Before becoming a cooking tools expert, she spent seven years working as a professional chef in New York City restaurants. In her free time, she’s busy baking sourdough bread and rustling pots and pans on her own stove. To select our best cookware sets, we relied on our years of rustling pots and pan both in our test kitchens and on our own home stoves. We checked what professional reviewers had to say about their test results and what home cooks reported about long-time use. If you want the benefits of a nonstick coating but want to minimize any risks, you can opt for a ceramic nonstick coating.
Whether you entertain often or just dislike doing the dishes, this Tramontina set is the best stainless steel cookware set for your need. This comprehensive set won over our testers with how easy it was to clean, making it a must-have for any kitchen. I’m a professionally trained baker with 15 years of cooking experience. I’ll admit, years of bad press Cookware Sets about nonstick cookware producing subpar food, being shoddily made and even potentially harmful gave me pause on whether to recommend a brand at all. But after my rigorous testing process, I concluded that there really are many excellent options on the market—and there have been incredible advancements in nonstick coating in recent years as well.
The handles are riveted and stay cool to the touch during cooking, and the rims are tapered to prevent drips and spills when pouring. With the Scanpan Classic line, you can enjoy the perks of nonstick without the use of Teflon. They’re lightweight, but durable and can be used for high-heat searing and sautéing; plus, they’re oven safe up to 500˚F and super easy to clean.
Completely ceramic cookware are made of either porcelain, earthenware, or stoneware, and they’re typically dishwasher-safe. While steel pans are not as common as other materials for home cookware, carbon steel, and blue steel is sometimes used for woks and other specialty pans. The cookware needs to be seasoned before use and oiled after cooking to keep it from rusting in storage. Enameled steel cookware is not as common today as it was in years past, but speckled enamelware can still be found occasionally, particularly in large pots used for water bath canning.
Drew Barrymore may be best known for her unmeasurable talent as an actress or her impressive talk show hosting abilities, but her design chops are just as remarkable. Her affordable kitchen line, Beautiful, offers your standard toasters and coffee pots but with way more display-worthy style than you’d expect from a kitchen appliance. Made In fashions itself as the DTC answer to All-Clad—really, comparisons between the two are at the heart of Made In’s marketing, where they claim to deliver the same quality at a lower price point. Made In has the greatest range of products for sale among the competitor DTC brands, offering pans, cutlery, glassware, and kitchen accessories. Made In has also courted endorsements from high profile chefs like Tom Colicchio and Nancy Silverton and Michelin-starred restaurants like Alinea and Le Bernardin.
Cookware only works on induction cooktops if it contains ferromagnetic materials, meaning either it has iron or a layer with magnetic properties. Cast iron and magnetic stainless steel sets are induction compatible, but aluminum, all-copper, and glass sets are not—unless they have an added layer on the bottom with magnetic properties. Be careful when it comes to stainless steel as it can be made with a variety of materials that may block the magnetic field. Most manufacturers will specify on the packaging or pans themselves if they are induction compatible. Stainless steel cookware is one of the most common types you’ll find, and for good reason.
If you plan to use cookware in the oven, go for something with wooden or metallic handles rather than plastic ones. A set with more pieces might not be suitable for smaller families as you might use one or two, leaving the rest to sit in the cabinet purposelessly. If you like to cook and try different dishes, consider buying a cookware set which at least covers the necessary items. Professional setups might pick one that has multiple pieces of the same cookware to cater to their requirements.
Testers did not that the stock pot felt a bit small for batch cooking, however they liked that the set had glass lids that make it easy to monitor your food. During cooking testers, our testers liked that this pan heated up fast and reached 400 degrees—it cooked both the scallops and frittata perfectly, without any sticking. It’s worth noting, however, that while testing durability, there was some discoloration and flexing of the material.
The testers were “blown away” by the heat distribution, quick boiling, and even searing. And the nonstick coating was so nonstick that they could scramble eggs or sauté veggies, which would then just slide right out of the pan. The Cuisinart cookware set boasts a triple-ply construction featuring pure aluminum and stainless steel finish.
This beautiful polished copper cookware set is sure to be the focal point of your kitchen. EuroCAST by BergHOFF is a premium cookware line featuring an eco-friendly and toxin-free non-stick cooking surface. Looking for a cookware set that covers all the basics and immediately adds a touch of style to your stovetop? Made In is one of my favorite new players in the cookware space, although the brand makes far more than just cookware. “I like heavy just because I think common sense would say the heavier they are, the slightly better quality they are,” says Jason Santos, a chef.