December 5, 2009

Confession: Farberware

That's right, I own and use a complete set of Farberware. I have one Calphalon pan my mother got on ridiculous sale back when Calphalon was The Pan to Have. Now All-Clad is The Pan to Have, and I wonder what all those Calphalon-owning home cooks have done with their sets. Have they thrown them out? Should novice cooks scour the yard sales?

Real foodies sneer at Farberware and its colleague Revereware. One commenter on a board wrote "I want my pans to last more than seven years." One must wonder what she does to those pans. Does she leave them empty on a hot stove? Set them on fire? I've done both and the pans, although scorched, are fine. My grandmother did neither, and nearly 70 years after she bought them, I'm still using her four-quart pot and double boiler insert.

There's an old saying: it's a poor craftsman who blames his tools. By extension, the best pot in the world won't make you a master cook. A bad pot that's thin and heats unevenly will make cooking extra difficult, but pots and pans priced in the stratosphere don't perform that much better than their mid-priced comrades.

The best cook that I know personally, food writer Anne Mendelson, uses Farberware. It's her attention to detail, experience and skill that makes her a good cook, not a $100+ pot.