Cookware

To some people, a pan's a pan. As long as it heats without torching the house, it's good enough.At the opposite extreme are cooks who fawn over copper or aluminum pots as though they were Monets.Most of us fall somewhere between. We've seen the cheap stuff burn food, but aren't sure what makes Calphalon different from Le Creuset. Both sound very expensive."People become intimidated," says kitchenware shop manager Louise Houser."But once you learn a few basics and know what you're looking at, it's really not as difficult as it first appears," she says.

  Need a new paella pan or a souffle dish? Best Buy Co.and Cooking.com have teamed up to launch an online store for cooks. The Best Buy Kitchen Shop, a microsite run by Cooking.com, offers more than 3,000 cookware and kitchen products and is accessible within the bestbuy.com online store, the companies said this week. Executives at Best Buy, which sells small and large appliances along with electronics, said the partners hope to offer customers  a “one-stop shop for all of their cooking needs - including a broader assortment of housewares, food and even recipes,” a Best Buy statement said.

CANONSBURG, Pa. - Along a winding two-lane road amid the rolling hills about 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh lies a couple of nondescript industrial buildings, noteworthy for one thing only - some of the world's finest cookware is manufactured inside. That's not just a lot of hot steel, either. Try holding an All-Clad skillet in your hand. You will feel the heft immediately. Then you will likely notice the craftsmanship, from the handle's oversized rivets to the stainless-steel cooking surface that's polished to a star-burst sparkle.

The shelves in my kitchen are heavy with expensive new cookware like All-Clad, Calphalon and Le Creuset, but the most useful pan in the house wasn't purchased at a fancy kitchen store. Several years ago, I bought my antique cast-iron skillet -- caked in grime, with a little rust -- at a thrift shop in Hampden for $10. I knew that with some cleaning and careful seasoning, I would have a treasure on my hands. Griswold, a long-defunct Pennsylvania ironworks, made my skillet in the late 1800s, when Griswold's foundries were turning out high-quality cookware.

Mara Reid Rogers, author of "Cooking in Cast Iron," gives these tips on how to care for cast-iron cookware. She says although these pieces need little care other than seasoning, cooks who are not familiar with the process may believe that it is a difficult and / or time consuming task. Seasoning. "All new cast-iron cookware must be seasoned prior to use. And periodically, you may want to re-season it. First, peel off and discard any labels. Wash thoroughly with mild dishwashing liquid, rinse with hot water and dry thoroughly with a kitchen towel.

  Need a new paella pan or a souffle dish? Best Buy Co.and Cooking.com have teamed up to launch an online store for cooks. The Best Buy Kitchen Shop, a microsite run by Cooking.com, offers more than 3,000 cookware and kitchen products and is accessible within the bestbuy.com online store, the companies said this week. Executives at Best Buy, which sells small and large appliances along with electronics, said the partners hope to offer customers  a “one-stop shop for all of their cooking needs - including a broader assortment of housewares, food and even recipes,” a Best Buy statement said.

Kitchen color is back -- in cabinets, cookware, appliances and surfaces. Those who remember a frightening experience with an avocado fridge, a harvest gold dishwasher or a pretty-in-pink sink -- don't run away screaming. This time, fashion, not engineering, is driving the color. This time the colors are subtle or bright neutrals that invite mixing and matching, and lend themselves to an endless array of decorating styles. No one ever made a bilious green refrigerator disappear in a design scheme, but today's colors, drawn from the subtler earth tones, are meant to be at ease in their settings.

Chef expands line What's that sound? Emeril's new whistling teakettle, perhaps, the latest in his line of Emerilware from All-Clad Metalcrafters. The celebrity chef has added this sleek and stylish teakettle to his gourmet nonstick cookware line. He's added a line of ergonomically correct nonstick kitchen tools as well, along with several new specialty pans. Emerilware is available at department and specialty stores. Culinary awards Forget Oscar and Tony. What you really need to know is who won the cookbook awards.

CLARIFICATION: We recently wrote about an article in Consumer Reports on Health that cited the benefits of tea. The phone number we provided is to subscribe to the newsletter. To see the tea report, visit www.consumerreports.org/health. Tea drinkers: a toast to their health Perhaps the British and Chinese are on to something. Recent studies have found that drinking tea - black or green, cold or hot - may have health benefits that include stronger bones, improved arteries and healthier hearts, according to Consumer Reports on Health.

June is a month of new beginnings. Marriages. Graduations. New jobs. New homes. New kitchens. This is the time when many young people discover they'll need more than a hot plate if they're going to feed themselves. Yet setting up a kitchen doesn't have to cost a ton of money. With a bit of resourcefulness, thrift and care, it is possible to equip a starter kitchen for less than $500. Randi Haman, a Baltimore native and recent graduate of American University, and her roommate, Lindsay Levine, have stocked the kitchen in their Washington, D.C., apartment the old-fashioned way: "We went around and asked," says Haman.

The gleaming cookware sets in the holiday sales catalogs arriving in mailboxes this time of year stir a cook's fantasy. You start to imagine the luscious cakes, hearty stews, delicate crepes and sumptuous roasts that you could make if only you had such sleek pots and pans in your kitchen. But before you write up your Christmas wish list, take a moment to cast a critical eye at your cookware and ask what it is you really need. Selecting the right pots and pans is among the most important decisions a cook can make.

It was a dark and stormy night. I was grounded by the weather, and the movie I had planned to see had yet to begin. With three hours to kill, I decided to tackle my No. 1 New Year's resolution: cleaning all the pots and pans in the kitchen. The job description was as follows: to remove interior stains and scour the outside crud and multilayers of cooked-on grease from the exteriors of a mishmash of American (mostly All-Clad) and European cookware. In three hours. What an optimist. The project got off to an energetic start, but after expending considerable elbow grease and going well into overtime, I threw in the towel.

CANONSBURG, Pa. - Along a winding two-lane road amid the rolling hills about 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh lies a couple of nondescript industrial buildings, noteworthy for one thing only - some of the world's finest cookware is manufactured inside. That's not just a lot of hot steel, either. Try holding an All-Clad skillet in your hand. You will feel the heft immediately. Then you will likely notice the craftsmanship, from the handle's oversized rivets to the stainless-steel cooking surface that's polished to a star-burst sparkle.

CLARIFICATION: We recently wrote about an article in Consumer Reports on Health that cited the benefits of tea. The phone number we provided is to subscribe to the newsletter. To see the tea report, visit www.consumerreports.org/health. Tea drinkers: a toast to their health Perhaps the British and Chinese are on to something. Recent studies have found that drinking tea - black or green, cold or hot - may have health benefits that include stronger bones, improved arteries and healthier hearts, according to Consumer Reports on Health.

June is a month of new beginnings. Marriages. Graduations. New jobs. New homes. New kitchens. This is the time when many young people discover they'll need more than a hot plate if they're going to feed themselves. Yet setting up a kitchen doesn't have to cost a ton of money. With a bit of resourcefulness, thrift and care, it is possible to equip a starter kitchen for less than $500. Randi Haman, a Baltimore native and recent graduate of American University, and her roommate, Lindsay Levine, have stocked the kitchen in their Washington, D.C., apartment the old-fashioned way: "We went around and asked," says Haman.

Mara Reid Rogers, author of "Cooking in Cast Iron," gives these tips on how to care for cast-iron cookware. She says although these pieces need little care other than seasoning, cooks who are not familiar with the process may believe that it is a difficult and / or time consuming task. Seasoning. "All new cast-iron cookware must be seasoned prior to use. And periodically, you may want to re-season it. First, peel off and discard any labels. Wash thoroughly with mild dishwashing liquid, rinse with hot water and dry thoroughly with a kitchen towel.

It is 6 p.m., and your dinner guests will arrive any minute now. But instead of pulling the perfect roast out of the oven like Martha Stewart, you discover that your dinner is unraveling.While sitting out, the cold appetizer veggies have gone limp as a wet book cover. You overcooked the roast, and now it's on the dry side. The asparagus, perfect in the store, has no flavor.And then there's the chocolate cake. So gorgeous in the magazine, it's burned on the edges and soft in the middle.There lies the inevitable question: Can this dinner be saved?

It was a dark and stormy night. I was grounded by the weather, and the movie I had planned to see had yet to begin. With three hours to kill, I decided to tackle my No. 1 New Year's resolution: cleaning all the pots and pans in the kitchen. The job description was as follows: to remove interior stains and scour the outside crud and multilayers of cooked-on grease from the exteriors of a mishmash of American (mostly All-Clad) and European cookware. In three hours. What an optimist. The project got off to an energetic start, but after expending considerable elbow grease and going well into overtime, I threw in the towel.

Chef expands line What's that sound? Emeril's new whistling teakettle, perhaps, the latest in his line of Emerilware from All-Clad Metalcrafters. The celebrity chef has added this sleek and stylish teakettle to his gourmet nonstick cookware line. He's added a line of ergonomically correct nonstick kitchen tools as well, along with several new specialty pans. Emerilware is available at department and specialty stores. Culinary awards Forget Oscar and Tony. What you really need to know is who won the cookbook awards.

Kitchen color is back -- in cabinets, cookware, appliances and surfaces. Those who remember a frightening experience with an avocado fridge, a harvest gold dishwasher or a pretty-in-pink sink -- don't run away screaming. This time, fashion, not engineering, is driving the color. This time the colors are subtle or bright neutrals that invite mixing and matching, and lend themselves to an endless array of decorating styles. No one ever made a bilious green refrigerator disappear in a design scheme, but today's colors, drawn from the subtler earth tones, are meant to be at ease in their settings.