Equipment Review: Cookware Sets

[Music] if you want to cook with confidence you need quality cookware you don't have to spend a ton of money because choosing well is the key our usual advice is to buy cookware piece by piece so you only pay for what you need but people have never stopped asking us about cookware sets for themselves or as gifts since the last time we tested cookware sets we've seen some interesting developments so we decided to take another look we bought eight sets priced from about a hundred sixty dollars to five hundred sixty dollars including the winning and best buy sets from our last testing so you're probably asking what is wrong with buying a cookware set now here's the thing cookware sets have a lot of particular problems manufacturers constantly change up the content so they're not consistent even from store to store they plump up the total number of pieces to make the set seem more valuable but they do it with oddball additions like colanders or so-called chef's pans in unusual shapes lids count as pieces too not just the pants and worse manufacturers cut costs by shrinking the pans and as a result it's rare to find what we regard as full-size cookware in a set like a 12-inch skillet a four quart sauce pan 8 to 12 quart stock pot you get itty bitty pots and pans now pans that are too small or crowded tend to boil over they give you rubbery steamed food instead of a flavorful sear and they make recipes take longer because you have to cook food in multiple batches quality can also be an issue now we've seen cookware sets for astonishingly low prices but too many of these consist of a pile of flimsy nonstick coated aluminum pans they're not capable of transmitting heat uniformly and they're not durable bottom line it's false economy if you're constantly fighting your pans to cook a good meal and if you have to replace them every few years we found some new brands that take a different approach they focus on construction quality they sell directly to consumers to reduce prices and they offer standard combinations of pans and some even feature practical pieces of full-size cookware we rounded up five of these sets plus an innovative compact set launched by a brand we've liked in the past to help us compare set to set we focused most of our testing on the four pans that nearly all the sets had in common they're all still slightly smaller than we prefer got a 10 inch skillet a 3 quart saucepan a 3 quart saute pan this deep lidded frying pan with tall sides and a 5 quart or larger stock pot most sets had additional pans and we evaluated those later but first we compared the skillets across the board we seared steaks we made pan sauce and we browned beef or shepherd's pie in these in the saucepans we boiled in mashed potatoes to top those shepherd's pies and we also made browned butter in the stock pots we seared batches of beef and made stew we also tried to cook two pounds of angel hair pasta to test their capacity in the saute pans we shallow fried swedish meatballs pouring off the hot oil and building the creamy sauce with the fond and we sauteed heaps of chopped kale we also asked additional testers to try the pans and give us feedback and we finished with abuse testing to gauge the durability of each skillet since that's the hardest working bin in most kitchens now throughout testing we hand washed the pans and rated them on how easy they were to handle and maintain the material of your cookware matters and in that these sets had us covered they all contained fully clad cookware made entirely of three or more layers of aluminum and stainless steel bonded together now in previous testings we found that fully clad pans really benefit from the qualities of the combined metals to heat more evenly and brown foods more uniformly than pans made of other materials or by other methods now not surprisingly every set produced acceptable food and most seem pretty solidly built we also love that this set by great jones added two pans in other materials an enameled cast iron dutch oven and a small non-stick pan the biggest difference in the sets came down to design features like uncomfortable handles or handles that heated up on the stove top made those pans less easy to use the angle of the handles mattered too especially when we were hoisting up heavy stock pots or sliding skillets full of shepherd's pie under hot broilers dutch ovens and skillets have provided wider larger cooking surfaces helped us brown meat in fewer batches so they sped up cooking wider openings on saucepans and pots helped us see and keep food moving which was really helpful when we were stirring brown butter on skillets sides that were lower and more flared rather than high in cupped helped steam evaporate so food browned and seared instead of boiling the balance of a pan's weight how it feels when you pick it up it's really an underrated design element some says pans felt off balance or clunky and harder to lift and maneuver whether we were sauteing foods or scooping out sauce this affects how efficiently you cook and how tired you feel when you're done do you want to fight your cookware or does it feel natural to use it and the selection of pans really does matter with each set we asked ourselves does this give me all the pans i need one of the attractions of a cookware set is the notion that someone wiser has pre-assembled the most functional combinations of pieces for you i'm sorry but that is not always the case an example two of the sets in our lineup had no stock pot or dutch oven their largest vessels topped out at three quarts which was not big enough to cook two pounds of angel hair pasta or to make our beef stew these sets lost points for lacking pans we deemed essential for a foundational package of cookware now one of these sets included a santoku knife instead we'd rather have additional cookware in our sets it was interesting that all the sets contained saute pans we don't actually find those essential and we typically reach for a 12 inch skillet or seven quart touch oven instead even if some sets had a particular piece that we thought necessary too often they were small or oddly shaped one of the ten inch skillets tapered down to just seven inches of available cooking surface which is barely enough room for a single steak browning ground beef for the shepherd's pie in this pan was frustrating pieces were constantly falling out onto the stovetop if we didn't store very carefully stock stockpots were a major issue now as i mentioned two sets didn't have them at all and at least two more sets had pretty liberal definitions of the term one set contained a miniature pot that claimed to hold five quarts and it did technically if we filled it all the way up to the rim but at just eight and a half inches diameter rim to rim with sides that are five and a quarter inches tall this was barely bigger than our favorite large saucepan which is eight inches across and five inches tall we could cook a single pound of angel hair in it but it took work to prevent that pasta from clumping an innovative compact set from a familiar brand had a different version of a five quart stock pot it was flattened and low sided like a saute pan and again we barely managed to cook just one pound of pasta in it and water splashed everywhere because i was frantically trying to prevent clumping in the end despite their promise none of the new sets bested our former favorites our top ranked set was the 10 piece all glad d3 tri-ply bonded cookware set now this fully clad cookware is really hard to beat with its clean goldilocks design of sturdiness without heaviness outstanding cooking performance and remarkable durability it costs about five hundred sixty dollars but when you consider that just the eight quart stockpot it includes cost nearly three hundred forty dollars on its own this set is a comparative bargain and it's a worthwhile investment that will last a lifetime our runner-up is the traumatina gourmet 12-piece tri-ply clad cookware set now this contained an astonishing number of full-sized pans and it's moderately priced at about 230 dollars now it's slightly less well balanced and well designed than the all-clad but it's still performed admirably and it's durable too of the new sets we did have a favorite for an inexpensive set with an excellent selection of well-designed fully clad pans the potluck cookware set which cost about 160 dollars pleasantly surprised us we were heartbroken when the skillet warped in our final round of abuse testing made us realize that this set probably won't hold up as long as our top two picks but for a starter set it's a decent choice and if you don't want to buy a set our testing team brainstormed to pick out the core pins that you need most plus a few more that might be good add-ons and some excellent extras for more information on our test kitchen ideal a la carte cookware set click on the link below [Music] you

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 630,361

Keywords: equipment review, cooking equipment, cookware sets, all clad, pots and pans, best cooking equipment, america's test kitchen, cooking, kitchen, kitchen equipment, kitchen tools, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cook's illustrated

Id: CT-SnMNp8Mc

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 11 2019