ATK small pot reviews

"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two ago,
and
picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember who made it?

Do you remember what they made on the show? And, do you
mean skillets?

nancy

"Nancy Young" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
ago, and
picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember who made
it?

Do you remember what they made on the show? And, do you
mean skillets?

Now that you mention it, I do remember they made hot and sour soup and
"silked" chicken stir fry.

I don't think they called them skillets. Most of the pots reviewed looked
like typical small pots.

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"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

"Nancy Young" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
ago, and
picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember who made
it?

Do you remember what they made on the show? And, do you
mean skillets?

Now that you mention it, I do remember they made hot and sour soup and
"silked" chicken stir fry.

I don't think they called them skillets. Most of the pots reviewed looked
like typical small pots.

Okay, sorry, I don't have that episode. Wish I could help.

Maybe you can find the info on their website?

nancy

Tom Del Rosso said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
ago, and picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember
who made it?

You can probably find it on their web site, although registration is
required.

Brian

--
If televison's a babysitter, the Internet is a drunk librarian who
won't shut up.
-- Dorothy Gambrell (http://catandgirl.com)

If I get any [censored] from any of you, I just don't care, so save your effort.

Hasta,
Curt Nelson
___________________________________________________________________

The Little Nonstick Saucepan That Could

You can spend $100 on a 2-quart nonstick saucepan--but should you?

For related information, see our review of The Saucepan That Saved Dinner.

Update: Our winning saucepan can now be found under the name: Calphalon
Contemporary Nonstick 2-1/2-Quart Shallow Saucepan with Lid: $29.99, Item
#JR8782-2P, www.amazon.com

Original Article:
At home, my small saucepan sees plenty of action--making rice, heating milk,
melting butter, or warming up a little soup. It may be the smallest pan in
my kitchen arsenal--and the tasks may be basic--but it's by no means the
least important. Because most of these tasks don't involve browning (and
many involve sticky foods), in the test kitchen we use nonstick 2-quart
saucepans almost exclusively. Do pans that cost close to $100 offer
significant performance, stick-resistance, or design advantages over models
costing a quarter as much? I decamped to the test kitchen with nine 2-quart
nonstick saucepans to find out.

Test and Tell
I designed my initial tests around the smaller, less complicated jobs for
which these small saucepans are suited best, including steaming rice,
scalding cream, and making pastry cream (using a nonstick-friendly nylon or
silicone whisk). The pastry cream test illustrated several design
differences that separated those pans I'd reach for every day from those
that would remain parked eternally in the cabinet. Pouring hot cream from a
saucepan is much neater if the pan from which you're pouring has either a
spout, like the pans from Look, Bialetti, and Revere, or a rolled lip, like
the Cuisinart and Bialetti. An ample diameter and sloped sidewalls make it
easier to carry out the constant whisking necessary to prevent pastry cream
from scorching. Diameters (measured across the top) ranged from just shy of
7 inches for the Anolon to nearly 9 1/2 inches for the Calphalon.

In the process of making pastry cream or rice, a pan can spend 30 minutes
(or more) on the burner, so there's a clear advantage to handles that remain
cool to the touch. All but three of the pans had hard thermal plastic or
Santoprene (soft plastic) handles, which passed this test with no problem.
Even the metal handles, which heated up alarmingly at the point of
attachment, maintained a sufficiently comfortable temperature at the far
end. While steaming rice, I also developed a preference for transparent
lids, which make it easier to monitor cooking progress.

There are two common ways to attach a handle to a saucepan--with rivets or
screws--but (to my mind) only one that works effectively. Simply put: Rivets
are sturdier than screws.

The means by which the handle is attached to the pan constitutes a pet peeve
for me. Rivets are a much more solid means of attachment than screws. The
Calphalon, Cuisinart, Anolon, and Circulon handles were riveted securely in
place, while the Revere handle appeared to be soldered. To my displeasure,
the handles on all of the other pans in our group, including the pricey $95
Swiss Diamond, $85 Look, and $70 Berndes, were screwed into place, a fact
that I find hard to tolerate on an expensive piece of cookware. Worse yet,
the Look's handle was loose from the get-go.

Slow-and-Steady Wins the Race
To get at performance issues such as the evenness and speed of heat
distribution, I sautéed chopped onions and cooked eggs in each pan. Weight,
rather than materials (which were similar in all pans tested), was the
deciding factor. The onions were lightly and evenly colored in the two
heaviest pans, the Calphalon and the Look, each of which weighs close to 2
1/2 pounds. In contrast, onions darkened faster in some of the lighter pans,
including the Bialetti, Circulon, and Cuisinart, which all weigh 1 3/4
pounds or less. In the past, we have often downgraded heavy skillets for
being too slow and unwieldy, but a heavy saucepan is actually a good thing.
Even the heftiest pan in our lineup was easy to maneuver, and many saucepan
tasks involve prolonged cooking over low heat, where gentleness, not speed,
is paramount.

Fresh from the box, all of the pans exhibited excellent stick resistance. In
fact, it wasn't until I subjected the pans to a purposeful abuse test,
designed to bring about the sort of cooking mistake we all hope never to
make, that I noticed any difference in the stick resistance of our pans.
What evil did I visit upon our victims? Caramel. In each pan, I cooked sugar
and water until it reached a deep amber hue. Caramel is no sin in and of
itself, but what I did next was. I just walked away, leaving the sticky,
sugary messes to harden overnight. I returned in the morning to face solid
disks of caramel set hard into the pans, clinging with the force of epoxy.
To remove the caramel, I tried bashing it with a wooden spoon and then
whacked the pan upside down against the rim of a trash can with the hope
that pieces of caramel would tumble out. If the caramel held fast after five
tries, then I filled the pan with water, brought it to a boil, and melted it
out.

Strictly speaking, I felt it would be unfair to count the results of this
extreme trial in the related PDF chart, but it certainly separated the men
from the boys; so I used this information to help break ties. In only two
pans, the Revere and the Anolon, did I have to resort to boiling. On the
other hand, the Calphalon and the Swiss Diamond pans discharged the caramel
with ease.

In the end, the performance differences were subtle--most of the pans will
do a fine job of heating up soup or making rice. Design differences were
more significant, and the sturdy Calphalon pan--with its riveted handle,
wide diameter, sloped sides, and superior nonstick coating--came out on top.
The final factor, price, was the most decisive. The Calphalon pan costs just
$30, a far cry from the second-place Swiss Diamond at $95.

"Default User" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Tom Del Rosso said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
ago, and picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember
who made it?

You can probably find it on their web site, although registration is
required.

Thanks. Didn't want to give them a mailing address, so I fudged it.

--

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"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

"Default User" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Tom Del Rosso said:

America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
ago, and picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone remember
who made it?

You can probably find it on their web site, although registration is
required.

Thanks. Didn't want to give them a mailing address, so I fudged it.

Did you find your pot? Just curious.

nancy

"Nancy Young" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

"Tom Del Rosso" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

"Default User" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Tom Del Rosso wrote:

> America's Test Kitchen reviewed small non-stick pots a week or two
> ago, and picked a winner that was wide and shallow. Anyone
> remember who made it?

You can probably find it on their web site, although registration is
required.

Thanks. Didn't want to give them a mailing address, so I fudged it.

Did you find your pot? Just curious.

Yes, thank you -- once I joined it was easy to spot.

I was also wondering why all the stainless roasting pans today are such
heavy-gauge. My parents had some stainless rectangular pans that were much
thinner and easier to handle, and they lasted decades.

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Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables?  I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits.  She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

You can add most any vegetable to a basic muffin recipe; grated
carrot, grated zuchinni, creamed corn or niblets, etc. Although I've
not tried I see no reason you couldn't add chopped spinich. Could
probably make veggie muffins more palatable by adding, berries,
raisins, craisins, dates, nuts, any dried fruit. You can even add
canned fruit; pineapple, peaches, apple sauce... choices only limited
by your imagination. Is chocolate chips a vegetable, I guess if you
add coconut... hehe

Sheldon

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

Instead of using butter or oil in the muffins, use unsweetened
applesauce for a bit more healthiness - that's one recipe change that
she probably won't even notice (it makes wonderfully moist
cake/muffins...)
I've made some quite delicious muffins with applesauce, mashed banana,
craisins, raisins and pecans. How about making her a carrot cake?

Quoted message said:

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? �I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. �She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

Hopefully its just a "phase" carrot cake, banana or zucchini bread etc.
is no substitute for good nutritious fruits and veggies.

You might try tempting her with a delicious sauce over lightly steamed
veggies, one of my favourites is steamed cauliflower florets, dressed in
butter, garlic and lemon juice with a good grinding of black pepper.

As difficult as it is to get a 5 year old to see the sense of something
they don't want to see the sense of, it is in these early years that
good as well as bad habits are formed.

Just out of my own perverse curiosity, what are you and your child's
astrological signs?

There might be a clue as to how to deal with her if i knew them.
--
JL

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

You can bake a lot of vegetables into breads or muffins.
Zucchini or carrots come to mind.

Many kids also will eat vegetables cut into sticks or rounds if you
provide ranch dressing to dip them into.

gloria p

Puester said:

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat vegetables
and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. She is a big carb eater though
so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into eating them, as
she will already eat banana muffins.

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

You can bake a lot of vegetables into breads or muffins.
Zucchini or carrots come to mind.

Many kids also will eat vegetables cut into sticks or rounds if you
provide ranch dressing to dip them into.

Kids are too mollycoddled these days, they should be TOLD to eat their
veg...dressing up or hiding veg with sweet stuff is only giving into the
lil' monsters, not to say it encourages bad eating habits.

--
Best
Greg

"Gregory Morrow" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Kids are too mollycoddled these days, they should be TOLD to eat their
veg...dressing up or hiding veg with sweet stuff is only giving into
the lil' monsters, not to say it encourages bad eating habits.

It's even WORSE than that. 15 years ago my sister's kids reacted to chicken
drumsticks at their grandmother's house with, "It has a bone in it."

Up until then they had only seen McNuggets.

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Tom Del Rosso said:

"Gregory Morrow" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]

Quoted message said:

Kids are too mollycoddled these days, they should be TOLD to eat their
veg...dressing up or hiding veg with sweet stuff is only giving into
the lil' monsters, not to say it encourages bad eating habits.

It's even WORSE than that. 15 years ago my sister's kids reacted to

chicken

Quoted message said:

drumsticks at their grandmother's house with, "It has a bone in it."

Up until then they had only seen McNuggets.

It's very simple to encourage kids to eat their vegetable or whatever.
Simply say, "This is what we are having for this meal, you have to eat a bit
of everything offered, no gorging on just one thing.. At such - and - such
time all the food will be cleared away, you'll get no more until next meal
time...". They'll be hungry soon enough and will so eat what's offered...

--
Best
Greg

Gregory Morrow said:

Tom Del Rosso said:

"Gregory Morrow" wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Kids are too mollycoddled these days, they should be TOLD to eat their
veg...dressing up or hiding veg with sweet stuff is only giving into
the lil' monsters, not to say it encourages bad eating habits.

Quoted message said:

It's even WORSE than that.  15 years ago my sister's kids reacted to

chicken

Quoted message said:

drumsticks at their grandmother's house with, "It has a bone in it."

Quoted message said:

Up until then they had only seen McNuggets.

It's very simple to encourage kids to eat their vegetable or whatever.
Simply say, "This is what we are having for this meal, you have to eat a bit
of everything offered, no gorging on just one thing..  At such - and - such
time all the food will be cleared away, you'll get no more until next meal
time...".  They'll be hungry soon enough and will so eat what's offered....

You're much too kind... I'd raise them how Papa Khrushchev raised
me... slap them silly and lock them in the basement coal bin, and no
light.

Sheldon

G

Quoted message said:

Kids are too mollycoddled these days, they should be TOLD to eat their
veg...dressing up or hiding veg with sweet stuff is only giving into the
lil' monsters, not to say it encourages bad eating habits.

It's easy to say that when you're giving advice, that's the advice I'd
give, until you live with it. There are times when we giver her certain
vegetables or food and that's it for the night, but the fight is not
worth it. I figure, if we can get her to eat healthy foods disguised as
other, we're both winning.

Thanks to all who responded, I'm going to try grating zucchini into
banana muffins, using applesauce instead of any fat, and see how that goes.

Sharon

Puester said:

Sharon V said:

Does anyone have any good recipes for muffins or bread that disguise
fruits or vegetables? I cannot get my 5 1/2 year old to eat
vegetables and she'll only eat a handful of fruits. She is a big carb
eater though so I thought I'd try making muffins and trick her into
eating them, as she will already eat banana muffins.

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

You can bake a lot of vegetables into breads or muffins.
Zucchini or carrots come to mind.

Many kids also will eat vegetables cut into sticks or rounds if you
provide ranch dressing to dip them into.

gloria p

Don't hide the vegetables or you'll never actually win the battle, only
postpone it. Make some zucchini bread, or carrot cake or muffins and
make a big deal out of it; let Big Girl help make them. This is to help
get over the "vegetables are weird, therefore yucky" part. Later,
perhaps much later, she can try some zucchini or carrots on their own.

Kid like frozen peas. Raw. Most will eat carrot sticks and similar
stuff that's crunchy and slightly sweet. She'll probably also eat
apples if you peel and slice them. Also try a few unpeeled slices; tell
her the peel is where all the flavor is. (Use good apples, not Red
Delicious picked green and held over in a warehouse from last year.)
Pears probably won't need to be peeled.

Don't let the kid escalate and control the situation; you're the adult.
If she doesn't want to eat, she can go hungry. OTOH, try to make
sure the stuff you serve is edible. Nobody should be forced to eat
slimy canned spinach, poorly prepared turnips or bussell sprouts,
blackeyed peas, etc.

Bob