Next pan/pot... high sided fry pans / woks, saucier?

[jedovaty]

I'm having trouble deciding whether I want/need a fry pan with high sides, like a wok or similar, or maybe a larger saucier, or both.

Currently I have 12" and 8" SS shallow saute pans, a 10" lodge CI, a 12" round CI griddle, a shallow/wide 8qt SS dutch oven, and a 2qt saucier.  20yr GE gas range, with possible upgrade to induction in a few years if the range stops working (probably won't, it's been easy to make repairs so far).

Past 18 months my diet has transitioned to super quick, easy meals with heavy plant and fish/seafood.  I rarely sear anything anymore.  Some soups when I have left overs.

My saute pans and the CI lodge have worked okay for sautes, but they tend to be messy with contents falling over the edges, annoying.  The DO is shallow enough to reach my utensils in to stir things around, but it has been really awkward to toss the pan, maybe the shape being so wide or it being bottom heavy.

I prefer to keep my tools minimal and multi-purpose. 

The 2qt saucier is too small to make myself 1-2 portion soups in the winter, and the DO is so wide such that solids stick out of the liquid.  So.. it seems a 3qt or 4qt saucier would be the right choice?

I have looked into woks, too.

Costco at the moment has an induction hob + cheapo carbon steel wok for $100; Sur La Table has a typical carbon steel wok for $35 on sale now; River Light has a nice nitride-gassed carbon steel wok for about $80-90.  There are other wok options I found but I dunno.  The local "asian stores" near me only stock non-stick coated woks (wtf?!) which I can't use due to my pets, and I've found the super premium snooty fancy fancy oxenforge stuff but yeah.. no. 

I've tried woks twice over the last 15 years, and totally disappointed each time: once was a "pow" shape carbon steel that would either rust or get super sticky if I didn't use it enough, and second was some cast iron thing that I couldn't get any seasoning on it.  That's why the nitride gased CS wok looks interesting.  But then the Costco induction hob would be a new toy, much fun, and I waffle to saving money on the SLT, but both that and the costco are standard carbon steel which I've had no luck with in the past.  

 

Any thoughts? Blah.

[gfweb]

did you season the carbon steel pans?

My two are nearly as good as nonstick with seasoning.

[jedovaty]

3 minutes ago, gfweb said:

did you season the carbon steel pans?

My two are nearly as good as nonstick with seasoning.

Yes, sorry I didn't mention that.  I correctly seasoned it, and tried multiple times over the years.  I have always seemed to have trouble with carbon steel. Even the vollrath fry pans I had which I gave away several years ago after giving up.  They would be okay as long as I used them almost daily.. if I didn't use them for a couple weeks, they would begin to rust or get very sticky.  Again, no issues with cast iron.  FWIW, I can make eggs scrambled and fried eggs on my stainless pans without sticking, too, so I like to think I have achieved some level of home-cook-wizardy - still working on french omelettes, maybe some day I'll get that down.  Hopefully this post will not go down the "here's how you season a pan" or "how to keep from rusting" or "too much oil" etc.. I'm more interested in deciding what pan, if any, to get next, and shared the background to demonstrate the basis of hesitation for going down a path I've tried before.

Fun side note, about 15 years ago, a family member and I welded/built a solid-steel outdoor wok station/rolling cabinet out of metal and wood to hold an outdoor high-BTU wok burner.  That was fun, many grease fires were had as we learned to control the flame.  Now that's out of my system, I've repurposed the rolling cabinet for garden storage and my pizza oven

[AAQuesada]

I'm a big fan of the saucier and straight sided saute pans! 

 

[rotuts]

If you have not tried a high quality saucier , 

 

you're really missing something special.

[KennethT]

For the past few years, I've been watching a lot of Indonesian/Malaysian YouTube videos of people making various dishes.  Most of these dishes are some form of braise, starting with frying a spice paste in oil over relatively low heat, then adding a liquid to the braise.  Every single video has them cooking in some kind of wok - and like you say, most of those woks are lined with a non-stick material.  For that type of cooking, I don't think the non-stick is much of an issue because it doesn't use high heat that can damage the coating. 

 

I used to do my braising in a standard 8qt sauce pan (looks like a mini stock pot), but lately, I've moved to a small, cheap stainless steel wok I got off Amazon and found that it works much better.  Even making a small quantity, I don't need a lot of liquid to cover, and it's easier to stir things around, especially when there's large chunks in there.  And it's vastly superior to the standard sauce pan when you need to reduce the liquid.

[rotuts]

@KennethT

 

what you are using is a round bottomed ' pan '

 

you can call it a wok , or a saucier .

 

each has very different connotations .

 

but , once you go Round ,  all the rest are Flat.