The 10 Pans Pro Chefs Really Use in Restaurants

[upbeat music]

[food sizzling]

[pans banging]

[upbeat music]

My favorite pan is the Made In Saucier pan.

A sauce pan has straight edges

and like hard corners at the bottom of the pan

versus a Saucier pan which has these like sloped edges,

which make it easier to get around the pan.

It's great for items that you might have to whisk,

so like a caramel

or anything that you might need to use rubber spatula

to get around the edges of the pan

and really like wanna keep stuff from sticking

to the bottom and burning.

And it's great for, you know, tossing

because of the nice sloped edges

and because it's relatively lightweight,

it makes it easy for flipping.

Whoop.

[person laughing]

This Saucier pan has made us stainless steel.

I really prefer to cook with stainless steel

because you get an even disbursement of heat,

they heat up really quickly.

You can use it for, you know, a lot of high heat cooking,

which a lot of the times is what I'm doing even at home.

I have had this Saucier pan for almost three years.

I got it in a breakup

and so I highly recommend in a split,

take this one with you.

[upbeat music]

So I love this KAMA-ASA pan,

which is a good quality carbon steel pan

that's very well balanced.

So you use this right, they turn into a non-stick pan.

You can use them for anything from making pancakes

to roasting fish or vegetables.

They are heavy but the long handles makes it very balanced

and you can even use it to sort anchor it on your arm

if you need to saute something or wok something.

The pans have great heat retention

and I love cooking with that retention.

I like turning my pan on, keeping it hot,

putting something inside

and then often I like to turn the heat off

or down, depending on what I'm cooking.

So this pan, you can really go crazy

and then you can just go back and fix it if you have to.

You can always wash them out, you can always bring it back

to basics and re-season them, go over that first step again.

So you can't really screw up so you don't have

to be intimidated, you can just go full force.

It's a cool pan, it makes you feel alive.

[pan banging]

[upbeat music]

This might not necessarily be

what you think about when you think of a pan,

but my favorite pan is a Hotel pan.

A Hotel pan is a pan you'll find

in each and every kitchen,

in any restaurant across the world.

It's a really lightweight but very sturdy, very resilient.

You can use it for cooking at lower temperatures,

for slow cooking, brasing meats, cooking rice,

starting that on the stove.

And I also love to use it

for doing some simple smoking techniques.

I think the idea of smoking something on your own

seems like a very overwhelming undertaking,

but it's actually a really simple task that you can do

with just a few simple tools at home.

It does create some smoke

but you really contain it within the pan being covered.

So I think it's a really great simple, easy method

to do at home if you wanna create some additional flavors,

additional depth to the dishes you're making.

The pan I use the most is the Le Creuset

one and a half quart signature Braiser.

Best part about this is it could sit on your flame

and because it's completely metal

it could go in your oven,

250, 300, four hours, five hours, whatever the protein is.

It's just super versatile.

It's cast iron so it gives you a really nice sear,

it holds the temperature really well

and it just gets the job done.

The cast iron really helps keep the heat inside.

You could go to the table 20 minutes later

and you could still see that the pot's really still hot.

We really care about the temperature

of which the food goes out to the guest.

The best part about these pans

is also that they come with these magnetic coasters

and they literally clip on

and they go to the table just like that.

It doesn't slide off, it's never gonna come off.

They have this coating which is an enamel coating,

which makes it really easy to maintain.

You don't have to season it.

We use these night after night

and we do the craziest cooking in this,

very easy pan to use.

The Banh Xeo pan is one

of the most useful pan in my kitchen.

So Banh Xeo is turmeric Vietnamese pancakes.

The great thing about this pan is it heat up really fast.

It has to be light enough so we can move,

so the batter can move or I can adjust the heat easily.

If I use non-stick or cast iron pan,

the gonna be extremely thick

and I can't really create the shape that I want.

With other pan, you can't really get

this kind of like crispiness, is super thin.

I don't really use soap to clean this pan.

If you try to like scrub it

or you don't clean it properly, the batter,

it will stick to the pan

and I cannot make Banh Xeo anymore.

I have it since college, which is over 10 years.

And when I came to America,

this is the only pan that I brought here with me.

[upbeat music]

My favorite pan is the Cast Iron.

It's a pan you can have I think for generation.

The cast iron is a very durable material,

you can use like any type of tool.

If you scratch it, it will be fine.

So you can cook with it like low, medium heat

and you can bring it up to really, really high temperatures

for an amazing searing

and then you can have it on the stove

and then put it directly on the oven to finish.

So it's been only like, I don't know,

probably like 15 seconds and it already has a crust.

For those people that are scared of like using a cast iron

because things can stick to it,

it's actually like pretty easy to season it.

You just need to use a little bit of salt

and then a little bit of fat.

And then the more you use it, the more season it will become

and then it becomes non-stick, which is perfect

for like even frying eggs.

The sheet pan is one pan that I highly recommend

for every cook and a baker especially,

it is the workhorse of every restaurant and a bakery.

Usually the lower the gauge, the better quality,

more durable, a thicker aluminum it is,

I suggest either 16 or 14 gauge.

Sometimes they're labeled as heavy duty,

they don't warp, they last longer,

they don't scratch as easily or get damaged.

These sheet pan dinners are becoming very popular

so you most definitely can, you know, make the whole dinner

and whole meal using a sheet pan.

We definitely do that with our family meal.

Family meal is a meal that we cook

for ourselves for the staff.

And you know, something like a sheet pan comes very handy

because we can easily cook larger quantities

and faster, without requiring too much effort.

[upbeat music]

My favorite is All-Clad Stainless Steel classic pan.

So first of all it's not too heavy, also very strong.

It's heated evenly.

I usually cooking the meat and vegetable,

so I use for a lot of chicken, sear like duck skin.

Also cook with seasonal vegetable.

Any situation always together, already looks good.

This is so hot so that's why you gotta be careful

but when you understand how to use this,

it's gonna be your right hand.

So once you understand heat,

everything you cook taste better.

[upbeat music]

So here at St. Anselm, our most used pan

is the non-stick pan.

Non-stick fry pan is worth having in any kitchen.

There are some benefits of cooking

in a non-stick frying pan.

Food is not overloaded, when a cook or fry potato pancake,

there is space for deep frying so it's great pan for that.

We make about 60 to 70 pan fried mashed potatoes a night

and without these pans, we would never be able to do it.

So just the constant flipping will give it a nice

oval rounded shape on it.

It is one of those pans that can do it all.

I've definitely worked in the past

in restaurants that use this actually

to cook piece of black bass

and you could get a super crispy skin,

as long as you just held the weight on it

while it was cooking.

So it actually is made outta aluminum, so it's very light.

So in your hand it actually flip it very easily.

Maybe non-stick pan doesn't have the best reputation,

but if you treat it well, it's gonna work well for you.

If you use silicone

or wooden tools, it's gonna work very well for you.

Smells good, ah.

[upbeat music]