What's for Dinner?

I would eat the shit out of that and absolutely suffer for it for the following few hours. But it looks worth it.

Their pans are bloody great, absolutely brilliant to cook in.

Stuff will stick to a good pan. It's called "fond" and it's a source of flavour. You want those burned on bits of you're into making sauces etc.

Good pans aren't about Teflon - they're about heat retention and distribution. Good pans get hot quick, stay hot and are hot all over.

Pleased to report that on the first few uses, these ProCook ones are pretty good. Making chicken adobo on Monday so I'll marinate the chicken tomorrow...

Non-stick is something of a misnomer anyway, stuff sticks to Le Creuset to some extent but the general point of them is that you can clean it off fairly easily without damaging the surface. Cheaper Teflon stuff might have a better time releasing food to start, but it’ll scratch and wear down quickly. Le Creuset and other decent brands, properly maintained, will last for life. Some of the enameled iron builds up a patina of seasoning as you go as well, which a lot of people seem to think is stuck food.

Also you do usually want browned bits to stick to the pan, then deglaze it with some liquid, to create a pan sauce or gravy. As mentioned above it’s a way to generate intense flavors. It’s an essential step for things like caramelizing onions.

No buttered bread, no sauce? Outrageous.

I use the Hairy Bikers recipe these days.

www.goodto.com/recipes/hairy-bikers-yorkshire-pudding

You need fond to make a good pan sauce, or if you're making a ragu - it's really difficult / impossible to get fond on a Teflon pan.

It's a bit of a niche use case, admittedly.

If you're struggling to clean your pans, try some making soda in hot water. Or - once you're finished cooking - get some water straight in the pan, get it on the heat, and use a spatula or whatever to scrape those burned bits off. It should clean up nice and easy either way.

Thanks!



This is not a thing I own, but I assume something like small ceramic oven dishes should do okay? I'll only be making 2 or so to try it out.

A muffin tray will also do. Yorkshires are tricky to make quite big without going too soft and gooey on the bottom, so you need something small. The recipe above (I use March Berry's but there's not much in it) will make a dozen small Yorkshires.

To join in the panwankery, I bought a couple of Carbon Debuyerpans a year or so ago which aren't too heavy(although other half hates the weight), seem to be seasoned better now although I did all the repeated oven seasoning wankery at the beginning it took ages for them to be right.
I also bought a nice wee 20cm non-stick (as we had crap ones before), German brand, Woll Diamond Lite which seems great, detachable handle as well , I want to get the next size up as well, can then dump the old ones.

They sent us the induction version instead of the normal one (think I just has an even thicker base), we have a normal ceramic hob so not needed but when buying the bigger pan, a combination of OCD and "you never know, might have induction at somepoint" makes me inclined to pay the extra and get the induction version of that too....

I bought a set of Meyer non-stick pans in about 2001 in a Debenhams January sale which are largely still going strong. Though my now Mrs Mercury goes at them with a chisel I believe so the non-stick surface is going. The largest of the set, which she seldom uses on account as to how heavy it is when full is still in perfect condition.

That is a very odd combo to go with a Yorkshire pudding.

So this is something I saw a lot when looking it up.. Roast beef I can understand, sausages and stuff as well. Gravy with this seems really odd to me, but then I'm essentially thinking of it as a variation of our "oven pancake" which is essentially the same but with more milk making it more "pancake-y" and then we eat it (usually) with raw-stirred lingonberries, which are tart and kind of dry. Gravy seems a bit too exotic.