Removing The Doubt From Cookware Shopping

Which are your favorite nonstick pots and pans? I have a great collection of various pieces of cookware and nonone of it is considered cheap. I don't adhere to the nonstick fry pan concept that it's better to buy cheap pans and replace them often. Personally that would ultimately prove quite wasteful and all of those throwaway nonstick pots and pans perform poorly at the chore closest to my heartcooking my dinner!

My choice is to select a pan designed for a specific use, quality of construction, ergonomics and last on my list is the ultimate decider for some peoplethe price. Food is too important to your happy daily life to compromise by substituting low grade products, because you'll immediately taste the difference. Likewise, compromising on your cookware is an invitation to stress in your kitchen. If you're multitasking on the stove top keeping two, three or more items at just the right heat; stirring one, whisking another and browning your entre in an effort to plate everything at its proper moment, the last thing you need to deal with is a pot or pan that can't take the heat! Cheap nonstick may seem like a great idea when you're walking through the local monster store (names withheld to protect me from guilty parties) thinking of omelets and seeing that $12 skillet. Hey, you may even get a decent egg out of that pan, but that isn't the only thing you'll ever cook with it and that's the problem.

When I look for a good nonstick pot or pan, one of the first things I do is heft it. Get a good idea if this is something you'll feel comfortable with, filled with food, held at arm's length just above the flame. Cast iron is out of the picture unless you pump iron regularly like a certain chef I know who is now on TV. If it feels too light it's because it is. That really light weight pan will warp in a heartbeat. When you have a warped pan it doesn't sit properly on the stove top. Any fat introduced for your cooking will tend to pool in one spot and not spread as a coating across the pan or pot surface. Cheaply manufactured cookware doesn't conduct or spread heat well which will cause possibly large temperature differences on the cooking surface. Usually if this happens you'll almost automatically turn up the heat to compensate and when you do you're pushing that pan dangerously close to its upper safe temperature limits. Your goal is to never, ever do that with any piece of cookware, but especially not with nonstick!

When you find a potential new member of your cookware family and the weight feels right, you like the way it feels in your hand and the grip on the handle (if it has one) feels secure, flip it over and look closely at the bottom. Every pan and pot bottom should ideally be extremely flat without ridges or shallow spaces. Some manufacturers like to put their name down there and they recess it so that it doesn't rub off when being moved about the stove top. A very small recess is less than ideal, but a recessed area the size of the back of your hand is not desired since that's a space which can't be in direct contact with typical electric heat sources. If you've got a gas cook top it may not be an issue, but it makes me wonder if they may have skimped on something I can't see! All of my pan bottoms look smooth enough to cook off of and yours should too.

If this new piece of cookware still looks OK, that's when I begin examining the actual cooking surface and reading everything they have to offer about core construction, possible bottom laminates, interior coatings and exterior ones as well. If a coating is one I've not heard about, that item goes back on the store shelf until I've been able to learn everything possible about it
.
Research using the Internet may only take you a handful of minutes, but those are minutes well spent. The new saut pan you wanted to buy is destined to live in your home for years to come and you don't want to be in the middle of that special new recipe only to discover an undesirable aspect of that pans performance. I love surprises, just please not in my kitchen!