Or, just any old cookware really.
Over the summer, I have managed to acquire four “new” cast iron skillets. One of which was a Lodge pan that was so caked with gunk that the giant Lodge branding “stamp” on the bottom couldn’t be seen. I say gunk because whatever was on that pan wasn’t good seasoning. It was very thick and some of it was peeling like bad wallpaper. It was nasty. But as a thrift store find, I figured a few dollars wouldn’t break me it the pan wasn’t salvageable.
Anyway, couple of weeks of cleaning, I have a nice little oddball (to me) Lodge pan that is, I dunno, 7, 8 inches? Smaller than any of my 9 inch pans. It’s perfect for sautéing mushrooms and making grilled cheese sandwiches and I have an old pyrex saucepan lid that fits it exactly right. Thus my hodge-podge lodge pan.
What about you, do you acquire and replace kitchen tools over time, building up a mishmash of items that works exactly right for you and your style, or do you buy sets of pans/knives/etc?
Both ways of kitchen equipping have their pluses and minuses and neither is wrong, but some people do better using one style and some the other, what’s your style?
I buy what I need at the time, so I very much have a hodge-podge. Most of my cast iron is 20+ years old, acquired at several points along the way, altough my dutch oven I bought just a couple years ago. My non-stick skillets change from time to time, based on whatever happens to be in the store at the time - Blue Diamond and Red Copper currently, have had Gotham and other brands. They normally last 5 to 6 years, then get replaced by whatever the new one is that the store is carrying. My stainless pots are all from a set I bought 30 or so years ago, other than my big stewpots, which were individual purchases.
I have an assortment of cast iron in different sizes, mostly inherited from my grandmother. I need to strip and reseason all of them, so I won’t be using them any time soon. The only new one is a tiny skillet that’s just the right size for one egg, or a large chocolate chip cookie. I also have a Le Creuset gratin dish that I rescued from the dumpster. It had a lot of baked-on grease, which cleaned up really well.
We have a full set of 12", 10", 8", 6.5", and a teeny little 3 5/8" one that I fry one egg for English muffin sandwiches in. Some of them are Lodge for certain but I’m not sure about all of them. I use the 12" the most. We basically store it on the stovetop anyways.
We also have a non-enameled Dutch oven and an enameled Le Creuset Dutch oven that was a wedding gift.
I’m definitely of the hodge-podge persuasion myself. I have a variety of cookware of varying quality, including a large heavy pot that I guess is basically a Dutch oven that I use rarely (for things like pot roast), a beautiful heavy KitchenAid saucepan that I use constantly, a lighter large pot that I use for pasta, and a bunch of others. Practically nothing matches. Also a bunch of mostly non-matching cooking utensils.
I’m aware of the fondness for cast iron, but I’ve never been on that particular bandwagon. For example, I like to use crepe pans for stovetop toasting of things like buns and bagels, and I do have a cast iron one, but I find that the lighter Teflon crepe pans heat up faster and their lightness makes them easier to handle, so I prefer them for that purpose.
Also a variety of frying pans, my favourites being a small Cuisinart stainless pan ideal for stir-frying mushrooms, and a large T-Fal non-stick that is perfect as a general-purpose frying pan. I’ve taken good care of it and after what must be at least 15 years its non-stick quality is as good as new – fried eggs literally slip right off. Also a large frying pan with a glass lid that is ideal for browning dim sum and then adding water and steaming it, the glass allowing me to see when all the water has boiled off.
Yeah, a lot of different things. I have a whole set of Le Creuset stainless pots and pans. I use the pots often, the pans less so. My go-to breakfast pans are a well-used Cuisinart non-stick 12", an Anolon 10", and an old Berndes (German) non-stick 8". Those Berndes pans are indestructible and with the heavy steel bottoms, they never warp. My go-to pot is a 2 quart T-Fal non-stick. Great for oatmeal or making rice; also cheap and last a really long time. I used to have a cast iron pan I picked up at an antique shop, but I never used it and it ended up in a garage sale.
When I moved from Chicago to NC I left almost all of my cookware (as well as many other kitchen items) behind and purchased replacements. Most of what I’d had was in bad shape anyway, so I figured it wasn’t worth packing. A few years ago I picked up a 12" cast iron Lodge pan, which I’ve found sufficiently useful that I’m planning on buying a smaller one for times when the one I’ve got is too big.
I’m definitely DEI when it comes to my kitchen. The cast iron was either inherited from Mom or stuff I’d gathered along the way, like the chicken fryer. There’s a couple of frying pans, a round skillet, a square skillet, a rectangular griddle and a pizza pan. La Creuset enamel Dutch oven. Pots and pans are mostly bog-standard restaurant stuff. Vollrath, to be exact. Plus the camping stuff, which is all light-weight aluminum and beat to shit. Knives are a mix of Henkel and Cutco. Laugh all you want, but I’m still using most of the knives I bought my first year of college. That was…never mind, wasn’t important.
How can a Lodge pan not be salvageable? If there’s gunk on it, take it to a foundry and shot blast that sucker. Take it to the hardware store and strap it to the paint shaker. Drag it behind a stagecoach for a couple miles. Anything still on there will revolutionize our understanding of gunk.
I have a bit of a hodge-podge; a Lodge, a non-stick Scanpan, and a stainless steel All-Clad. I got a set of pots and pans some years ago as a gift; the pots and the small skillet from that set get used regularly. And I have a corbon steel wok that’s still building up the seasoning.
Hodge-podger here. I love having cast iron of all shapes and sizes. But I did rationalize the collection recently and put two pans on the free table: one was a ginormous fry pan (probably 14") that I had no use for and the other was griddle pan that we used once and decided it provided no additional flexibility to our cooking options.
So now I have a cast iron Dutch oven, the lid of which is the day-to-day fry pan; a small pan perfect for one egg; and a very large but shallow fry pan that is perfect for pancakes or lots of fried eggs. I can’t imagine needing anything else, but estate sales and garage sales often tempt me.
All it takes is a 4-1/2" or 5" grinder with a wire wheel. I’ve saved quite a few of them that way. Strip to shiny metal, then begin the seasoning process all over again. As for a griddle, my 1950s era Wedgewood stove/oven has a griddle right in the middle of the burners, 2 on the left, 2 on the right. It’s gonna kill me when we move and I can’t take this with me.
It would mostly depend on if whatever was on it was more effort/expense to remove than I wanted to invest. I went the chemical route to stripping it down to bare metal with oven cleaner and a trashbag to soak in
