My New Pan

A few weeks ago, our neighbors invited my wife and I on an afternoon outing to a free “Boomer” exposition in Portland.  This is a show that is targeted to people of Boomer age (born between the years 1946 and 1964).  There were all kinds of companies demonstrating their products and services anywhere from retirement homes, funeral home (I’m not ready for either of those!), wineries, Monastery Mustard (more about this to come), roofing, siding, windows, and many others.

The show was lots of fun because there were many nice promotional give-away that we picked up along the way; post-it-note pads, a pedometer, book light and insulated water bottle holder.  As we are cutting down on “stuff’, we passed on picking up the pens and water bottles and the like.  Free candy and cookies were a nice draw to get us to look at the products.  Both my wife and I had a ten-minute massage from a health club that was advertising their spa capabilities – nice!

Most of the booths offer some sort of door prize, all you had to do was provide your contact information, so we signed up for all kinds of gift baskets and other prizes.  We just knew that we were going to win the cruise to Alaska.

Well, we didn’t win the cruise but I won a free 8-inch skillet.  I received a phone call from a local Platinum distributor, that they would send my skillet personally delivered by a “chef” that would show us how to use the skillet.  In addition, the chef would make dinner for as many couples as we wanted to invite.  Great, come on out!

As our neighbors invited us to the boomer expo, we invited them to the dinner demonstration (yes, we knew up front this was a sales presentation).  The dinner/demonstration went well.  We had a nice meal of chicken thighs, potato slices, corn, broccoli and sliced carrots, all cooked with the Platinum cookware.  Our “chef” said that it would take some practice to get used to cooking at a much lower heat than we normally would, and be prepared to burn some food along the way.  Ok, how hard can it be!

When the evening was over, we had had a nice meal, some dessert and I ended up with my new Platinum 8-inch skillet.  This is a surgical steel non-stick skillet that doesn’t use Teflon.  Our son has tried to get us to get rid of our Teflon frying pans due to the health dangers, so he will be happy that one of the frying pans is now on the way out.

On Sunday morning, I decided to use the provided recipe and make omelets.  I have made some omelets in our Teflon pan, but I usually get them a little brown on the bottom while trying to get the middle cooked (we don’t like omelets that are runny in the middle).

I mixed together two eggs and a little water and waited for the pan to heat.  It has a temperature gauge on the lid that when 40 degrees Celsius is reached, you turn the heat on the burner from medium to low.  I had sprayed the inside of the pan with PAM and once the temperature was reached, I turned down the burner and added the eggs.

After two and a half minutes I found out that I should have turned the burner heat way down, as the eggs were done, but brown on the bottom from overcooking.  The inside of the pan was also brown and stained, so we decided to wash it before trying again.  Soap and water were not removing the stain, so we tried a small packet of Bar Keepers Friend that came with the pan.  Wow, it took off all the stain and really shined the pan.

Back to the stove I went with the pan and some more eggs, this time I started with lower heat then before and used a little margarine in the pan,  Once the correct temperature was reached I turned the burner to it’s lowest setting and added the eggs to the pan.  My wife had prepared some cheddar cheese and ham pieces to put into the omelet before folding it over.

After two and a half minute, I took the lid of the pan and the omelet looked great!  I added the ham and cheese and folded the omelet and slid it right onto her waiting plate.  I cooked mine the same way and they were both wonderful.  The omelet was cooked to perfection and was very light and fluffy.  My wife then tried making scrambled eggs in the pan and they turned out perfectly.

We are very excited to try additional recipes in the new pan, we just wish it was a little larger in diameter so we could cook recipes with more volume than will fit in the 8-inch pan.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell