A kitchen tool

Cuisinart Stockpot

Cuisinart · Stainless stockpot

The pot every good batch starts in — my mom's red sauce and my homemade chicken stock that ends up in half the recipes here.

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I used to have a flimsy, cheap stockpot that would always burn anything that got stuck to the bottom and something always got stuck to the bottom. Once I upgraded to the Cuisinart stockpot, HOLY COW - in love! This stockpot has a heavy bottom so while things do sometimes stick, it turns into fond/flavor that you WANT to scrape with a wood spoon to get mixed in with what you're cooking - and it holds it's heat for anything you want to simmer for hours. If you've got the cheap pot that burns everything, I can't recommend this upgrade enough - save up and buy it for soups' sake!

A few snaps

Photos from the table

From this

Recipes it inspired

Red Sauce

My mom's red sauce recipe edited (barely) to make it my own (with my mom's blessing). It's good stuff, y'all.

Chicken Stock

The homemade stock half my recipes lean on — built from bones out of Premier Meat Market.