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See why.The Best Cookware Sets
Our advice has always been to skip sets and just buy the pans you need. But new brands offering practical cookware packages compelled us to take another look.
The Best Buy cookware set from Tramontina has been discontinued, and the closest replacement from that company is a more expensive set with smaller pans in sizes we don't find as useful. In its place, we are promoting the Goldilocks cookware set as our new Best Buy.
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What You Need To Know
If you want to cook with confidence—or help a novice cook get a solid start—quality cookware is essential. You don’t have to spend a ton of money; choosing well is key. We usually insist that you buy cookware piece by piece so you pay for only what you need. To help keep track of everything, we've put together a comprehensive guide to stocking a kitchen with cookware, featuring both essential items and a few handy extras. Even so, people continue to ask us about cookware sets. There have been some interesting developments since the last time we tested cookware sets, so we decided to take another look, buying eight sets priced from about $160 to about $560, including the winning and Best Buy sets from our previous testing.
What’s Wrong With (Most) Cookware Sets
Cookware sets are different from most kitchen products in that manufacturers typically customize the contents of sets for retailers, meaning that two 10-piece sets from the same brand at different stores can contain different pans. Some sets also contain oddball additions such as colanders to plump up the total number of pieces and make a set seem more valuable. (Lids count as pieces, too.) What’s worse, manufacturers often cut costs by shrinking the pans. As a result, it’s rare to find what we regard as “full-size” cookware, such as a 12-inch skillet, 4-quart saucepan, or 8- to 12-quart stockpot, in a set. Too-small, crowded pans tend to boil over, steam instead of sear, and take longer to accomplish some cooking tasks because they require cooking food in batches.
Frankly, quality can also be an issue: We’ve seen cookware sets for astonishingly low prices, but too many consist of a pile of flimsy, nonstick-coated aluminum pans. They’re not capable of transmitting heat uniformly—and they’re not durable. It’s false economy if you’re constantly fighting your pans just to cook a good meal and you replace them every few years.
However, we recently found new brands that take a different approach. They focus on construction quality, sell directly to consumers to reduce prices, and offer standard combinations of pans, with some even featuring practical pieces of full-size cookware. We rounded up five of these sets, as well as an innovative set launched by a brand we’ve liked in the past.
What’s In Cookware Sets?
Nearly all the sets we bought contained the following pans (all slightly smaller than we preferred): a 10-inch skillet, a 3-quart saucepan, a 3-quart sauté pan (a deep, lidded frying pan with tall sides), and a 5-quart (or larger) stockpot. Most sets had additional pans, but we focused our testing on the four they had in common to help us compare s...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 3 stars out of 3.
These fully clad pans brown beautifully and feel balanced, the handles stay cool, and they’re tough as nails. The set offers essential pieces in practical sizes that will last a lifetime. The set price is a bargain: The 8-quart stockpot alone usually retails for nearly $340.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 3 stars out of 3.
This huge collection of practical, useful pan sizes and shapes comes at a truly bargain price for clad cookware. (Note: There’s also an 8-piece set, which costs about $110, with five pans [5-quart Dutch oven, 2- and 3-quart saucepans, and 8- and 10-inch frying pans].) Our only quibble: The pans in this set are a bit heavier and not quite as well-balanced as those in our top-rated set, and the handles get hot.
Recommended
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 2 stars out of 3.
We love the compact, innovative design of this set: Its nesting cookware makes it easy to store. To nest, though, the skillet was wide (which we liked), but the so-called stockpot was stumpy and flat (it resembles a sauté pan); it was impossible to cook more than a pound of pasta in it, and even that was a challenge. If you’re willing to work around this, it’s sturdy, high-performance cookware.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 1 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 3 stars out of 3.
This set was a heartbreaker. It has well-designed, balanced pans with practical sizes and shapes and comfortable, cool handles at an outstanding price. Everything cooked beautifully. And then, on the last day of abuse testing, the skillet warped badly as we heated it to 500 degrees on an induction burner, leading us to worry about the set’s durability. (A second copy of the pan did not warp when we heated it more gradually to 500 degrees, however.) Note: Since we originally tested this cookware set, the manufacturer changed its name from Potluck to Goldilocks; the products themselves remain the same.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 3 stars out of 3.
We loved that this set included mixed materials; the cast-iron Dutch oven made excellent stew and cleaned up beautifully, the fully clad metal stockpot worked well for pasta, and the tiny nonstick pan was handy for eggs. Pans generally performed well, but we disliked the bent-metal-tube handles, which were uncomfortable and got hot. Cleaning the clad cookware was a pain; it became more stained than other pans, ending up with permanently discolored surfaces (particularly on the skillet), so it quickly looked worn-out.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 2 stars out of 3.
Excellent browning and comfortable handles helped this cookware score well, but the dinky 5-quart stockpot, which was narrow and tall and just a bit bigger than our favorite large saucepan, was a big disadvantage when cooking pasta and stew; we could fit only 1 pound of pasta and had to stir furiously to keep it from sticking; it took many more batches than usual to brown the beef for the stew. The frying pan’s sides tapered down to a 7-inch cooking surface, which felt cramped.
Recommended with reservations
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 1 stars out of 3.
Steaks and meatballs browned well in this thick five-ply cookware, but the pans felt heavy and off-balance. Handles heated up on the stovetop, and their fat, round shape turned in our hands and made it hard to lift pans full of food. We liked that the set included a saucier with rounded corners for easy stirring. The biggest flaw: It had no stockpot or vessel larger than 3 quarts, so we couldn’t cook pasta or stew.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 3 stars out of 3.
- Cleanup/Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Composition of Set: 1 stars out of 3.
This set lacked a stockpot, so we couldn’t cook pasta or stew. The knife felt unbalanced, unimpressive, and unnecessary in a cookware set. We wish the saucepan were bigger. That said, the pans it did include were tough and cooked food fairly well, and the handles (though skinny) stayed cool.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Lisa McManus
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.