A trick with pans

timmmers

I recently ran out of hob space...one was playing up and needed fixing after a spill so I was one short for making a meal.

I thought I'd try using my set of stainless pans that sit inside each other when a smaller one is on the hob and the lip fits the base of the next size up very nicely....use the boiling turnips to warm up my gravy in the top one maybe? Well that worked well, so I expanded it to actual cooking.

I find that the lower pan needs to have a lot of water in it and something requiring the most cooking time...and the top one needs a lid. It's amazed me how low a gas flame can cook a decnet meal like this with turnips or spuds in the bottom one and maybe peas or carrots or even fish in the top one. The lower on is sealed by the top pan on top and it's weight of water...which makes a mini pressure cooker out of it and boiling much faster and easier than normal (not letting cabbage smells escape so much as a bonus I find too)...the top pan is basically heated slower but stays hot for free since that heat would be wasted otherwise. Both the steam inside the lower pan and the walls getting hot heat it though, so it's not a massive difference. The bottom one isn't likely to boil over or dry out either...not happened or come close yet for me.

They need to be stable and a good fit though, the flared rim ones. A clean base on the top one would be nice too.

i can boil spuds and veg in two pans like this without ever having the gas above the lowest it will go, that's got to sav money I think?

t