Take barbecue gloves. Yes, you can buy all sorts of varieties. Pitt Boss, Crate and Barrel, and others sell gloves in the $30 range. These gloves have enough heat resistance that you can pull a steel handled pan right out of the oven.
Know what works even better and is more durable for half the cost? Welding gloves. You can buy gloves rated to over 1K Fahrenheit for less than $20. Now you've cut your cost but also have the added ability if you wish to rearrange burning coals BY HAND.
I think that one of the things we do in this consumerist society is to buy things that look good instead of things that are functional. You aren't going to find much tupperware in a professional kitchen. What you WILL find are Cambro containers, heating dishes, and a variety of generic food storage containers. They are cooking their food in heavy walled pots and stainless steel pans with metal implements. Most people could throw out about 80% of their cooking pots and pans and never miss any of them. At least baking vessels are far more task-dependent.
Is a Le Creuset dutch oven pretty? Sure. Is it functionally better than a generic cast iron dutch oven? No. And of the two, the cast iron dutch oven is the one where you can buy once and have your great-great grandkids fight about who gets to keep it, because the Le Creuset will almost certainly have developed defects in the ceramic by then. On the flip side, a $300 refurbished Vitamix will beat the pants off of any off-the-shelf blender and last longer, too. But then, that's a professional product.
Take barbecue gloves. Yes, you can buy all sorts of varieties. Pitt Boss, Crate and Barrel, and others sell gloves in the $30 range. These gloves have enough heat resistance that you can pull a steel handled pan right out of the oven.
Know what works even better and is more durable for half the cost? Welding gloves. You can buy gloves rated to over 1K Fahrenheit for less than $20. Now you've cut your cost but also have the added ability if you wish to rearrange burning coals BY HAND.
I think that one of the things we do in this consumerist society is to buy things that look good instead of things that are functional. You aren't going to find much tupperware in a professional kitchen. What you WILL find are Cambro containers, heating dishes, and a variety of generic food storage containers. They are cooking their food in heavy walled pots and stainless steel pans with metal implements. Most people could throw out about 80% of their cooking pots and pans and never miss any of them. At least baking vessels are far more task-dependent.
Is a Le Creuset dutch oven pretty? Sure. Is it functionally better than a generic cast iron dutch oven? No. And of the two, the cast iron dutch oven is the one where you can buy once and have your great-great grandkids fight about who gets to keep it, because the Le Creuset will almost certainly have developed defects in the ceramic by then. On the flip side, a $300 refurbished Vitamix will beat the pants off of any off-the-shelf blender and last longer, too. But then, that's a professional product.