Starting your Le Creuset collection may seem challenging at first, especially if you’ve never purchased quality cookware before. With a vast catalogue to choose from, the opportunities are truly endless.
From the iconic Dutch Oven, to the versatile Iron Handle Skillet, and Saucepan, our cookware is built to last, equipping your kitchen for success for years to come. Ultimately, different pieces of cookware are better suited to different ingredients and cooking techniques.
Starting a cookware collection based on what you cook the most is a great way to set up your kitchen, ensuring you have the essentials. Whether you make one-pot pasta dishes, or regularly prepare oven-roasted chicken for the whole family, we will help you find the perfect piece of cookware for your everyday needs.
Here is a complete guide on how to curate your cookware collection based on what you cook.
What do you cook most?
Having the right tools in the kitchen will ensure you are best prepared to tackle all of your favourite recipes and sharpen your skills. These versatile and timeless pieces won't stop there, they'll also help expand your recipe and technique repertoire. If you are unsure where to start your Le Creuset collection, select a category and keep reading!
Poultry
Poultry dishes offer home cooks a healthy and hearty meal for the whole family, and make for great dinner and leftover lunch options. Easy to put together, poultry dishes are a great option for weeknight cooking, feeding the whole family with ease. While these dishes can be prepared in a number of different pieces of cookware, the Oval French Oven is best suited for the job. Unlike traditional Round Dutch Ovens, this versatile piece of cookware comes in an elongated shape, making it the perfect pot to prepare longer cuts of meat, roasts, poultry, and even fish.
The Oval Dutch Oven comes in two different sizes, the 4.7L and 6.3L, ensuring you can prepare meals of all sizes depending on how many guests you’re expecting. Featuring a tight-fitting lid and tall, thick enamelled cast iron walls, the Oval Dutch Oven creates the ideal environment for poultry to neatly fit in and roast to perfection.
Try our Coq au Vin Mousseux recipe or the classic Pot Roast Chicken recipe today!
Fish
Fish is yet another ingredient that features prominently in any healthy diet, offering an equally nutritious and delicious main course. The Iron Handle Skillet is perfectly suited for preparing fish, exposing it to a consistent heat source. Its shallow base makes it ideal for searing and stovetop-frying, offering superior heat retention at any temperature level.
Beyond the versatile Iron Handle Skillet, Le Creuset’s collection of baking and casserole dishes, including the Rectangular Casserole, is a great option when preparing fish. Featuring a wide, shallow baking area, this piece of cookware ensures fish is cooked evenly and is perfect for fish recipes in the oven.
Our Oblong Casserole is yet another piece of cookware best suited for fish recipes, providing even heat distribution and a large surface area for ingredients to slow-cook or braise. Its oblong shape is designed to accommodate a variety of ingredients beyond fish, offering home cooks and chefs alike a versatile option for their Le Creuset collection.
Soups and Stews
Hearty stews and slowly-simmered soups are a staple of cold weather days, embodying the set-it-and-forget nature of cooking. These recipes can be prepared in a variety of slow-cooking pots, including the Chef’s Dutch Oven, Stockpots, and even French Ovens. These pieces of cookware are carefully crafted to lock in heat and moisture, simmering ingredients and adding new layers of flavour until they are ready to be served. The Chef’s Dutch Oven, Round Dutch Oven and Stockpot all come equipped with tight-fitting lids and tall walls to trap in liquid. Here are 10 delicious soup recipes you can begin experimenting with in the kitchen.
The Shallow Round Dutch Oven, on the other hand, is yet another piece of cookware perfectly suited for preparing stews, tenderizing ingredients such as rough cuts of meat with ease. Its wider cooking surface similar to the braiser combined with its tall sides like the traditional Dutch Oven makes it ideal for holding liquid, while its tight-fitting lid is perfectly suited to locking in heat and moisture.
Vegetables
Vegetables are a great way to complement a delicious main course, offering a healthy side dish and an abundance of recipe opportunities. Typically, roasters are the ideal pieces of cookware to prepare vegetables, ensuring even heat distribution in the oven. Our Rectangular Roasters are specifically crafted with a low-profile design optimized for oven-roasting, helping you serve up a delicious side of vegetables for the whole family.
Alternatively, a Sauté Pan or Wok can be used to prepare vegetable side dishes, helping you sauté or stir-fry ingredients to perfection. The Sauté Pan is ideal for tackling larger recipes, offering a generous cooking surface and high sides to contain large amounts of vegetables at once. The Cast Iron Wok, by contrast, is crafted to withstand higher temperatures, featuring a flat base and easy-sloping sides. Its design and tempered glass lid ultimately helps steam vegetables with the minimum of fuss.
Our Roasted Vegetables recipe and our Spicy Thai Bok Choy recipe is a great place to start with these pieces of cookware.
Pasta
One-pot pasta dishes are perfect for weeknight cooking, serving the whole family all-while making for an easy cleanup. Pasta recipes are relatively simple to put together, and give home cooks and chefs alike the ability to incorporate new flavours into their everyday meal preparation. Multi-purpose pots such as the Dutch Oven and Stockpots are typically used for pasta recipes due to their versatility. These pieces of cookware allow you to prepare your favourite pasta dishes from start to finish in one pot with ease.
The Dutch Oven and Stockpot are the perfect pieces of cookware for boiling pasta, locking in heat and moisture with a tight-fitting lid. These pots can also be used to simmer a delicate sauce, offering superior heat retention and even heat distribution without burning it. Our Stainless Steel Stockpot also comes equipped with a pasta insert, adding draining functionality and convenience to this versatile pot.
When the Dutch Oven or Stockpot is not being used for pasta dishes, they both serve a variety of other functions in the kitchen, making for a great addition to your Le Creuset collection. Our Pappardelle Pasta with Bolognese Sauce is a great recipe for your next pasta night.
Sauces
Whether you are preparing a delicious oven-roasted chicken, or looking to make your very own lasagna from scratch, having the right pieces of cookware to prepare sauces can make all the difference. As their name suggests, sauciers and saucepans are best suited for the job, helping you simmer your favourite sauces to perfection.
While these pieces of cookware share many similarities, sauciers have rounded sides, while saucepans have straight sides. Indeed, the rounded sides of the saucier ensures sauces do not get stuck on corners of the pan, and makes whisking delicate sauces a breeze.
Saucepans can also be used to prepare grains and small side dishes, all-while offering similar heat retention to sauciers. These pieces of cookware make for a great one-two punch in any kitchen and are a must when preparing sauces.
Desserts
Are you looking to improve your baking skills, but don’t know where to start? Look no further than Le Creuset’s metal and stoneware bakeware collections. Featuring versatile sheet pans, cake tins, muffin trays, insulated cookie sheets, and more, our vast bakeware selection has you covered.
Our Dutch Ovens and Iron Handle Skillets can also be used to bake decadent desserts. These pieces of cookware excel at baking recipes for different reasons, but are ultimately your best bet at pulling off your favourite treats. The Dutch Oven, while not commonly associated with baking, can be used to prepare desserts of all sizes, offering a generous surface area and exposing ingredients to a consistent heat source. Its tight-fitting lid will lock in heat and is completely oven-safe up until 260ºC / 500ºF.
The Iron Handle Skillet, on the other hand, has a unique ability of producing the perfect balance between a crispy golden crust, and a soft, fluffy interior. Whether you’re baking cornbread, or cookies, this versatile piece of cookware will accommodate in style.
Starting Your Le Creuset Collection
One of the best ways to start your Le Creuset collection is by asking yourself what ingredients and types of recipes you see yourself cooking the most. While the Dutch Oven and Iron Handle Skillet, for example, are extremely versatile and can be used for a number of different recipes and cooking techniques, other ingredients require specific pieces of cookware.
Our cookware is crafted to withstand the test of time, and will ultimately be in the family for years to come. Le Creuset’s vast catalogue embodies the buy-it-once-for-life nature of quality cookware, helping you prepare your traditional family recipes with ease.
For more inspiration on kickstarting your Le Creuset collection, visit our blog today and read up on how you can get the most out of your cookware.
