It’s a good idea to know what you’re looking for before making any shopping decisions as it will help you get the best value for your money. Once price match is agreed, our offer will be valid within 48 hours only. Donna Currie is a food writer and blogger specializing in recipes and kitchen gadgets. She covers kitchen tools and gadgets for The Spruce Eats and is the author of Make Ahead Bread. Michael Sullivan has been a staff writer on the kitchen team at Wirecutter since 2016. Previously, he was an editor at the International Culinary Center in New York.
The glass lids are easy to clean, and the pans can safely go on a variety of burners. Gas, electric, glass, and halogen stovetops can all accommodate this without damaging it. The exterior is covered with black nonstick coating, which makes it suitable for all kinds of cooktops including induction.
Most of the items have covers, apart from the 8-quart stock pot, the 10.25-inch frying pan, and the 3-quart sauté pan, which share one interchangeable lid between them. The set is available in gray, black, or slate gray, and comes in an array of sizes. This 17-piece hard-anodized cookware set has all the essentials necessary for the kitchen plus a few extras. With its Quantanium nonstick cooking surface, the pots and pans offer a lasting food release, which means you won’t have to use as much oil and butter. It also features cast stainless steel handles with a cool grip to ensure the handles stay cool on the stovetop. When you’re shopping for a stainless steel cookware set, it’s important to note how many pieces there are and what’s included.
You’ll likely never have to replace the All-Clad D3 Stainless 10-Piece Set. It was hands down the best-quality cookware we tested in this price range ($700 at the time of publishing). The pots and pans are the perfect weight, and due to their superior heat conduction, they cooked food more evenly than our top-pick set. This cookware set was one cuisinart griddler elite of the only ones that became spotlessly clean after washing—even when coated with burned-on oil. And although this set is much more expensive than our main pick, we think it’s worth the extra cost for its durability and proven longevity. Overall, the best stainless steel cookware set is the Cuisinart MultiClad Pro Triple Ply 12-Piece Set.
The Goldilocks set’s stick handles are almost identical to the stick handles on some Cuisinart pans . With the All-Clad set, we liked the angle of the pans’ stick handles and their rounded bottoms, which fit nicely in our hands. We prepared small batches of caramel in the saucepans to check for hot spots. Carbon steel, like cast iron, requires more upkeep to maintain the cooking surface, and it can rust if not properly seasoned. Anodized aluminum’s dark color can make it hard to tell whether foods are browning properly, which is especially important for challenging tasks like making caramel.
When you are done cooking, you can put it in the dishwasher for simplified and easy clean-up. Available in both red and black, the metallic exterior complements any kitchen decor. Sharon Franke has been testing and writing about kitchen equipment for over 30 years. Before becoming a cooking tools expert, she spent seven years working as a professional chef in New York City restaurants. In her free time, she’s busy baking sourdough bread and rustling pots and pans on her own stove.
Cuisinart’s stainless steel and hard-anodized aluminum collections are oven-safe up to 500°F, but the aluminum pans are only safe up to 350°F. All of its stainless steel cookware is induction-compatible, and the Ceramica XT and Elements Pro Induction non-stick collections are cuisinart pots and pans set too. The copper offerings are fully-clad with a copper exterior, aluminum core, and steel cooking surface. Stainless steel cookware is either fully-clad or single-ply with an encapsulated (cladded or impact-bonded) base to improve cooking performance and heat distribution.