ALDI recently launched New color range Among the dishes of the cast iron, an annual event since 2015 at least. While other retailers including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Argos and John Lewis are also storing cheap iron, aldi’s, at 19.99 pounds, to a large extent cheaper. It is also available “as the stocks last.”
Any cooking book that deserves salt, at some point, tells you to boil/boil/fry/fry something in a bowl or a “heavy bottom” pot. Unlike the lightweight aluminum fare after the war, a decent weight contains it maintains and distributes the heat evenly, ensuring better food chefs (and slowly). The final in comprehensive heavy pots-kitchen status symbols- Come from le Creuset. This sacrifice was founded by two Belgian in the town of Fresnoy, if the northern small, this cave produced the first bright orange (a color known as the flame in the language of Le Cyrusite) in 1925. This was the international tail that they raised early, and that the company still makes the same products exactly, in the same way.
The colored enamel exterior was essential in their attractiveness from the beginning: the original volcanic orange inspired by the color of the molten metal. Marilyn Monroe had a full group in Eilese Yellow It was sold at the New York Auction in 1999 for $ 25,300 And the author of the cooking book Elizabeth David, a lifetime lover, inspired a blue domain. The latest repetitions come in all types of colors with names like Berry and Bamboo. Every cost of a small wealth.
The last time the French brand held the sale of warehouses-in Andover, Hampsheer, in November 2024-The police were called for the difficult hope They were lining up on the London and A3093 road for Miles. One couple, on the waiting list for four hours, Tiktokked with huge exercises of about 50 elements They said, they provided 1,614.50 pounds (they pay 1,127 pounds instead of 2,741.50 pounds at the full price). This included a classic circular ceramic dish that would cost them 369 pounds, the full price, but they paid only 159 pounds.
It makes sense, then, that supermarkets should be climbing to produce the Le Creusets tradition, but finding one of Alde Casserol Casserol of cast iron is a difficult work. I moved to the Superstore brand in Leyton, east of London, a day after their release and discovered the last two, in the middle of the hidden corridor in mixed products boxes. It comes only one-size-22 cm in diameter, with a size of four liters-colon: Pepto-Bismol Pink or Night-Sky Blue.
The aldi store assistant told me that he bought a large blue pan in the same range, which was completely sold now, two weeks ago. He was happy to buy, and at this price (12.99 pounds sterling), it will also be. Le Creuset tagine (Form 24 cm / 4.2 liters) is costing to Aldi One 305 pounds. For this amount, you can buy 14 ALDI (with change). Or one aldi bowl, and it has enough money to buy yourself a cheap hobby and oven. The question, then, is: Are they good?
Kitchen test
I have a small Le Creuset Cocotte I use to make things like Marila Hazan’s slow Marcela sauce Or Japanese pork curry. I use it to cook Japanese rice as well; A Dutch ovens for bread. I try to cook all these things with the pink and gray aldi number Average MS & s dish (21.2 cm / 2.8 liters, 35 pounds), as a comparison.
I find that the Aldi cap is not perfectly proportional to the Le Creuset’s and M&S’s – all steam rushes from the bowl and the rice is too much. Other than that, cooking with both utensils is similar to le creuset.
I have always linked enamel iron with gas or fire cooking, but these utensils also work on any other stove, including induction. Tyler Pot, a graduate of the Kokry School, got millions of followers On Tiktok and Instagram With family dishes such as Shepherd, made in this exact type of ceramic dish – and in – AGA.
Meanwhile, Honey and Co’s SARIT PACKER has a 20 -year -old group of utensils and pans made of iron at home that it uses on an electric hobby. “We love the distribution of heat and it is suitable for the oven for cooking or keeping it only,” she says. She adds that her best use of pans is to spoil a whole chicken with vegetables “and perhaps a group of wine and some spices, simply in a two -hour hot oven without paying any attention to it while cooking it. You get a great dinner without wandering for four.”
I do not roast three whole chicken, but to test the utensils in the oven, bake a group of cinnamon coils in each of them. Here too, bread comes out significantly – there are no noticeable differences.
Test of abuse
The rules of using a simple amount of raised iron: do not heat it very quickly (a special risk of induction hobbies), or heating it dry, without oil or liquid. Do not use it at a very high temperature. Do not put a hot frying pan under cold water. Do not use metal utensils or abrasive cleaners; Do not rub with mineral wool. I definitely, foolishly, destroyed a sain iron milk frying pan before before not following this guidance. So, this is exactly what I am trying to do now, with both Aldi and M & S.
The curry intentionally burned. I make the milk. Solid sugar until black and smoking. I put hot pans under the cold tap, drink it with knives and metal spoons, and search for them inside and out with mineral wool.
The most damaged damage was some gray lines on the beautiful soft enamel: both still seem new. Of course, I did not spoil the Le Creuset milk pan in one, and the Le Creuset Cocotte has been present for more than a decade. All this indicates that the real test will be how cheap fee in time.
Neil Curie, co -founder of Netherrton ShropshireHe began designing cooking and devices directly from the Arts School in 1981. He worked in both Lidl and Aldi and says they will remove all unnecessary ingredients, and strip the product to a minimum – which sometimes led to a better product.
When it comes to ranked iron cooking tools, there is nothing strange to go out. Production is essential as happens: molten minerals are poured into a sandy template, cooling, cleaning and singer. In a Korean mind, a 20 pounds of sterling iron appears “very good to be correct.”
It warns that the two source of the two and the practicality are of major importance. He says French brands like LE Creuset and Staub are very expensive due to employment costs. They still coded the cast iron vessels on the site, which means that the purity and safety of the relative foods for the raw materials they use are guaranteed. A ceramic of Le Creuset is towards sand with a mixture of iron and recycled steel It was searched, by hand, by 40 people. It comes with a lifelong guarantee, and it covers “workmanship and/or wrong materials when using the product in normal and local conditions and according to the instructions that are presented and used.”
On the contrary, both M & S and Aldi determined that iron utensils made of iron made “made in China”-which is somewhat mysterious when you think that some estimates put the number of Chinese brakes that pour sand across the country with more than 20,000.
Likewise, what is enveloped in a mineral is important. “Iron is cheaper than aluminum, weight for weight, but it always requires a lot, and finishing is much more. If this end is placed on top, it is often costly like making the pan itself,” Curie says. The iron vascular cables of iron are usually wrapped in the glass enamel: a layer of stained glass powder built into the metal by launching temperatures more than 800 ° C (1,472f). The colors (LE Creuset’s Shades, Aldi’s Pink, which M & S Gray) is achieved by adding in different minerals, which, as they are cooking tools, you need to be of food degree. This is why many people do not work in the UK in the UK these days: “You should make sure that you get the right minerals and that they are not leaking. It is very difficult to control them.” Meanwhile, I mastered ancient French causes like LE Creuset the craft of roads for more than a hundred years, and they still do everything at home.
If the enamel chips are, the metal is detected. Iron, of course, will rust. If it is outside, you can decorate it to prevent rust, which Le Creuset says is safe. If the enamel is cut from the inside from a bowl, the company’s website says, “We recommend that you make a warranty claim so that the piece can be evaluated.” On the contrary, the aldi ceramic dish simply determines “3 layers of enamel coating” and promised to replace or recover if the customer is completely satisfied with the product. M & S version warns of users to handle care to avoid cutting enamel coating. In other words, these cheap pots come with much less information, and there are no guarantees.
Ruling
In a row, then, as the metal and traditions tell you, French appears to be the best in terms of literal weight and quality control. It is clear that no one really needs more than its value from the Le Creuset tools, but if you can invest until only one, it makes sense to do this.
Used is a great option. As Baker David Leipovitz He put it: “I really love to see the pieces used well in the markets used in France, because many people kept their utensils and parks in their families, and they greet them from generation to generation. Some of them have retreated because they went very far, and others that removed them for them-or they only pay because it is good to get out of the knees-and I regret some of the fact that they did not expand.
At the same time, though, these cheapest versions are definitely more stable, and therefore less wasted, than unique cheap articles, with which cooking tool experts will usually tell you between one and five years. Therefore, as long as, over time, do not treat them as they did, cast iron equations have the ability to continue for a longer period. It should count for something.
