Warranty: Does this cookware come with a warranty, and is that warranty honored by the manufacturer?.Cost-per-year-of-use: You'll pay more up front for clad stainless cookware (or at least you should), but you should also consider the cost-per-year-of-use? Fore example, a $150 stainless steel skillet is a better deal than a $30 nonstick skillet because you will replace the nonstick skillet every couple of years, but you will never have to replace the stainless skillet.Piece sizes can vary even among sets of the same brand, so be sure to check the piece sizes in any set before you decide to buy. Best Set Pieces: We picked cookware sets that we thought had the best pieces for the best value.Design (ease of use as well as aesthetics): Are these pans easy to handle? Are the handles comfortable? Do the lids fit well? Can you pour without dripping? Are they a pleasure to look at and use?.Durability: Is the stainless steel of high enough quality to last a lifetime? Can they take a licking and keep on cooking?.
Heating Performance: How well does the cookware conduct heat? How even is the heating? How responsive is the cookware to temperature changes? How long does the cookware retain heat? In clad stainless cookware, heating performance depends on the quality of the internal heating core, so we spend a fair amount of time explaining how it works.)Īmong all the clad stainless steel cookware brands, we sought the best quality using these criteria: (If you don't know the difference between "full cladding" and "disc-cladding," we explain it below.
#Stainless steel cookware full#
Much of the disc-clad stainless cookware sold here is mediocre quality, so to simplify testing, we stuck to brands with full cladding. While there are many high quality brands of disc-clad cookware on the market, they are not popular in the US. Stainless steel cooking sets are the most durable, versatile cookware on the market, so we eliminated other types of cookware-cast iron, nonstick, etc.-as well as disc-clad stainless cookware. The first thing we did was narrow the field down to fully clad stainless steel cookware.
We put hundreds of hours of research and testing went into selecting the best clad stainless steel cooking sets. Back to top How We Picked the Best Clad Stainless Steel Cookware Sets