Specialty cookware helps home cooks and chefs alike explore new cuisines from all over the world from the comfort of their own home. Whether you are preparing a Moroccan tagine, or a classic Paella, specialty cookware is essential for trying new recipes and celebrating renowned dishes from across the globe.
Learning how to cook with specialty cookware will teach you a variety of new cooking techniques, helping incorporate a number of new flavours into your everyday meal preparation. While understanding how to make the most of your specialty cookware may take some time initially, these pieces of cookware will undoubtedly elevate your cooking skills and traditional recipes.
All of Le Creuset’s specialty cookware is crafted with premium materials, from enamelled cast iron, and stainless steel to toughened nonstick, and is built to last regular use.
Here is a complete guide to Le Creuset’s specialty cookware, including some of the most commonly used pieces of specialty cookware.
Specialty Cookware
From the iconic tagine to the lesser-known pâté terrine, adding specialty cookware to your kitchen is a must and is a great way to experiment with new ingredients, cooking techniques, and flavours. Here are nine of our favourite pieces of specialty cookware.
Tagine
The Moroccan Tagine is a great slow-cooking pot to add to your Le Creuset collection and is best suited for perfectly simmered recipes such as stews. This conical, earthenware pot is typically used for North African cuisine and is ideal for tenderizing lamb, beef, and other tough cuts of meat.
Its cone-shaped structure and stoneware lid is designed to promote natural steam circulation with very little water. Much like the iconic Dutch Oven, the Moroccan Tagine Pot embodies the set-it-and-forget-it nature of cooking, creating a self-basting cycle using a tight-fitting stoneware lid.
Take a trip to Morocco from the comfort of your own home with this versatile pot and delicious Apricot and Lamb Tagine recipe.
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Paella Pan
Our Paella Pan derives its name from the traditional Spanish dish, paella, and makes for another versatile addition to your specialty cookware collection. The hallmark of any successful paella is its socarrat – a layer of toasted rice at the bottom of the paella.
Crafted with enamelled cast iron, our Paella Pan is perfect for achieving a perfectly crispy golden socarrat, keeping the rice layer shallow and allowing excess moisture to evaporate. Our Paella Pan features wide loop handles to provide a comfortable grip, while its black satin interior enamel is specifically formulated for higher temperatures.
This versatile pan can also be used for searing steaks and fish, or as a griddle for pancakes. Look no further than our paella or paella roja recipe if you’re looking to make the most out of this piece of cookware.
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Cast Iron Wok
Inspired by the classic Chinese design, our Wok is the only piece of cookware you need to prepare delicious stir fries for the whole family. This piece of cookware features a flat base and sloping sides, making it ideal for stir-frying all your favourite ingredients.
The Wok’s black interior is carefully crafted to withstand higher temperatures and does not require seasoning. In fact, a natural patina will develop over time, creating a nonstick surface for all your favourite ingredients. This makes our Wok especially useful when sautéing vegetables.
Its tempered glass lid creates the ideal environment for steaming vegetables, locking in heat and moisture with the minimum of fuss. Whether you want to prepare a Ginger-Sesame Vegetable Stir Fry or a classic Rib Stir Fry, our Wok can accommodate all your favourite recipes.
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Balti Dish
The Balti Dish originates from North Pakistani cuisine and is specifically designed to prepare marinated meats, vegetables, and to incorporate new flavours and spices into your everyday meal preparation.
Our Balti Dish has a wide, curved base making it the perfect piece of cookware for stirring meat and vegetables with ease. This specialty piece of cookware also comes equipped with wide, loop handles, ensuring you can transfer it from the oven to the stovetop with ease.
The Balti Dish’s enamelled cast iron construction exposes ingredients to a consistent heat source, cooking food evenly throughout. This piece of cookware allows for easy improvisation as meats and vegetables cook, helping you easily introduce new spices and layers of flavour into your meal.
Try our Paneer Balti Masala recipe this weekend!
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Heart Skillet
Our Heart Skillet offers a unique twist on a Le Creuset essential, the Iron Handle Skillet. Featuring a distinctive heart shape, our Heart Skillet offers many of the same benefits as the Iron Handle Skillet and makes for a great gift for that special someone in your life.
Much like our Iron Handle Skillet, our Heart Skillet is crafted with enamelled cast iron, offering superior heat retention. This skillet can be used for a variety of cooking techniques, including stovetop frying, searing, sautéing, and baking.
While not traditionally associated with baking, skillets have the unique ability to strike the perfect balance between a soft interior and a crispy golden exterior when preparing cornbread, desserts, and cookies. Our Decadent Chocolate-Banana Skillet Cookie is the perfect recipe for this piece of cookware.
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Cast Iron Crêpe Pan
Our Cast Iron Crêpe Pan is a great addition to your breakfast routine, helping produce thin and light pancakes in just minutes. This authentic French-inspired pan features a low-edged design and a satin black enamel cooking surface, ensuring you can prepare crêpes with ease.
Its enamelled cast iron construction exposes batter to a consistent heat source, cooking it evenly throughout. Our Cast Iron Crêpe Pan comes equipped with a 20 cm rateau that is designed to spread batter evenly on the smooth cooking surface as well as a narrow spatula for easy flipping.
This versatile piece of cookware can also be used to prepare grilled sandwiches or even savoury treats besides crêpes and pancakes. Our Crêpe Suzette recipe is the perfect recipe for our Cast Iron Crêpe Pan.
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Rice Pot
Our Rice Pot, as the name suggests, is the only piece of cookware you will ever need to prepare a perfect batch of rice each and every time. Built with enamelled cast iron, our rice pot is built to last a lifetime, and even serves as a bold centerpiece on the dinner table.
Carefully constructed with steam vents on the stoneware lid to prevent boil-overs, our rice pot creates the ideal environment for preparing rice and grains. Its curved sides and precision lid promote convection and moisture circulation, delivering evenly cooked grains and rice with ease.
Whether you are preparing a delicious couscous, or a simple serving of rice and vegetables on the side, our Rice Pot has you covered.
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Pâté Terrine
Inspired by early Le Creuset designs from the 1930s and 1940s, our Pâté Terrine dish gives a nod to the past all-while remaining relevant in kitchen’s today. This versatile piece of cookware can be used as both a cooking and a serving dish, making for a great addition to your specialty cookware collection.
Our Pâté Terrine can be used for a variety of dishes, including foie gras, breads, cakes, custards, and head cheese. Its high walls and tight-fitting lid lock in heat and moisture, offering superior heat retention. When it is not being used to cook, this piece of cookware is a great serving dish, keeping food warm well after it has been served.
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Specialty Cookware Set
Our Specialty Cookware Set features many of the essentials on this list and is a great way to equip your kitchen for success for years to come. This comprehensive set includes the following pieces of specialty cookware: Fondue Set with 6 wooden forks, a 2.3 L Tagine, a Paella Pan, a Wok with Glass Lid, a Cast Iron Crêpe Pan with Rateau and Rake, and a Pâté Terrine.
Indeed, this specialty cookware set helps you experiment with new cuisines from all over the world, including Western Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa, from the comfort of your own home. While each piece in this set excels at its own cooking technique, or recipe, many of these pieces can be used beyond their intended purpose, offering some much-needed versatility in the kitchen.
Shop the SetBecoming a Specialist in the Kitchen
Mastering an art requires having the right tools at your disposal, and cooking is no different. Any chef will tell you that having the right pieces of cookware is about half the battle. Equipping your kitchen with specialty pieces of cookware will allow you to tackle new recipes and cooking techniques you otherwise wouldn’t be familiar with.
From the classic Paella Pan originating from Valencia, all the way to the Chinese Wok, our collection of specialty cookware has been carefully curated to reflect the endless opportunities for incorporating new flavours into your everyday meal preparation.
These were just nine of our favourite pieces of specialty cookware, but for more inspiration, visit our specialty cookware section or follow our blog for more tips on getting the most out of your Le Creuset collection.
