I have tried spaghetti squash as a pasta replacement. I don’t like it. I do have a mandolin. I don’t like it either.
NKoan: that looks interesting. How sturdy is it? I am concerned that the plastic will snap, especially the handle.
C’mon, you didn’t need those fingertips anyway.
I’m seeing lots of knockoffs on amazon. I don’t know what is the original (or if I even have the original myself) but the one I have seems decent enough. I don’t use mine a ton (probably less than once a month now-a-days) but it’s sturdy enough that I don’t worry about it. I’ve put zucchini, yellow squash and potatoes through the thing without much of an issue.
Not sure if this really counts as a gadget, but I recently got new enameled cast iron dutch oven.
I was looking at a la creuset pan, as they are kind of the standard for that type of pan. But I have an old lodge brazier, and its still holding up well, so I decided to investigate a comparison.
From what I found, there is no actual difference with the modern lodge enameled cast iron, whose enameling process is solid. The biggest difference is that instead of paying $380 for a 7 quart dutch oven, I was able to get one for $89.
It came, and its quite nice. I suspect that is there is a fault, it will potentially result in the enamel separating from the iron. So, if that happens, we’ll see. But my initial impression is that the lodge is a good choice over the La creuset.
I really do love enameled cast iron though. It’s heavy as shit, but it cooks so nicely.
Ooh, yeah, enameled cast iron is great. I inherited a motley collection of Le Creuset and Cousances pans, most of which are 50+ years old now and still going strong. They’re not indestructible—it’s entirely possible to ruin the finish if you’re careless enough to, say, wander off and let a saucepan full of apple cider burn down to carbon—but they’re real workhorses.
Le Creuset is crazy expensive, though. Same with All-Clad. I don’t buy a piece more than once every five years or so.
If you take care of them, they last forever. So I wouldn’t have been super against an investment in an expensive one. But like I said, after doing some research, it seemed like the lodge pans were identical in terms of function.
The real test will be whether they last a half century or not.
That will be one heck of a thread bump.
Stainless steel all clad really will last forever. So will cast iron.
Enameled cast iron, not so much. If you heat it too quickly, the enamel cracks. If you heat it “dry”, it cracks. If you hit it with metal utensils juuust right, same deal. The enamel always cracks, sooner or later. They’re great pans, but they aren’t heirlooms.
No such thing as a heirloom non-stick pan, either. Buy cheap.
On a side note, I really dislike Lodge cast iron pans. They’re just too rough. Old cast iron like griswold and wagner was polished and completely smooth. These days nobody is mass-producing cast iron pans finished that way. There’s Finex, but they charge a fortune.
Luckily you can just get a carbon steel pan instead. Smooth as silk.
Well sure, but you can just… Not do those things.
You need to be aware of what you are doing with it, but if you treat it well, it won’t crack.
But I think your point stands, that it’s not as straight up indestructible as something like a normal cast iron pan.
That’s easier said than done!
It’s an argument for the Lodge over the Le Creuset, really. Get the $75 enameled cast iron dutch oven, not the $350 one.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can take care of it well enough to have it last for the $89.
It’s just such an awesome cooking surface though. Regular cast iron can actually get as good, if correctly seasoned, but it’s way more fussy… And if you do stuff wrong and it gets gummed up you end up needing to start over and season it again.
Le Creuset is nice, but you do a pay a stiff premium. I love my enamelled cast iron dutch oven. It’s a Kirkland brand item from Costco, and was 1/5 the price of the equivalent size Le Creuset. Only one chip on the lid from hitting something on a drying rack.
Heh, my folks actually got me an enameled cast iron skillet for Xmas, but ordered from some shady vendor and it got in way after I’d left to come back home. Realizing that the damn thing was way too expensive to economically ship back to me, they’re now calling it a “whenever the hell you come back to TN” present.
Good to hear about the dry heating, etc., though. Hope I remember this thread’s contents in 3-6 months!
I got a Chasseur cast iron skillet as a promo with my new fridge a couple of years back. I’d never pay the $300 the thing costs at retail, but I have to admit it is ludicrously better than the $50 no-name brand one I had been using.
I have the lodge enameled cast iron oven that I got for like 50 on sale. It is pretty awesome. The Le Creusets are just… so expensive. And cast iron is cast iron. The process for making them is pretty much the same, I guess the LC could be more sturdily built, but Lodge knows what they are doing with cast iron cookware.
Well, the potential issue with the Lodge isn’t the iron, it’s the enamel.
If you are preheating an enameled cast iron pan and you hear tiny ping, ping sounds, that may very well be tiny bits of enamel cracking and even popping off of the surface. I’ll gladly put oil in a cold pan to avoid this.
Right, and you also need to pre-heat at medium, never high. Problem is that cast iron has so much mass that preheating at medium takes for-frickin-ever.
From what I’ve found, the Creuset pans are expensive because for a long while the only companies making such cookware charged a high premium for it. It wasn’t until the past decade or so that manufacturers like Lodge started making the same cookware cheaper (and really, it seems like it’s basically the exact same, since the process for bonding the enamel to the cast iron isn’t super complex or secret).
So the difference in price at this point is more legacy based than anything… and ends up being kind of supported by the fact that the legacy prices are so much higher. Folks say, “For an extra $300, there MUST be something different about this pan… right?” But I don’t think there actually is.
Regardless, the big ass dutch oven I got seems real nice. It’s a nice looking pan, and made a mean pot of chili. I’m thinking it’s gonna be my primary pan when I don’t need to be flipping stuff around, since it’s a perfect diameter, with high sides. The only downside is that it’s heavy as hell.
Doesn’t really fit in the dishwasher either. So you’re flipping that sucker around in a sink to wash it. PITA but worth it. I make a lot of tomato sauce. I let it simmer for hours. Older thinner pans have ended up with burnt crap on the bottom, no matter how low the flame is. This killed the flavor. With my dutch oven it just doesn’t happen. I love it and use it all the time. Often I’ll use it for slow cooking instead of the crock pot. I brown the roast or whatever and the same pot goes in the oven. Less cleanup and consistently good final product. Now the crock pot is for set it and forget it meals.