things that you do in frying pans, woks, and fry kettles

which pan?

Here are the pans we're going to be talking about:

         A frying pan or skillet (same thing) can have straight, flared, or curved sides. The special name for a frying pan with curved sides is sauteuse, (sauté‑er) but you can sauté in a pan with straight or flared sides, and you can do every kind of frying, not just sautéing, in a sauteuse. (An old-fashioned name for a frying pan is a "spider.")

         If you use a straight-sided pan you will probably want to stir the contents with a pancake turner; if you use a flared- or curved-sided pan you will probably want to stir the contents with a spoon. A kitchen tongs is useful for turning and removing stuff you're cooking.

         A wok has flared, curved sides. Traditionally, a wok has a round bottom and sits on a wok ring, but a round-bottomed wok demands gas fire. Asian Americans who use electric stoves have long ago reconciled themselves to the untraditional flat-bottomed wok, and some even prefer it. (See Grace Young and Alan Richardson's brilliant The Breath of a Wok, Simon & Schuster, 2004, on "wok hay.")

            Use a long-handled pancake turner for turning stuff you're cooking. Use a long-handled pancake turner plus a kitchen tongs plus a slotted spoon for removing stuff when it's been cooked long enough. Slotted spoons come in two shapes, oval and round. (Oddly enough, a round wire slotted spoon is also called a "spider," and that's a current locution, not old-fashioned at all.)

   A fry kettle is deep and has straight or slightly flared sides. (The old-fashioned pronunciation in the American South is "frah-kell.")

               The same tools that are useful with a wok are also useful with a fry kettle. And in addition you'll need a high-temperature (sometimes called "candy") thermometer.

It is a misfortune of the language that every technique you use these pans for can be called "frying." We can distinguish six different kinds of frying:

technique	also known as	notes
pan‑toast	dry‑fry
sauté	fry, pan-fry, stir‑fry	Calling sautéing "stir-frying" or counseling the cook to stir while sautéing represents a double confusion among many cookbook writers. To stir while frying is not what's meant by stir‑frying; stir‑frying requires a wok and a well of fat, not a little slick on the bottom of the pan (that's sautéing). And stirring while sautéing is self‑defeating.
shallow‑fry	fry
frynto	fry	"Frynto," rhymes with "pinto," is a completely made‑up word from fry + into, because the fat both fries and goes into the food. If someone knows a real word for this technique, please, I beg you, enlighten me.
stir‑fry
deep‑fry	fry

A quick run-down on the techniques (with links to fuller explanations):

	result	easy	fast	typical foods
pan-toast	aromatic	pretty easy	fast	breadcrumbs, whole spices, nuts
sauté	caramelized, crispy	hard	fast	any food that needs cooking
shallow‑fry	crispy, crunchy	very hard	fast	fried chicken, fried fish
frynto	unctuous, creamy	easy	slow	foods that are starchy (potato) or fleshy (eggplant) gravies, stews
stir-fry	caramelized, tender	hard	fast	any food that needs cooking, typically cut up small
deep-fry	crispy, crunchy	very easy	very fast	yeast doughnuts, breaded fish, fritters, tempura

The pans best suited to each of those techniques are:

	frying pan	wok	fry kettle
pan-toast	yes	yes	no
sauté	yes	no	no
shallow-fry	yes	yes	no
frynto	yes	yes	yes
stir-fry	no	yes	no
deep-fry	no	yes	yes

In some sense, all these pans are interchangeable. You can deep-fry in a frying pan if it's deep enough to accommodate the stuff you're cooking and you have an extremely stable burner. You can sauté in a wok if you have great technique. You can pan-toast in a fry‑kettle if you're careful not to burn your wrists. But each pan has its own best uses, and a well-stocked kitchen might well include a frying pan (of whatever shape), a wok, and a fry kettle.

There are also numerous special-purpose pans in this same family whose names usually reveal their best use, like omelet pans.

All of these pans can also be used for stewing (link to follow) and, if they have lids, for braising. Here's a link to braising greens; a link to more general braising will follow.

For all these kinds of pans, quality is important. You can get away with a flimsy spaghetti pot, but a frying pan should be heavy. Lifting a wok should be a workout. A fry kettle that is anything less than hefty is actually dangerous -- you want it to be as stable as a boulder, no chance of tipping over and giving you third-degree burns.

If you often cook for one or two, small (but beefy) versions of these pans are a must -- always given that you want to use any of the techniques associated with them.

If you're never going to sauté or frynto, don't bother to buy a frying pan. If stir-frying gives you the willies, there should be no wok taking up space in your kitchen. If you're going to deep-fry only once a year, choose a fry kettle that will also work for making stews or casseroles, i.e. one that will fit in your oven as well as on a burner.

Manuals on basic cooking often recommend various pieces of equipment without taking into consideration what you want to cook, or want to learn to cook. I couldn't live without my small and smaller straight-sided frying pans, but you might never use them. I can get away with using cheap plastic spoons because I never stir the contents of my cooking pots with spoons, always with pancake turners. Take with a tiny grain of salt other people's advice about what kitchen tools you need; think what dishes you cook, not what furnishes somebody else's idea of a complete kitchen.

What about the non-stick versions of all of these pans? What are they good for?

I'm still a novice in the land of non-stick, but in a while I'll do an appendix on what I've learned.

And deglazing is a related topic that I'll also try to write about in a while.