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I like to cook. I need a new cookware set, I want to invest in a good set as I am not in my earlier days of cooking! I've been looking at All- Clad vs. Cuisinart, Kitchen Aid, Cephalon. Anyone have advice? Thanks in advance.
I like to cook. I need a new cookware set, I want to invest in a good set as I am not in my earlier days of cooking! I've been looking at All- Clad vs. Cuisinart, Kitchen Aid, Cephalon. Anyone have advice? Thanks in advance.
You can find good deals on lots of cookware at an antique store vs. buying brand new stuff. Many antique places will sell stuff like copperware (which is extremely expensive) for half the price. After a quick polish, many times they'll look like new.
Location: Los Angeles>Little Rock>Houston>Little Rock
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I prefer pieces to sets. With sets you can't always get exactly what you need or want. All-clad makes awesome stainless saute/frying pans and Cuisinart has great non-stick fry pans. I also like Le Creuset enameled cast iron. I have a Farberware sauce pan I really love and another sauce pan by Calphalon that is the perfect size for several things.
One Christmas I got a set of Emerilware made by All-clad and I use some of the pieces, but others just sit on the shelf.
We bought a lot of regular All-Clad cookware years ago, and were happy with the performance. But it didn't last very long ... the anodized coating wore through pretty quickly and was especially susceptible to wearing through with acidic foods like tomato based soups/stews. The teflon coated pieces were the first to wear out, and we were very careful to use them at reasonable temperatures and only with plastic or wooden utensils.
We wound up going back to our old favorite, cast iron. Mostly Griswold, including their ceramic coated cookware. Just about all of it 40+ years old and still in perfect condition. The issue for us was that my wife has some difficulty handling the very heavy cookware, especially the larger pieces when they are full of food. We also have a lot of old Descoware enamel cookware which serves very well. Recently, my wife bought a new 6 qt enamel cast iron dutch oven at wally world ... I was sceptical because my experience in the past with chinese cast iron was that it was of very poor quality ... but this piece has done very well on the wood cookstove with slow cooking of soups and stews.
She also bought a couple of sets of newer stainless steel cookware with heavy bottoms ... a Wolfgang Puck set from wally world, and a number of individual Wearever pots. Both work very well with uniform heating on the bottoms in all the pots and pans, clean up easily, and are far superior to the anodized aluminum All-Clad. They weigh a lot less than the cast iron and are my wife's choice now for cooking.
We won't go back to any aluminum cookware ... especially in light of the health concerns re aluminum in our diet. Seeing how much of the anodized layer came off of the All Clad cookware we'd bought pointed up just how much of that stuff had gone into our food.
Honestly unless you are a professional cook why spend the money.
I have many pieces of All Clad stainless I have picked up at garage sales and flea markets for cheap. Meh not much better than the Kirkland stainless I got as a gift many year ago.
I've got a number of All Clad pans and like them but really prefer Demeyere Apollo. Their construction and heat transfer is every bit as good as that of All Clad and the lack of rivets in handle attachment makes them a lot easier to clean.
What about the " eco green" ware cookware pieces? My coworker rec'd a cuisinart set for xmas and she loves it thus far.
go to a restaurant supply store and get the ugliest, heaviest duty aluminum pans you can get. That's what professionals actually use in world class kitchens. Just pay attention on those cooking shows that have shots of working kitchens in restaurants. You wont see those pretty shiny eco green all clad pots.
I love my All-Clad stainless, don't care for any of their non-stick, my fry pan didn't hold up very well to my high heat cooking and general abuse. I prefer to purchase specific pieces rather than a set, the 4 quart saute and the french skillets get them most use in my kitchen, along with a couple pieces of Le Creuset. I did have a Kirkland set for about 12 years and passed it on to a friend, it's still going strong and was a great price.
I just got a 15 peice calphalon cookware set for Christmas from my husband. I cook alot and wanted a good cookware set, not garbage made in China. This cookware set is made in the USA. it has sear and slide pans. The set is about $1,000 but it was on sale when my DH bought it and he got 30% off on top of that.It was well worth the money. I use them everyday and cook about 6 nights a week. Best gift I ever got. We got it at William's Sonoma. I also have an All clad 12 qt stock pot with steamer basket. I make my Marinara and meat sauce in it. so far I have used every peice in this set.
Calphalon Unison Nonstick Slide & Sear 15-Piece Cookware Set
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