Tools of the Trade: Selecting the Right Pans for Your Kitchen

Professional cooking pans run the gamut in restaurant kitchens. Peek into a mom and pop restaurant and you will likely find a residential range with some of mom's secret sauce simmering in fine, old Farberware® pans.

Look behind the swinging door in one of the many chain restaurants that dot the landscape and you will see stacks of inexpensive aluminum sauté pans piled on the backs of stoves, with flames high, keeping them hot and ready.

Crash the kitchen of a three-star or higher-end kitchen and you will find heavy, highest-quality copper, stainless or black steel cookware. These pans come in many different shapes and sizes for plenty of components during plate pickups, as the menus in these upscale menus are more complex.

The bottom line: The pans are as different as the menus and price points that they serve. Finding the pan that is right for the operation should be easy. A lot of those decisions like so many in our industry come down to money.