The Best Tools for your Porcelain Kitchenware

 High-quality, stylish kitchenware can elevate your kitchen and bring a clean and sanitary environment to your home. Forget bone china or other stoneware, the best tools for your kitchen will be made of porcelain. With a creative eye, mixing and matching your handmade kitchenware can also bring chic flavor to your kitchen.

Why not other ceramics?

To the layman's eye, porcelain and other earthenware may be seen as indistinguishable. But porcelain has many unique properties that make it stand out from other ceramics. For starters, porcelain is much more durable than other ceramic products. It’s much denser, and will probably find itself to be the hardest substance in your kitchen. While both are made from different types of clay and fired at high temperatures, porcelain uses its own unique clay, as well as a mix of quartz, to create beautiful, non-porous, white porcelain. True porcelain would originate from ancient China, and see its craft evolve in the Tang Dynasty, using locally sourced kaolin, feldspar, and petuntse. Pottery from baked earth would make a major cultural impact in the east and would find itself more commonplace in the west under the Yuan Dynasty.

While the term ceramic may be applied to any kind of stoneware, types of porcelain make themselves distinct from the rest. Earthenware, while more affordable, is only baked at 1,200°F. This leads it to be more fragile and may chip easily. Earthenware may be porous, allowing for grime to build up, and making it harder to clean and keep sanitary. Porcelain is fired at high temperatures, at over 2,300°F. It’s incredibly hard and even has translucent properties. Kitchenware made from this glazed stoneware can be used in baking, cooking, or even serving, as its resistance to heat makes it great for cooking, not facing any thermal shock.

What Kitchenware benefits from Porcelain?

One of the most difficult to clean items in the kitchen is anything dealing with oil. Porous stoneware or other materials will have the oil build up and make it difficult to clean. With porcelain's ability to resist high temperatures, as well as its non-porous properties, a porcelain oil dispenser makes cleaning the oil come right off. If you’re afraid of a build-up of residue or having bacteria fester within your bottle, consider using porcelain as a safe and healthy way to store those oils.

If you’ve ever had difficulty wondering where to place your cooking utensils, such as a spoon, consider a porcelain spoon rest. If you find yourself heating up pasta sauce, flipping greasy bacon, or even just tending to some stew, you’ll want a safe and sanitary place to rest your utensils. All that grease and oil will build up over time, so you’ll want a non-porous surface that can handle the heat, and a spoon rest does just that.

While we’re still looking at utensils, you may want a safe place to put all of them. A porcelain utensil crock is one way to keep the rest of your kitchen tidy, and sanitary. Utensils themselves, especially the commonplace wooden cooking spoon, will have build-up over time and may transfer to other surfaces. If you’re looking for a crock that is quick and easy to clean, look no further, as porcelain will allow you to wipe any contaminants right off. 

Salts and spices are the keys to any kitchen, and you’ll want a safe space to store them. You won't want any residue from the previous spices you kept inside if you’re one to rotate your cuisine, and porcelain ensures just that. A porcelain salt cellar will keep a clean and healthy environment to prevent any cross-contamination between the spices and herbs you cycle through. And if you need to clean it, don’t worry about running it in the dishwasher, as porcelain is well accustomed to high temperatures. This extends to other kitchenware that may deal with spices and herbs, such as the mortar and pestle, which usually find themselves with ceramic coatings.

Many other pieces of cookware and dinnerware will find themselves with porcelain enamel coatings, making them hard, durable, and easy to cook with. With their naturally nonstick properties, resistance from the cut of a knife, and high heat tolerance, it's no wonder that pots and oven trays will find themselves with a porcelain coat. Being able to mix and match, whether farmhouse style, Chinese, or otherwise, can also bring a stylish flair to your household. Forget terracotta pots, or earthenware plates, if you want to have a kitchen fit for a chef, porcelain will provide that high-quality experience.