Stack Cooking

There are always enough burners for the dishes you are preparing with Lifetime’s Stack Cooking options!

Stack cooking is a wonderful convenience saving energy and space by allowing you to prepare several foods at one time using a single burner—or warm finished dishes while others cook! Your Lifetime cookware is specially designed to provide the uniform heat distribution necessary for stack cooking. Stack cooking is very easy when you follow these simple steps:

1. Always start with the largest of the pans you are using on the bottom of the stack—covered with a flat dome cover.
2. Make sure the bottom pan is suitable for cooking foods which have more weight and volume and require longer cooking times such as meat, poultry and stews. Place pan on the range unit over medium heat. If cooking meat, preheat pan, then brown meat on both sides. Cover, and when the water seal is formed, reduce heat to low.
3. Use the upper pan for cooking foods which have less weight and volume and shorter cooking times, and those which require steaming or melting like fresh or frozen vegetables, fruit sauces and puddings, melting butter or chocolate, or for reheating leftovers or keeping foods warm.
4. Vegetables or other foods may be stack cooked in the double boiler pan placed on the Steamer/Grater Rack. Remove Dome Cover from lower pan, place the Steamer/Grater Rack on pan above meat and place Double Boiler containing food on the rack. Replace the Dome Cover immediately so that the moisture already present in the lower pan will re-form the water seal.
5. Coordinate cooking times so that all foods are ready at the same time. Before placing a smaller pan on top of a larger one, heat the smaller pan on another range unit until the water seal forms. Then stack on the larger pan. Forming a water seal on the upper pan is not necessary when melting, heating, or keeping foods warm.

DO NOT place a small pan within a larger pan, or pans with similar diameters into another for use as a double boiler or any other cooking function. Double boiling should only be done in pans designed for this cooking function, like the Double Boiler Inset Pan.