We recently stumbled upon a hole-in-the-wall shop in Mangaf that sells Ukrainian cookware, the vintage-looking kind that my grandparents used back in Ukraine.

The place is located by a road next to a row of stores, one of them with a black and white signage titled “ابو سعود”.

There is an array of cooking pots, trays, tea pots and mugs all made in Ukraine.

I picked up a couple of these cooking pots, primarily for making stews, porridges, soups and cottage cheese. They are all made of metal and coated with enamel inside and out. Due to that, the pots heat up quickly and evenly, as well as hold the warmness for a prolonged period.

It’s not recommended to fry things in them as they are coated in enamel and that can chip, deeming the cookware unsafe to use because it exposes the metal underneath. This will comprise the functionality of the cookware as the unprotected metal core can leak harmful ingredients into the food.

For this reason I inspected each pot carefully before purchasing it to ensure that it wasn’t chipped in the slightest bit.