Urban Rural: The Latest Kitchenware Trend

Home cooking has long been associated with traditional rural life and for a long time, kitchenware designs have strongly reflected these rural beginnings. Old-fashioned copper or cast iron pans, wooden spoons, timers and placemats have been a common sight, even in brand-new kitchenware for many years, with items being made to look like they had been handed down for generations. 

Today, with the urban lifestyle becoming much more prominent, cookware has been revived to suit the modern home. New kitchenware designs reflect more modern tastes; created with modern materials and visual styles in mind whilst maintaining a more traditional function, as perfected in rural homes.

With the popularity of Heston Blumenthal and his futuristic kitchenware and cooking gadgets, people are looking for kitchenware that reflects their city homes. Modern homes and kitchens have a much different feel to is found in the country, so new ranges that complement the sleek kitchen designs are a must have for urban living cooks. 

Kitchenware has been receiving an overdue update. We are now seeing a trend of “urban rural” which takes the old, traditional kitchenware tools of our family homes and transforms them into sleek and modern items that better fit within a city lifestyle. With this revival the urban household can now build up new traditions that bring the joys of rural life into city homes. 

This new kitchenware phenomenon has turned old equipment into modern tools. The bowl scrapers from our childhood baking cakes in our rural family homes are now made from light and flexible silicone. The fun shaped egg timers we all played with and used in our rural cooking are now shiny and sleek; made from stainless steel to match modern kitchenware and cookware. 

Instead of traditional wicker or the image of country watercolour paintings to place our dinner plates on, today’s placemats are made from acrylic with bare bold, vibrant twists on traditional designs like gingham. At heart, these new designs reflect their rural origins but now embrace the modern materials and tastes of the urban lifestyle.

Urban rural kitchenware is quickly making an impression on modern homeowners looking to build the perfect, family home in the big cities. It makes great use of modern materials, such as silicon and plastics, which are shaping both cooking and decorating. This unique combination of traditional tools with new materials is perfect for the keen home chef to match their kitchenware with their modern interior design.

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Going Gourmet At Home With Cookware Sets

If you have ever whipped up a meal that left you underwhelmed or, worse, calling for a pizza, you may have been left wondering what went wrong, especially if you were following a recipe.

They say bad workmen blame their tools but, with good gourmet cooking, if you don’t have the right equipment then you will struggle to produce the impressive meals that you see on TV. 

You may have been put off by the sheer variety in cookware sets; questioning why you need so many pots and pans, but there is a reason so many different pieces exist. They serve a precise purpose and are made to produce specific foods perfectly. You can’t just stick everything in one pot and hope for the best if you want to produce something special.

Each piece that you see in cookware sets is unique and will cook in a different way, meaning some foods just will not cook well in certain pans. Cooking a soup or producing a stock in a wok, for example, will never get you good results because of the shape and design. 

A wok is designed for quick, nimble frying and will do a poor job for low simmering foods because the heat will not distribute evenly. Similarly, a large, basic sauce pan is, despite the name, a poor choice for cooking sauces and gravies. Instead, a saucier pan is shaped for better temperature control and easier liquid evaporation, making it a much better choice for creating the perfect sauce.

As important as the different designs are,consider the different materials used to make the best cookware sets. Whilst your simple pan will probably be made from stainless steel, cookware sets may be made from copper, cast iron, aluminium or a mix of these different materials. 

This range of choice lets you have better heat convection for quicker, even cooking, and will be less reactive with the food, protecting the flavours. This all plays an important role in producing gourmet food, as opposed to the simple, one-pot meals from your student days, and makes choosing the right cookware set an important task if you want perfect meals.

Good cooking is a source of pride for many of us and nothing is more disappointing than a bland or unsavoury meal. Don’t let poor equipment affect your cooking: take the plunge on a good cookware set to give yourself the best chance of serving up a meal that will put a smile on everyone’s face.

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The Origins of The Oven Casserole

As you might expect, the traditional casserole dish has a long and rich history. Since the Stone Age it has been known that slowly cooking food brings out extra flavor and earthenware pots count among some of the earliest cooking implements to have been used by humans. But what about the specific notion of an oven casserole? Here's a brief history of the popular dish, along with a recipe that will help you make use of any leftovers.

The first modern cooking ranges began to appear in England the late 1700s. These were essentially a case of mortar or cast iron that enclosed a fireplace with a restricted chimney. These made it possible to cook on either the stove top or in oven compartments. However, the heat wasn't really adjustable, and the whole appliance had to be heated in order for it to work, so the idea of putting a pot in the oven would have seemed a little odd - the stove would have been hot anyway. However, poorer families were making use of a kind of oven casserole at this time. It was known as a box oven stew, and involved heating a pot over a fire to start the cooking process, then quickly moving it to a box and covering it with lots of straw. This kept the pot hot for hours, and created a slow cook without requiring any extra fuel. 

The name casserole appeared as a term for a French dish that involved mashed rice and bits of meat in the 1800s, but in the later part of that century it began to apply to oven casseroles in America. These grew in popularity during the depression, when Campbell’s released special condensed soups marketed for the purpose of casserole cooking. As with most American classics, putting a new name on an old idea was enough to cement it as part of the national culinary identity. 

Leftover turkey casserole recipe:

500g turkey, shredded
300g vegetables
1 onion, diced
1 eating apple, cored and chopped
2 tbsp plain flour
300ml vegetable or chicken stock
A dash of vinegar
A sprig of thyme
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
2 tbsp runny honey


1. Fry the onions and apple in a casserole pot with a dash of vinegar until softened. Stir in the flour.
2. Add the stock gradually and stir, followed by the rest of the ingredients.
3. Move the casserole to the oven, heated to 190°C / gas mark 5.
4. Remove after 30 - 45 minutes, remove sprig of thyme, and serve with crusty bread.

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