steady; thin and light reacts fast and burns easily. That is why cast iron sears and why a cheap thin pan scorches the garlic.

Care

• Stainless: anything goes. Scrub it, soak it, run it through the dishwasher. Stuck-on fond lifts with a splash of water in the hot pan.
• Cast iron: wash with hot water and a little soap (modern soap is fine), dry it on the stove for a minute, wipe a thin film of oil over it. Never soak it. Never air-dry it.
• Nonstick: soft sponge, no high heat, no metal, no cooking spray (it builds a gum the coating cannot shed).
• Enameled Dutch oven: treat it like stainless, but do not bang the rim. Chips start there.

The small things that matter

• A digital instant-read thermometer. The single most useful tool after the knife. It ends guessing.
• Tongs, a fish spatula (thin and flexible, good for everything, not just fish), a wooden spoon, a whisk, a ladle.
• A fine-mesh strainer, a box grater, a microplane for garlic, ginger and citrus zest.
• A kitchen scale. Grams are more accurate than cups, and every nutrition label on this site was weighed.

When it goes wrong

Food sticks to stainless

The pan or the oil was cold, or you moved the food too soon. Heat the pan, then the oil, then wait for the food to let go.

Rust on cast iron

It sat wet. Scrub the rust off, dry the pan on the stove and rub in a thin film of oil.

The nonstick pan sticks

High heat or metal tools wore the coating out. It is done. Replace it and keep the next one on medium.

Garlic scorched in seconds

A thin pan on high heat. Use a heavier pan or turn the flame down.

A sticky brown film that won’t wash off

Oil baked on. Scrub stainless with a paste of baking soda and water.