Industry Figure Tom Chappell

My lovely wife, Sylvia, had volunteered us to host Christmas, and to make the Christmas Stew for my in-laws.

Now, you might or might not be surprised to hear this, but even though we’re 50 years old, we didn’t know how to make a stew. However, a few quick phone calls, web searches, look-ups in the recipe books and we were ready to go…except that we didn’t have a stew pot.

“Geez, Tom, can’t we just use one of our existing big pots?” My spouse demanded, and who among us can say that she didn’t have a point?

“No, well, honey, they say that you should have a Dutch Oven,” I countered, and scuttled off to the nearest Great Indoors to purchase an All-Clad 8 Qt. Stainless Steel Stockpot, $258.00 US.

“WOOF!” I can hear you say, if you’ve never bought All-Clad. “A quarter of a thousand dollars for a stew pot???” And once again, who wouldn’t say that you had a hell of a point? I won’t even tell you about the same pot in their Copper Core line, which will set you back a cool $400 before you’ve had Stew One.

But this All-Clad cookware, they’ve got the bonded triple-alloy bottoms; they’re supposed to conduct heat like nobody’s business! At this point, you’re probably saying to yourself, “Yeah, but my cheap pot still gets hot, all right.” This is true, up to a point, but your lame inferior pot conducts heat unevenly, and develops soul- and stew-destoying hot spots, whereas, supposedly, mine would not. And we were feeling Uncertain about the stew; we could use every advantage.

The big day arrived, and all was going well. Then, at virtually the last minute, but what was in fact the final half-hour, I added the vegetables, and decided that the stew needed some more water, too. “Looks like it needs some more water,” was about how I sized up the situation, if I remember correctly.

But, after I had added the vegetables and the water, the stew, which had been bubbling merrily, looked sullen and withdrawn. “Time to kick it up a notch — Bam!” I didn’t say, as I turned the fire “temporarily” up from simmer to nuclear furnace.

My Good Work in the kitchen complete, I wandered off and essentially contemplated my naval for about 25 minutes. Then, sensing that the time to serve stew had almost arrived, I meandered back to the kitchen, and, seeing the stove setting, swore like a sailor: “Bork! Dole!”, I cried (and if those weren’t the exact words that I used, well, at least plenty of the actual words did have four letters).

I cranked the dial down to warm, lifted the lid, and started stirring cautiously: maybe there was an unburnt top layer that could be salvaged. But what’s this? Total, absolute, and complete non-burnage! It was 100% OK! At five servings, that was a solid (say) $20 worth of stew saved right there! And (as Sean pointed out), after another dozen meals saved, the thing will have paid for itself!

Everybody said that the stew was great, and in fact, we all had just a terrific time — it was the first time that Sean and grandparents Virginia and Phil had been together for a while.

Long live All-Clad!

(Post #9 of 16 Posts in 16 Days)