Picking the best pots and pans for your kitchen can be tough! There’s so many different brands to choose from and so many different options amongst the different brands, it can make your head spin. Today I’m going to walk you through this quick little guide that will help you narrow down the best pots and pans for your specific cooking needs.
When it comes to this sort of thing, there are basically just two or three areas you need to focus on:
- First, what kind of cooking do you plan on doing?
- Second, which brands do you prefer – if any?
- Third, how much are you looking to spend?
We’re going to take a look at each of these three questions, and as you answer them it will become clear which pots and pans are best for you.
What kind of cooking do you plan on doing?
This question is important because if you plan on doing a lot of heavy-duty cooking in your kitchen then you require different cookware than if you’re just going to be making a couple meals every now and then.
Young professionals who spend most of their time at work and only occasionally make a meal because they usually eat out, for example, probably wouldn’t want a stainless steel set of cookware because they’re much more difficult to keep clean and require more maintenance and sometimes take longer to cook things because you sometimes have to use lower heat. For somebody like this a nice Teflon set would make more sense.
On the other hand if you do lots of cooking then you may enjoy the even heat distribution and control that stainless steel cookware gives you. For you, 18/10 stainless steel may be the way to go, or maybe a nice copper bottom set.
What Different Brand Options are Available?
When it comes to cookware, you have a lot of different brand options to choose from. Some of them are better than others and some of them are more popular than others. For the most part you’re going to run into this handful of different companies:
- All-Clad
- Revere
- T-fal
- Calphalon
- KitchenAid
- Cuisinart
- Farberware
- Lodge
- Martha Stewart
- Rachael Ray
- Emeril
- Jamie Oliver
Notice the last four on my list; these are celebrity chefs who have manufactured their own brand of cookware. You’re going to run into this stuff quite a bit, especially in the department stores but if you take my advice you’ll steer clear of all of it because usually this stuff tends to be lower quality compared to the companies on the first half of the list.
The trick is, those celebrity pots and pans look amazingly good. Those guys are really good at marketing! The problem occurs after you start using them for a while and they start to get dinged up or they may start to warp or break outright.
Of all the names on the list, All Clad is probably the most expensive and most popular while Revere is a lower priced option but still a decent quality brand.
How Much Money Are You Willing To Spend?
Cookware is just like anything else. The more money you spend, the higher quality you get. If you’re just starting out or don’t plan on doing much cooking then you can find a solid set for anywhere from $80 up to $200 that should contain just about everything you need to do some basic cooking.
On the other hand, if cooking is a passion and you want the best, then you can quickly spend $500 or $600, and all the way up to $2,000 or more depending on the size of the set and the brand.
So what are the Best Pots and Pans? Good question! There really is no one best pot or pan out there. Everybody is different, and everybody’s cooking needs are different. Only you can determine what’s best for you. That may not be very helpful but here’s a tip… go to a few department stores or specialty shops and hold the pots and pans in your hands. You’ll soon discover based on your own intuition which are the good ones and which are the bad ones. This way you can pick the set that’s right for you, which is really the only important thing.
