Earlier than the Instantaneous Pot, Air Fryer, or just about some other cooking vessel existed, there was the clay pot. These conventional clay or earthenware vessels are available many styles and sizes and have been used around the globe since prehistoric instances. And to at the present time, display-worthy clay pots, together with donabes, tagines, cazuelas, sha guo, and extra, can all play a job within the fashionable kitchen, whether or not a recipe particularly requires one or not.
So, why go for this historical cookware when you’ll be able to faucet a couple of buttons on the facet of a slow cooker? Lidded clay pots are glorious selections for making any dish that must be simmered, stewed, or braised. That features beans and grains like rice. The clay usually takes longer to totally warmth than a steel pot, however as soon as it does, it retains that warmth and permits for regular, light cooking. And clay has the distinctive benefit of being a porous materials. An unglazed clay pot could also be soaked in water earlier than use, so that after meals cooks inside, the pot places off further steam. As 886’s chef and founder Eric Sze commented on utilizing a clay pot for Three Cup Chicken, when this happens and the meals is delivered to a rolling boil inside, the soaked clay pot virtually creates “a semi-pressurized setting” the place the meals can prepare dinner extra quickly.
As a result of clay pots are the standard cookware of so many cuisines, there’s a nostalgic delight it’s possible you’ll get when cooking with them. And the great thing about these vessels makes them nice for presenting meals on the desk. Like a wok, they purchase a wealthy patina with use, which clay pot aficionados covet. Steve Sando, founding father of Rancho Gordo beans and avowed clay pot head, sells clay pots on-line and writes in a single product’s description: “Publicity to warmth, fireplace and meals will solely make it extra stunning. Even higher, cooking beans in clay is sort of magical. The sluggish, even warmth and pure clay are thought-about one of the best ways to prepare dinner beans.”
One caveat: by no means introduce clay pots to sudden temperature adjustments, as they might crack. Let the pot cool all the way down to room temperature after cooking in it, earlier than you convey it to the sink.
Listed below are some temporary introductions to in style sorts of clay pots from around the globe.
Tajine or Tagine
Simply recognizable by its conical form, this pot is a mainstay of North African cooking, the place dishes cooked within the pot are additionally known as tagines. These pots have comparatively shallow dishes with tall, pointed lids: The lid’s form permits steam to condense and trickle again into the meals that’s simmering within the base. Tagines will be glazed or unglazed, fabricated from terra cotta or different sorts of earthenware, and range in dimension. Gradual-braised stews with greens and meat comparable to lamb or rooster with seasonings are popularly cooked in tagines; the components turn out to be superbly enmeshed whereas they gently simmer. As Claudia Roden writes in Arabesque: A Style of Morocco, Turkey & Lebanon, “Cooking in a clay tagine, very gently over a brazier (kanoun) of continually replenished embers, diffuses the warmth throughout the pot and produces, on the finish, a lowered sauce scorching in its fats.”
Shakla Dist
These clay pots are historically utilized in Ethiopian and Eritrean cooking, particularly for long-simmered stews or wat (or wot) comparable to doro wat, with rooster and hard-boiled eggs. These pots are available a wide range of sizes, and are normally spherical in form, with handles on either side of the bottom and one on the highest of the lid. According to Harry Kloman, writer of Mesob Throughout America: Ethiopian Meals within the USA, shakla means clay in Amharic, and “some Ethiopians will swear that the meals tastes higher when it simmers in earthenware.” There are additionally many different sorts of clay cookware utilized in these East African cuisines, such because the jebena, a standard clay espresso pot. In In Bibi’s Kitchen: The Recipes and Tales of Grandmothers From the Eight African Nations that Contact the Indian Ocean, writer Hawa Hassan notes that every one recipes will be made with fashionable cookware that’s out there—however makes an exception for the buna, or Ethiopian espresso, recipe, which specifies the jebena.
Cazuela
As famous above with the tagine, the dishes which are sometimes cooked in clay pots usually share their identify. Within the case of cazuela, which has been historically utilized in cuisines throughout South and Latin America, that battery of typical dishes has turn out to be fairly broad. In Chile, as an example, a cazuela refers to a chunky soup or soupy stew of meat and greens like potatoes and corn on the cob. In Puerto Rico, a cazuela is a sweet potato and pumpkin pudding. The phrase originates from the Spanish for “cooking pot” and like its contents, its form and dimension can range fairly a bit. Cazuelas are sometimes fabricated from glazed terra cotta, with handles on either side and lid, and may be adorned with glazed patterns.
Bean Pot
There are a selection of pots which are extra particularly for slow-cooking beans. In Mexico, they may be known as an olla de barro frijolera. In Italy, they might be known as a pignate. The shared traits usually embody an extended, deep cavity with a rounded heart. You may mistake one for a vase if it doesn’t have a lid. In response to Rancho Gordo, which sells a Mixteca Bean Pot, “beans love the fixed warmth and the intelligent form helps maintain in moisture.”
Cassole
These days, you’ll be hard-pressed to search out this pot even in France, the place it originated, not to mention within the U.S. However this earthenware pot was historically used to make the country French bean dish, cassoulet. (Like lots of the clay pots right here, the meals that was sometimes served in it took on its identify, to some extent.) In France, these pots are sometimes tapered from prime to backside—form of just like the inverse of a tagine. The open prime permits for a wealthy crust to kind after the effervescent bean liquid has principally evaporated.
Donabe
This conventional Japanese earthenware pot is a flexible cooking vessel that is available in a wide range of styles and sizes which are extra tailor-made to their cooking makes use of. As an illustration, the donabe Kamado-san, with a big domed lid, is great for cooking rice. In response to Naoko Takei Moore, who sells the pots on-line and authored the cookbook, Donabe: Basic and Trendy Japanese Clay Pot Cooking, this donable creates fluffy, shiny rice grains which are virtually satisfying sufficient to eat alone. Donabe are additionally the traditional cooking-and-serving vessel for a Japanese hot pot, or nabe, a comforting one-pot meal with meat or fish and greens cooked in broth or typically soy milk.
Sha Guo
Chinese language clay pots, or sha guo, additionally run the gamut by way of form and dimension. Braised and stewed dishes, such because the Taiwanese Three Cup Chicken or Shanghainese Lion’s Head Meatballs, are historically cooked in sha guo. This historical fashion of cooking has its followers—there’s a restaurant in Beijing dedicated to sha guo cooking—though you most likely gained’t discover it in lots of fashionable city kitchens in China right this moment. Sha guo generally characteristic an extended clay deal with on one facet, for straightforward transport from the hearth to the desk. The historic Wok Shop in San Francisco sells two sizes of them with handles and a wire cage, the latter to assist shield the clay and promote even heating.
Ttukbaegi
In Korea, clay cooking pots are referred to as ttukbaegi (or ddukbaegi), and are used for a lot of traditional dishes, like soondubu jjigae, a seafood and tofu soup, or samgyetang, a rooster and ginseng soup. The pots range in dimension and form, starting from small, one-person dishes to bigger family-style pots. The pot is commonly positioned on a picket trivet to convey to the desk from the range, the place the residual warmth from the clay retains its contents effervescent and scorching. In Korean Residence Cooking: Basic and Trendy Recipes, writer Sohui Kim notes that should you don’t have a ttukbaegi to make soondubu jjigae, as per custom, it’s best to go for the smallest pot that can match all of the components for the soup, “as you don’t need the liquid to evaporate.”
Palayok
That is the standard clay pot within the Philippines, used for cooking many dishes, together with kare-kare, a stew thickened with peanuts. Palayok refers back to the Tagalog phrase for clay pot; different areas all through the Philippines have completely different phrases for it, comparable to kulon within the Visayas. These clay pots will be glazed or unglazed, deep or squat, they usually’re used primarily for soups and stews in addition to for cooking rice. A classic shape and size contains a domed lid and a deep base that bulges across the heart, like a bean pot.
Observe: This pot is presently out of inventory.
Handi
Whereas these days they may be constituted of copper or different metals along with clay, a handi is a standard clay pot utilized in North Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi. And as a result of many languages all through South Asia the place it’s used, clay pots go by many different names as nicely, comparable to chatti within the Indian state of Kerala. Biryani, a rice dish that’s layered with meat and spices, is one widespread use for handi, and due to this fact typically these clay pots are known as Biryani pots. There’s a restaurant celebrating this cookware custom, known as, appropriately, Clay Handi, in Buffalo, NY, which additionally sells clay cookware.
