Stewpots - back with a bang!

Long banished from restaurant kitchens, stewpots are currently making quite a comeback. This method of slowly and gently cooking delicious dishes is rapidly gaining popularity amongst top international chefs such as Paul Bocuse (France), Laurent Tourondel (United States) and Stefan Stiller (China), who have chosen to bring back this cooking method which preserves vitamins, enhances fl avours and lends itself to all tastes.

What’s new? Mini stewpots, that’s what, small dishes that become serving dishes for the dining table. These fun individual dishes can be used to make both sweet and savoury classic treats. Mindy Segal, one of the best chefs in the US, and owner of restaurant Hot Chocolate in Chicago, uses them to lovingly cook her Monkey Bread and banana brioche. In London, the restaurant La Cocotte is proud to serve all its dishes (linguine & spiced prawns, coq au vin, knuckle of lamb, etc.) in stewpots of all shapes and colours, to their customers’ delight.

Major kitchen equipment brands such as Staub and Le Creuset now offer stewpots in a wide variety of materials: stoneware, famous for its lightness and variety of shapes, but which can only be used in the oven; cast iron, which comes with a lifetime guarantee, can be used on all heat sources and retains heat the longest; titanium, whose non-stick surface means it can be used to cook anything, while its base delivers constant heat, which means that you can fry at a high temperature; and lastly, ceramic, which is resistant to temperature shocks so can go straight from freezer to oven. And Jamie

Oliver now offers an aluminium stewpot: “It’s light, heat distribution is excellent and it stays hot right up to the table”.

With the stewpot, a time-honoured tradition has been revived.