Cookware

For most of us, cookware means pans, baking dishes, serving dishes etc. and is available in hundreds of shapes and sizes to perform numerous different cooking tasks, but most of us also realize that the bakeware a professional chef uses, for instance, will be significantly different from the one that you and I use on baking day. Monsieur Chef will obviously use what is known as ‘commercial or ‘professional’ cookware. And we aren’t merely talking size here. The difference between domestic and professional cookware may also lie in design, material used, and purpose served.

In this article, we present a checklist of what you should keep in mind if you are buying professional cookware. At the outset, remember that when construction is stripped down to the basics, there are just a handful of materials used in professional cookware. For your convenience, we will divide this article according to the material used in particular kinds of professional cookware.

Cast Iron

• The simplest and cheapest cookware, made from mild steel. While relatively inexpensive, professional cookware made of cast iron is always vulnerable to rusting.
• It is not particularly easy to clean and if not thoroughly dried, can tarnish overnight. That in turn means cleaning your professional cookware every time you want to use it for cooking.
• Cast iron frying pans are notorious for sticking, particularly if you are cooking items such as fish and eggs, so the pan has to be seasoned before use. One way to do this is to place a layer of salt on the inside base and heat it up. This seals any surface imperfections in the base of the pan. The salt is removed, replaced by cooking oil and heated till it smokes. The pan is then seasoned and ready for use.
• Avoid washing in soapy water if you want the seasoning to last for some time. You will notice that Chinese chefs seldom wash their cast iron woks and never seem to be troubled with food sticking. When cast iron was much more common in kitchens chefs would often keep one pan aside just for omelets.

Aluminum

• This metal, the workhorse of many kitchens, is still the predominant pan metal for professional cookware, particularly in kitchens where budgets are stringent.
• The advantages of aluminum are that it is cheap, does not corrode and is a wonderful heat conductor.
• This makes aluminum a good material in which to boil foods and on cost grounds is suitable for very large cooking vessels such as stockpots.
• However, one of aluminum’s disadvantages is that it can react with acidic food to produce an off flavor.
• It also cannot be used on induction burners and, like cast iron, is prone to sticking when food is fried.
• Cheap aluminum pans are made of a single sheet of metal, but the best professional aluminum pans have a thicker base to spread heat more evenly.
• Medium-duty aluminum pans with a base thickness of 3-4mm are suitable for open-top cooking ranges, but with a solid-top range or for vigorous use, a heavy-duty pan with a base of 7mm is better suited.

Stainless Steel

• Stainless steel is fast becoming the material of choice for professional cookware used in hotels and restaurants because it doesn’t tarnish, is easy to clean, hygienic, hard-wearing, relatively less prone to sticking and looks great.
• Because it is so popular, there is a wide variation in the quality of stainless steel on the market. However, as with aluminum, the base of a stainless pan will typically be layered. This usually takes the form of a three-layer sandwich with stainless steel on the bottom, aluminum in the middle to give good conductivity and stainless steel on top. Some top of the range pans can have up to seven layers.
• Cheap stainless steel pans look serviceable, but are unsuitable material for professional cookware. The thin gauge of the metal makes for poor heat distribution, in addition to which the cookware tarnishes easily. Because the metal surface is poorly polished, sticking can also be a problem.
• Cheap stainless steel pans can also be dangerous when it comes to workplace safety. The welding that secures the handle of a pan on may snap without warning when the pan is brimming with hot liquid.

Non-stick Professional Cookware

• Most professional kitchens have a small selection of non-stick cookware. It is perfect for frying delicate fish such as sole and plaice, omelets never stick and because you use less oil, it means low-fat cooking.
• The cheapest non-stick is coated on aluminum, but because of the relative softness of aluminum, the non-stick layer will not last as long as it does with steel.
• The main source of damage to non-stick professional cookware, apart from the obvious one of using metal utensils, is too-high temperatures, which damage the coating. While normal frying is done at about 390°F, flash frying over a fierce heat can send the base temperature over 480°F, causing the non-stick coating to split. That is why true wok cooking works better with cast iron rather than non-stick.

Copper

• Once the material of choice in all true blue professional kitchens, copper has now given way to stainless steel. Earlier, the commonest kind of copper professional cookware used copper (for conductivity) lined with tin to protect the food from contamination.
• It is still possible to buy copper-tin pans, but professional cookware using copper lined with stainless steel is growing in popularity, because it combines the qualities of stainless steel with the conductivity and good looks of copper.

Now we are done with pots and pans, it would help a prospective professional cookware buyer to take a brief look at the world of professional cooking dishes:

Stoneware: While these colorful dishes are more often used for food presentation, they have a lot of temperature tolerance and can withstand extreme temperature ranges, making them suitable for oven to counter use. Most are dishwasher-friendly and all can be placed in a microwave, but definitely not on a stovetop, as the sudden burst of heat will cause the ceramic to shatter. Many cooking pots are available with matching lids for closed-lid cooking in the oven and to keep food warm while on a service counter. Baked-on food debris will benefit from soaking in water before going into the dishwasher, but avoid scouring pads as they may damage the surface. Stacking the dishes inside each other can also cause surface scratching.

Enameled cast iron: These pans and casserole dishes are built for strength, conductivity of heat and heat retention, then coated inside and out with an enamel paint which is baked onto the cast iron at high temperature to give a smooth cooking surface and prevent rusting. The colorful nature of these pots and dishes make them suitable for oven to counter use, a basic in professional cookware. However, the enameled surface is not suitable for frying due a tendency for sticking. In addition to enameled cast iron, a variation is enameled stainless steel.

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