So...some topics are necessarily banal

[woolybanana]

Seems a huge expense to boil a few carrots, Nimt. What next, boiled eggs, or do you have hidden culinary skills?

[mint]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Seems a huge expense to boil a few carrots, Nimt. What next, boiled eggs, or do you have hidden culinary skills?[/quote]

Actually, boiling eggs is no simple culinary skill, Wools!

For example, put in cold or hot water, make little holes (bet software wouldn't allow me to use the "p" word[:-))]) or not, how many minutes for soft, medium or hard, vinegar in the water or not, salt in the water or not and so on...............

Some years ago, when Delia S wrote about boiling eggs, all the usual contingent of male TV chefs got very sniffy and started making fun.

What I remember Delia best for is her saying that, if you got the basics right, you could then go on to cook even the most elaborate of dishes.  It's getting the basics right that is nearly always the hardest bit to learn[I]

[idun]

I don't know about boiling an egg taking skill, but shelling hard boiled eggs, well, I have tried the lot, every single method that I have read about.

 I'll say boil four, two will have shell's that slip off the other ones end up looking like chewed up toffees and half the size of the other two.

I would always go for good pans as if one is making a slow cooking sauce, then a cheap pan will tend to stick and maybe burn. Even heating up a tin of beans, they easily stick in a cheap pan.

[Russethouse]

That's why the lady who had my mothers copper bottomed pans loved them so much, she makes something that involves heating milk very slowly and in these pans she said it doesn't 'catch'