MARCH 2020 93
who managed to disarm the idea of
cooking in clay with a single Instagram
post in which she made her husband
John Legend’s chili in a clay tagine. “I
first fell in love with tagines on a visit
to Morocco, one of my favorite places
in the world,” Teigen later told me. She
shares her passion widely: You can
watch her try her hand at making a
tagine on David Chang’s Netflix show
Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, and she
included one in her Cravings cookware
line for Target. “Cooking with clay feels
like something people have been doing
since the beginning of time, and the
way a clay tagine retains heat is super
comforting,” she continued. As a par-
ent of two small children, she finds
clay cookware convenient. “I like it
for food that is braised or long-cooked
and can either be made in advance or cooked slowly for hours
without needing a lot of caretaking.”
Teigen’s comments made me realize that in actuality, we have
all been cooking at home with clay for years: The ceramic inserts
of slow cookers are the most widely distributed and used style
of clay pot in America today, with 12.7 million sold in 2018.
But traditionally shaped clay pots—especially those designed
for cooking over direct heat–produce dishes with nuanced,
deep flavors that retain their textural integrity beyond what a
slow cooker can achieve. Owning an array of clay pots, I was
starting to suspect, could be the way to open up a new world
of deliciousness in my home kitchen. But was the difference
between clay cookware and metal worth the investment in a
new set of pots? I decided to put them to the test.THE F&W TEST KITCHEN COLLECTED more than 50 clay pots and
started cooking. First, we cooked beans, testing a dozen bean
pots from throughout the Americas against cast-iron Dutch
ovens and stainless steel pots. In a blind tasting, the beans
cooked in a pricey, handmade micaceous pot beat out everyother bean. Those cooked in a stainless-steel soup pot were
relatively bland, tough, and sharp-tasting. We repeated the
test twice, with new tasters and several different recipes, but
the micaceous pot won every time. (Of note, our second-place
winner was an old-school Boston-style bean pot available for
a fraction of the price.)
Next, we revisited the Römertopf, popular with home cooks
starting in the 1970s. A rectangular lidded baking dish made
of raw German clay from Ransbach-Baumbach, Germany, the
“Roman pot” is often touted as a healthy way to cook, since the
glazed bottom requires no added fat and the unglazed, porous
lid (soaked in water before covering the dish) provides enough
moisture to steam-roast the contents of the pan. The result is
profoundly juicy roast chicken and vegetables with an intensely
concentrated flavor. (See p. 99 for the recipe.) During testing,
one chicken was accidentally overcooked to an internal tem-
perature of 190°F. It should have been tough and dry, but when
the chicken was pierced with a knife, juices shot across the
room. Forget brining; forget hair dryers—the Römertopf is the
key to the best roast chicken you’ll ever make.
In test after test, we found that everything cooked in clay
tasted better than the same recipes cooked in metal pans. Rice
smelled more floral and toasty, each grain fully cooked while
maintaining its individuality. Beans were creamy and tender
without their skins falling apart. Braises tasted snappy and fresh,
not muddled and heavy. While I wouldn’t recommend searing
and frying in clay pots—thermal shock of cold ingredients hit-
ting the hot pan can cause breakage—gentler cooking methods
rewarded us with deep, delicious flavor.
The only drawback to clay pots is that they can break. Season-
ing, cleaning, and storing them properly are easy but necessary
steps to keep them in good condition (see p. 95). Cooking with
them also takes a bit of practice—a sort of awkward period of
getting to know each pot as an individual—which I found re-
engaged my senses and focus at the stove.
“At the base of it, you are cooking in a part of the earth, and
that is pretty incredible,” Ortiz told me when we caught up
recently. “When you are willing to cook in these things—know-
ing the pot might break, knowing you can’t control everything—
it changes the way you look at the food you’re cooking.”TAGINE
The tagine’s conical lid
stays cooler than the
base during cooking, col-
lecting and condensing
aromatic steam, which
continually bastes the
ingredients. “The flavor
of cooking in a tagine
cannot be duplicated
in any other vessel,”
according to Ori Menashe
of Bavel in L.A. “Plus, it
is impressive to drop at
the table where all of the
aromas in the steam can
be celebrated.”
BRING IT HOME: Colored
Circle Cooking Tagine
($70, treasuresof
morocco.com)
In the world of wine, qvevri, enormous egg-
shaped earthenware vessels that are buried
in the ground, are still used for fermenting
and aging wine in the Republic of Georgia.
The process imparts a distinct minerality to
the final product. In many other wine regions
around the world, concrete, which works
similarly to clay, is used for fermentationtanks. Antoine Gouges, the great-grandson
of Henri Gouges who now runs the epony-
mous winery in Nuits-Saint-Georges, France,
with his cousin Gregory Gouges, explains the
benefits: “The concrete resists quick temper-
ature changes, creating the perfect environ-
ment for slow maceration of whole grapes.”
A slow, cool maceration and fermentationallows for all of the flavor and texture of
the grape skins to seep into the juice while
maintaining fresh and lively flavor, even if
the weather affects the temperature in the
winery during the fermentation process. This
careful and low-energy temperature control
helps create Gouges’ acclaimed premier cru
Burgundies.