The Unsung Hero of Kitchen Cookware

Forget what you’ve heard elsewhere.

You don’t need a mountain of cookware to have a well-stocked kitchen.

If you are looking to fix up delicious and healthy preparations of any combination of:

meat
vegetables
eggs
grains
beans
sauces

then you can get away with a much more minimalist kitchen than you may realize.

In fact, a budding kitchen hacker needs only three pieces of cookware.

We’ve talked about the first two pieces before, but in this article, we’ll tackle the third.

The unsung hero. The dark horse.

The saucepan.

The Goldilocks of Cookware

The pot and the pan are the yin and yang of the kitchen.

One handles high heat well, the other excels with low.

One is ideal for the stovetop, the other perfect for inside the oven.

And, if you follow my recommendations, the cast-iron skillet is the gruff, street smart wise guy, while the enameled cast-iron Dutch oven is the stylish and refined cosmopolitan yuppie.

But in between these two extremes lies the saucepan. And just like Goldilock’s choices, this one is often just right where the other two fall short.

While these two pieces of cookware are ideal for the majority of your kitchen cooking tasks, throwing a wild card into the mix can complete the trifecta and make the perfect beginner cookware set.

By adding a saucepan into your arsenal, you are all set to learn all the fundamental beginner cooking skills (and you are prepared to throw together a big meal for your friends and family! Noish!)

A saucepan is a pot, smaller than a Dutch oven, but which holds about the same volume as a skillet.

It heats up pretty quickly, but due to its small size has a tendency to lose heat quickly as well. So small, simple, non-finicky preparations work best here.

Boiling beans. Boiling rice. And yes, making sauce. They’re great for scrambled eggs as well.

While they come in a wide range of sizes, I’ve found that a 1.5 quart (1.5 L) saucepan is the ideal one to have.

It’s usually the smallest (and thus cheapest) model any manufacturer makes.

But the bigger it gets, the more you might as well just be using a Dutch oven. Which you already have. (Right? Right?)

And while there’s certainly a case to be made for having another high-volume pot on hand, yet another saucepan is probably overkill. (We’ll hit on which you should opt for in an upcoming article.)

Sometimes a Dutch Oven Is Just Too Big

A big ass pot of about 6 quarts (6 L) should be the first piece of cookware any budding kitchen hacker should pick up, but it has its limitations.

If you want to make something that is a quart or less, it will all spread out thin on the bottom and possibly burn.

I like using my saucepan for boiling rice, melting butter for sauces or desserts, and scrambling eggs.

Unlike a heavy Dutch oven, a saucepan can be moved around with one hand, which is helpful if you are draining the water off top or moving it around.

The saucepan is an agile little pot ideal for smaller preparations than you’d put in a larger pot.

When the Other Dishes Are In Use

Unless you are only making one-pot meals, you’ll eventually hit a wall with how much you can cook at once.

You might be boiling greens in your Dutch oven and frying a pork chop in your pan, so where are you going to boil the rice?

When your two main tools in the kitchen are in use, the humble little saucepan is more than willing to step up and play a supporting role.

While you can buy another big pot or skillet, why not get something that excels in its own ways as well?

Buyer’s Guide

You can use a cheap pot in lieu of a Dutch oven as long as you don’t heat it up too high in the oven. (But enameled cast iron is better bang for your buck.)

And there’s no substitute for a cast-iron skillet. (Apologies to all the sad, flimsy nonstick pans out there.)

When it comes to saucepans, you’ve got even more leeway to go cheap.

They don’t need to stand up to ultra-high heat. They don’t need to be oven-safe.

They’re mostly there to just heat stuff up. Nothin’ fancy. So feel free to stick with the cheapo stuff here.

But…

If you’ve got the cash to spare, and are interested in buying something that will last you decades and give you the best value, aluminum coated with stainless steel is the way to go.

They can handle high heat (in case you ever want to toss it in the oven), and do a decent enough job at being nonstick without the dubious leaching that Teflon and its ilk may or not do…

Anyways.

All-Clad is the reigning champion in the stainless steel cookware world, but their stuff is hecka expensive.

The list price of a 1.5 quart (1.5 L) saucepan is $150, though you can find it for $80 on Amazon as of this writing.

If, on the other hand, you don’t spend your free time drinking Dom Perignon out of a jewel-encrusted golden chalice, on your similarly jewel-encrusted golden yacht, you can probably find better value with an off-brand model.

The Multiclad Pro line from Cuisinart gets consistently high reviews from users, if not better than the All Clad, at a fraction of the cost.

Currently, you can get a similar model to that 1.5 quart guy on Amazon for $30.

It’s what I use, and I’d highly recommend it. But, y’know, it’s your money Lord Grantham.

The Trifecta, Completed

One of the biggest reasons guys don’t bother learning how to cook is that it seems too overwhelming.

Too many exotic ingredients. Too many difficult techniques. Too much expensive equipment.

But if you’re more interested in being a successful home cook rather than a chef wannabe, then you only need three pieces of cookware to enable you to prepare a better dinner than any of your friends.

The big ass pot and skillet are the most important of these three, but the saucepan is the best supporting actor that you can’t live without.

With this important piece of cookware in your arsenal, you’ll be unstoppable.