Cookware: The Big Guide

Buying cookware seems like a challenge because these vessels have huge range of options — types, shapes, brands, materials, prices or even designs. But our guide can break through this: It’s clear-cut to understand without complicated information, cuts down the choices, and goes straight to your needs by step-by-step guide. Let’s jump in!

Too rush to learn? View our editor’s Top Picks Products to ensure you’ll get the best one in short-cut of time.

1. Know Yourself

Of all, your cooking routines will decide your best cookware. If don’t know where to start, these questions, at least, should be asked to roughly assess what you should look for:

• What types of foods will you cook the most — meats, fillets, grains, vegetables or eggs?
• What recipes or techniques do you cook the most — deep frying, sautéing, searing, braising or just heating?
• Are you a newbie who just cooks for living, a food enthusiast who loves to challenge your cooking skills with new kind of recipes, or a food expert who seeks for only unfailing tools?
• Do you cook for yourself, your small family or feed a crowd?
• Do you have any health conditions that can be sensitive to some metals, like nickel, cobalt or iron allergies?

2. Material Matters

Why material is matter?

The answer is heat conductivity that can indicate how good of heat conductivity, how durable of the construction, and how easy to care or what technique can be used. Say, it has a big influence on cooking quality.

Each material has different heat transferable performance or ability to react to temperature changes. Some metals heat up and cool down very fast, but some others stay hot much longer after taking times to heat.

Still, some metals, like stainless steel, have bad conductive ability so they need to infuse conductible metals inside to improve the heat transmission.

The most common materials for cookware are stainless-steel, aluminum, cast-iron, carbon steel and copper. See more about cookware materials, heat conductivity and cooking techniques that suit for each one, see The Big Guides: Cookware Materials.

3. Look for Heavy-Gauge Materials

“Good conductor and heavy gauge are the key features of good cookware”, advises Fine Cooking Editor Amy Albert. Heavy-gauge pans deliver heat more evenly, and aren’t easy to dent and warp

Before buying a pan, she recommended to life it, check the thickness of the walls and base and knock it with your knuckles to hear a dull thud sound, a light ping — to check how dense of the pan, which ensure you’ll get a good one.

4. Cooking Surface

Apart from conductive materials, the cooking surface plays extremely big role — The material that contact with food can indicate:

• how evenly the heat spreading on the cooking surface is,
• how durable the cookware is,
• what techniques can be applied,
• how easy it will be cared,
• How attractive the cookware looks.

These are most common cooking surfaces:

5. Food Safety

Some materials, like bare aluminum, tin, copper or cast-iron, can react to acidic, sulfurous, and alkaline foods. This can make the foods taste metallic and get discoloration — Eggs, vegetables in the cabbage family and baking soda are vulnerable to aluminum’s graying effect.

Also, some metals might raise health risks. For example, aluminum is suspected to link to Alzheimer, but there is no clearly evidence at this time.

So, if you cook reactive foods, such as tomato, fruit filling or wine, ensure to use non-reactive surfaces, like stainless-steel, enamel and hard-anodized aluminum. Learn more about Cooking Materials and Food Safety.

6. Design & Construction

When talking about ‘design’ in cookware term, it doesn’t mean only just the beauty but rather imply to practicality and usability — good cookware construction should require good ergonomic design, weight in hand, comfortable handle or even drip-free rims.

What to Look For

These are common checklists before buying:

7. What Pieces Do You Need?

When buying cookware, there are many debates here:

• Should I buy a whole set to save money or buy some practical separated pieces but cost more?
• Should I buy 10-piece set or 14-piece set?
• How much saucepans do I need?
• Do I need a wok, a steamer or a griddle?

Most experts might recommend you buy pieces you need. We agree, if budget is unworried, this is ideal choice. Also, this is good for occasional cooks who don’t cook much or amateurs who cook some certain recipes, having a good nonstick skillet will be fine.

In the other hand, buying whole set looks way more value than buying al la carte but trades-off with some unwanted pieces. Still, the final decision hinges on your needs: cooking habits, level of cooking or even how much to spend.

Keep in mind: Many cookware tools are versatile — they can do multi-functions. So, unless you are an enthusiastic home chef, you don’t really need every pot and pan. Only some essential pieces are enough for daily cuisines. See The Essential Pots and Pans You’ll Need for Every Kitchen.

8. Get More, Spend Less

For the optimum choice between usability and value, we recommended 2 options:

1. Buy a complete practical set. Buy a full-sized, commonly offering 10 to 12 pieces, set that fills with workable pieces.

   

   or

   
   
   

   The Cuisinart Multi-Clad Pro (12-piece) set is the good sample as having enough essential pieces for daily culinary tasks. But, if you like nonstick cooking, consider Calphalon Contemporary Nonstick (11-piece) set.

2. Buy a small set (or essential pieces) and add others later. If you have more budget and time, buy some essential pieces, such as a saucepan, a skillet and a stockpot, or a small set first. Later, you can fill your collection by adding other tools you need, like omelet pans, roasting pans or Dutch ovens.

   This allows you to have most-utilized tools while visibly save money than buying full collection piece-by-piece.

   
   

   For example, you might pick the quality All-Clad Tri-Ply (7-piece) set that offers a fry pan, two sauce pans and a stock pot. Then, add some handy pieces, like a 10.25” nonstick pan and a sauté pan, or else later.

9. Budget

Price of cookware mainly varies by material, feature, construction and brand.

• Stainless-Steel. The price depends on layer and type of conductive materials — the more layers or higher conductors, the more price. Normally, a 10-piece fully clad set sells for $250 to $1,000 while an encapsulated disc one, like Cuisinart Chef’s Classic, is much cheaper, $70 to $200.

  Brand is matter. An All-Clad tri-ply set, costs $700* some mid-range brands, like Cuisinart or KitchenAid, offer under $300.

• Non-Stick. It has wide price ranges from coating materials and construction. Typically, Teflon pans are cheapest. You can find a good 10.25” non-stick skillet at $20. The hard-anodize and standard ceramic pans are in mid-range ($50 to $90), unless they have tri-ply construction that can be found up to $200.
• Cast-iron. The bare cast-iron is cheaper. A $50 for a Lodge 5-quart Dutch oven while enameled cast-iron is a bit pricier. However, the heirloom products, like Le Creuset and Staub, might cost more than 3-time expensive.
• Copper is far more expensive. A 10-piece Mauviel set costs around $1,400.

10. What Type of Your Stovetop?

Gas burner is most handy since is compatible with most cookware materials. Still, if you have other type of ranges, don’t forget to check these:

• Choose Smooth, Flat-Bottom, if you use smooth-surface ranges like ceramic, halogen, induction and electric ranges.
• Choose magnetic materials, if you use induction ranges. Choose induction-ready stainless-steel, cast-iron or other magnetic compatible materials.
• Choose Bare Cast-iron, if you plan to cook on fire.

11. Warranty

Some products carry very long or lifetime warranty. You might have a peace of mind that your pots and pans are ensured all over freely usage. However, the fact is not like that. Most warranties will cover only any production or material defects, not from misuse or accidents.

To ensure your insurance, follow the guides strictly.

12. Help Me Choose!

After all, if you still feel this too hard to choose the right ones, look up here: