Pots and pans are among the essential pieces of kitchen gear, along with a good knife, bowls and a spatula. I don’t know about where you live but here I can walk into any department store, Costco, restaurant supply house, specialty cookware store and even the supermarket, and find a dizzying array of pots and pans to choose from. What’s a person to do? How do you know what kind to buy? Unless you have some basic understanding of the various materials and manufacturing processes it can be a bit of a crap shoot.

The first thing to know about pots and pans is this; there is no one type of pot/pan that will do it all. Each one has its pros and cons.

For a couple of generations now some of the most popular pots and pans have non-stick coatings for pretty obvious reasons; food doesn’t stick and clean up is easy. What can be better than that? Well, a few things actually but we’ll get to that later. Let’s take a look at some of the more common material options available to us:

Aluminum or Aluminium (depending on which side of the pond you live) – It has excellent heat conducting properties, almost as good as copper but at a fraction of the cost. Uncoated aluminum isn’t that common outside of commercial kitchens but it is available to home cooks from restaurant supply houses. Cooking with uncoated aluminum cookware is fine so long as it does’t involve any acids which can result in discolored food with a distinct metallic taste. There are some tenuous links between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease but that is a contentious issue and since I have no medical knowledge I’ll leave that one alone! I personally have no qualms about using uncoated aluminum, but that’s just me. I’m not advocating for it one way or the other; it is purely a personal choice we must each make. Most of the aluminum cookware available at retail is coated with some kind of nonreactive material. More on that later.

Hard Anodized Aluminum – You’ve seen these; thick, heavy, black aluminum with no applied coating. Anodized aluminum is made by dipping the utensil in an acid bath and passing an electric current through it. Some molecular magic takes place on the surface of the aluminum and it turns black and incredibly hard. Harder, in fact than steel, making it safe to use with metal utensils. The open pores of raw aluminum are closed up in the anodizing process making the pot (kinda) non-stick. It’s not non-stick like Teflon is non-stick but it’s better than raw aluminum or stainless steel or plain carbon steel which have absolutely no non-stick properties at all. The one major drawback to anodized aluminum is again, acidic foods. (Curses! Is there nothing to stand up to acidic foods?) In this case, acid is used to create the hard, non-porous surface and it is acid that will remove it. If you cook enough acidic foods in your anodized pot (like tomato based sauces for example), it will cause the surface to revert to its raw aluminum state eventually. If you make a pot of marinara and store it overnight in the fridge, still in the pot, the anodized surface will be gone in the morning. Putting these pots and pans in the dishwasher is generally not recommended either so it becomes bit of a chore washing them by hand. A minor negative point but still…

Non-Stick – Non-stick cookware is pretty much ubiquitous all over the world. Most non-stick pans are made from aluminum because it it cheap and has excellent heat conducting properties. It used to be Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE for short) was the only non-stick coating on cookware. The best known formula being Teflon, but these days there are variety of other, non-toxic alternatives to choose from.

(As an aside, Teflon was discovered in 1938 in a DuPont laboratory where an experiment went wrong. That failed experiment had a major impact on the rest of the 20th century. In the 1940s and 50s Teflon was used primarily in the electronics industry. Then around 1962 or so, a frustrated French housewife said to her engineer husband, “If this stuff is so good why don’t you put it on my frying pan?” (or words to that effect) and the rest, as the saying goes, is history. The coating at the time was marketed as TEFAL for Teflon Aluminum, and later shortened to T-fal, a product still available today.)

Non-stick coatings allow for low fat or even fat free cooking, touted as “healthy” (don’t even get me started!!) When it is new non-stick coatings work really well. The trouble is they don’t last long before the non-stick properties start to deteriorate and worse, bits of the coating material start to flake off, some of the particles undoubtedly being ingested along with the food. Perhaps the most damaging aspect of PTFE coatings to humans is Polymer Fume Fever, commonly called Teflon Flu. Under normal circumstances a pan is heated on the stove top and food or liquid is added, keeping the temperature of the pan relatively low. However, a dry pot left on the heat unattended will quickly reach temperatures in excess of 500°F (260°C) at which point the PTFE begins to degrade. Gas byproducts of the degradation process, when inhaled, cause flu like symptoms. The takeaway from this? Don’t leave a dry PTFE coated pan unattended on the flame!

As mentioned earlier, other non-stick, non-toxic coatings have popped up in recent years. So called ceramic coatings are PTFE free and so do not pose any of associated health risks. I’m not a huge fan. I have a couple of ceramic coated frying pans that look to be in pristine condition. Not a mark on them but they have long since lost any non-stick properties.

One thing to remember about cleaning non-stick pans, never ever put them in the dishwasher, even if the manufacturer say it is dishwasher safe. The harsh chemicals from the dishwasher detergent will destroy the non-stick coating in no time flat.

Most non-stick cookware is relatively inexpensive (although some brands can get quite pricy) but still, don’t go for the cheapest options. You want to look for a pan that is fairly substantial; that is, not obviously flimsy, and the handle should be riveted on to the pan. On some less expensive models the handle is screwed on to the pan and over time the screw will come loose. You can dig out your Philips head screwdriver and crank that thing down but I can tell you from experience it will never be tight again.

All in all though, coated aluminum is a good choice for cookware because it is durable, easy to maintain and relatively inexpensive. You get a couple of years out of your non-stick frying pan then chuck it and buy a new one.

Cast Iron – Some people swear by these pots and aficionados will use nothing else. On the plus side, cast iron is inexpensive, especially when you consider its longevity. A well cared for cast iron piece is literally an heirloom lasting generations. The more often it is used, the better it becomes. However, that kind of long service comes at a price; not monetary but in terms of tender loving care. It takes a lot of use and some initial frustration before the cast iron is properly seasoned and develops a non-stick surface almost as good as an applied coating. I’ve had my cast iron skillet for over 20 years (cost me $10 at the time, about $30 now) and I can fry eggs in it without them sticking. To get to that stage (and keep it there) I had to scrub it clean with salt and oil, rinse it out in warm water – No Soap – heat it over a flame on the stove top and wipe it with a thin coat of oil. It is now sufficiently seasoned that a quick rinse and a wipe with a plastic scrubber pad and a hint of dish soap is enough to get it clean. It still has to be heated on the stove top and wiped with oil after each use though. Never, ever, ever does it go in the dishwasher! Now, that said, it isn’t exactly the end of civilization as we know it if some innocent with good intentions maltreats your prized cast iron pan. In a worst case scenario the seasoning you have spent many hours over many months building up will be gone and you will have to start all over again from the beginning. I’ve made it clear to my dearly beloved that if ever that should happen it will bring into question the future of our relationship! I think the message got through…

Another plus for cast iron is its capacity to retain heat. It is not a particularly good conductor of heat but it holds a lot of it. That is to say, it takes a huge amount of heat energy to heat the pan up and all that energy is stored in the pan. When you add cold food to a hot pan, heat is transferred from the pan to the food and the food cooks. If you drop a piece of meat in an aluminum pan, for example, which does not have the heat capacity of cast iron, the meat robs the pan of its heat and cools the pan down immediately. It takes a lot more heat energy to transmit through the pan to the meat to get a good sear which translates to good flavor. If you don’t have a good heat output from your burner it can take a while to get the pan hot again. In the meantime the meat is stewing in its juices instead of developing a nice brown, flavorful crust. With cast iron it takes a while to get the pan screaming hot but when you drop in the steak, the pan hardly cools down at all, resulting in a crust on the meat that is GB&D (that’s Golden Brown & Delicious).

On the down side, cast iron is heavy! You’ve seen these TV chefs who dump a load of chopped veggies in a frying pan and give them a toss now and again, flipping the pan in that theatrical way they do. You’d break your wrist if you tried that with a large cast iron pan. To give you an idea, my 12″ (30cm) aluminum, non-stick pan weighs 2 1/2 lb (1.15 Kg) and my 12″ cast iron pan is almost 8 lb (3.5 Kg)!

The handles on cast iron pans (I’m talking about the one piece pans, not the ones with separate wooden handles) are short and stubby and they get just as screaming hot as the rest of the pan. It’s easy to get burned if you forget your pot holder. And there is the aforementioned special care and attention they need. Still, I recommend having at least one cast iron pan, properly seasoned, for those occasions when nothing else will do.

Enameled Cast Iron – Taking the cast iron idea to the next level, a French company called Le Creuset takes a raw cast iron pot and coats it in enamel. The interior enamel is usually a light beige color while the outside comes in a variety of attractive colors. (Sounds like a commercial now, doesn’t it?) The enamel is not and never will be non-stick but that’s OK. It makes up for it with its durability.

Le Creuset pots and pans are hugely expensive and to many households, cost prohibitive. The reason for the high cost (apart from the fact they can get away with it) is the production methods and materials used. There are many enameled cast iron pretenders out there much cheaper than Le Creuset (though still not all that cheap) whose product is not nearly as good. Le Creuset enameled pots are at the opposite end of the price range from plain cast iron but like plain cast iron, a Le Creuset piece will last a lifetime without the tedious care needed for it’s naked cousin.

Plain Carbon Steel – This material has become more popular recently. It has many of the benefits and drawbacks of cast iron; it is very durable and it needs to be seasoned and cared for like cast iron but is more expensive. it is much lighter than cast iron too, making it easier to handle. I have no first hand experience with this material so I am not really qualified to offer any opinion. I will say that in my research I saw that reviews on carbon steel cookware are mixed. If you are in the market for new cookware you might consider this but do your own careful research before you buy.

Stainless Steel – Ever more popular in recent years, stainless steel cookware has become almost as ubiquitous as non-stick pans. As with all kinds of cookware there is the good stuff, the not so good stuff and the downright bad stuff. Needless to say, you will pay more for the good stuff but if your budget can run to it, when it comes to stainless steel cookware this is the time to splurge and don’t waste your money on the cheap stuff. In this case the old adage, “you get what you pay for”, was never more apt.

Stainless steel is impervious to pretty much anything, even that accursed acidic food that is the enemy of aluminum. You may hear that salt will cause pitting in stainless steel and so it will. However, that takes a really long time and in the kitchen, unless you leave a pot of salted water sitting on the counter while you go on vacation for a month, salt pitting isn’t going to be an issue.

Stainless Steel is a really bad conductor of heat. A plain stainless steel pot will get hot where the flame touches it and stay relatively cool where it doesn’t, creating unwanted hot spots. (Beware thin, cheap stainless steel pots!) To get around this manufacturers sandwich a good heat conductor (usually aluminum) between layers of steel so you get the heat conducting benefits of the core and the durability of the steel. Some models have a copper core for its superior heat conducting properties for which you pay a premium. The aluminum core models are expensive enough as it is and the difference in performance is negligible.

Some stainless steel pans have a thick bottom with its heat conducting core and thin, single ply steel sides. It is a compromise and one I don’t recommend. These pots are intended for use with induction cook tops because the thick plate of the base won’t warp. The fully clad pots and pans where the core goes all the way up the sides are far superior and as mentioned, if your budget can manage it, they are the better choice. As expensive as they are, the good ones will last pretty much for ever with normal use and are a good investment.

Copper – Actually, not that common these days but still available, copper has one distinct advantage over all other materials, it is an excellent heat conductor. That means even heat distribution and virtually no hot/cold spots.

The drawbacks to copper cookware are many. In the first place uncoated copper reacts to acidic foods and produces toxic byproducts. That’s why the inside of copper cookware is usually coated with a non-reactive material, traditionally tin. As the tin coating wares off the pot has to be sent away to be re-tinned, an expensive and inconvenient process since you don’t have the use of the pot for the duration. These days copper cookware is more likely to be lined with or sandwiched between layers of stainless steel. If the outside of the pot is exposed copper it needs to be cared for regularly otherwise it will tarnish and loose one of its most endearing qualities – its stunning good looks. And lastly, copper is very expensive! So, unless you have pots of money (pun intended) there is no benefit to owning copper cookware other than bragging rights.

To wrap it up – So what does all this boil down to? Well, first off, don’t go cheap. Fork out for the good stuff if you can, take care of it and it will last a long time. Buy a cast iron pan, get it seasoned and it will cook meat like no other. Save up and get yourself a large Le Creuset Dutch oven (casserole) type pot for great pot roasts, soups and stews. Use good quality stainless steel for every day, general purpose cooking and get a small, medium and large non-stick frying pan for delicate foods.

Cookware manufactures are constantly innovating and new products are being introduced to the market all the time. Some are worth a second look but it seems to me that the old standbys are a reliable choice. Newer products tend to be very expensive, notably a product called Hestan which is one of the most expensive brands on the market, way out of reach for the average household.

And one last piece of advice, don’t buy a cookware set. You are going to end up with at least one piece in the set you will never use. Better to buy just the pieces you need.