Up until I got this pan, I just ate.
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Food & Wine / Amazon / Hans Namuth / Photo Researchers History / Getty Images
Over Thanksgiving, I decided it was finally time to raid my parent’s (sparse) cookbook collection. There was a Claudia Roden book on Jewish cooking that looked unfortunately untouched, a James Beard book that had only one recipe bookmarked (my mom’s apple pie), and strangely enough, two copies of the same Julia Child book, The Way to Cook.
I opted for the more-loved version of this book and after smuggling it out of my parents’ house and across the country in my suitcase, I began digging through the pages filled with microwave takedowns (“I rarely use it for real cooking,”), aspics galore, and helpful bits of wisdom regarding cooking and life (on drinking wine with eggs she writes, “I say fie those damn oenophilic spoilsports who insist that wine goes with neither eggs nor salads. Wine is essential with anything!”).
But the most helpful tip I’ve gleaned from this book so far is what Child calls “the pan you will use most — of all your frying pans — for general cooking.” Even though she wrote this book 35 years ago, after using the Wear-Ever frying pan for two months, I can confidently say it has changed my cooking for the better.
Thanks to its 10-inch diameter, I’ve found it to be endlessly versatile. I’ve used it for omelets as Child recommends, and the eggs haven’t stuck, even when I bang the handle of the pan to curl the bottom edge up (something I’ve never seen before, but has seemed to improve my omelet form). In fact, its nonstick surface is so slick that every time I cook with it, I feel like the vegetables are skating around on an ice rink, performing an intricate ballet rather than a lopsided line dance.
Thanks to its aluminum base, it heats evenly, and I can use it to sear chicken thighs, and then pop them in the oven (up to 600°F, according to the brand, although I really only do 375°F) to finish cooking them through. Plus it’s easy to clean. Just a warm sponge and a little bit of soap gets most things off with little elbow grease required.
While the pan even comes with a silicone sleeve on the handle to protect against burns, Child dislikes them and so do I. “They are almost impossible to get off when you want to put the pan in the oven for one reason or another,” she writes, adding that it is worthwhile to wear a towel on your waist “as chefs do.” Mine still hang on the oven-door, and the silicone sleeve is long-gone in the garbage.
Maybe I’m slightly biased because every time I reach for this pan, it feels like Julia Child is standing next to me in my kitchen. But whoever said that was a bad thing? For $62, you too can have a great pan, plus some hallucinations. But you can leave those at the door, if you’d like.
At the time of publishing, the price was $62.
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