Choosing the Right Cookware - Advantages and Disadvantages

Several years ago my life style changed. Instead of pouring many hours per day into work and home maintenance, I started laying back. Since I have always loved most types of food and enjoyed a good food presentation, I turned the page of my life and started looking into preparing meals myself.

Like most aspiring new home chefs, I started slowly and began with stir-frying. I then moved into slow cookers. The next venture was into casseroles and baked dishes. (Outdoor grilling was always going on, but I expanded that into rotisserie items and different meat products and veggies.)

When it got to where I was using the stovetop more, I realized the dramatic difference among our existing pots and pans. In general I found the following (remember that I am talking about electric range cooking):

Our ancient copper bottom pots were outstanding in heat distribution and heat conduction. This pertains to both coil burners and glass top range burners. The drawback was that over time the bottom of the pots warped enough that they would not sit flatly on the burners. This was most obvious on the glass top burners. That being said, if I am grabbing a pot, I most frequently will grab one of this copper bottom pots and deal with it rocking on the burner.

Our stainless pots distributed the heat fairly enough, but the conduction of heat was far inferior to the copper bottom pots. The strong point about these stainless pots is that they have maintained their true bottom shape and you could shoot a laser sight over the bottom and not find a flaw. This feature is most welcome on our glass top burners. The construction also tends to be more substantial allowing for a magnificent cover fit. This allows lower settings to be used once the food is the temperature you wish it.

Cast iron cookware, specifically our Le Creuset Cast Iron Cookware: Now this is a different beast. Here are my two personal dislikes. 1) I like to be able to grab the handle of my skillet and move the skillet around the burner, raise it up to temporarily remove from the heat and raise it to flip/toss the ingredients. To do that with as cast iron skillet, you have to have a pretty manly wrist and even then be prepared to ice your wrist down later. This is work! 2) The handle gets hot if you have been cooking much time at all. I don't much care for using a heat mitt to handle my cookware. The good feature of this particular brand is that it is expensive and any observer will think you know what you are doing.

That brings us to non-stick cookware. My impression is that if people did not love non-stick, every household in the country would not have one. This type of cookware is POPULAR and for good reason. You can cook just about anything and not have to use anywhere close to the amount of grease as the other types AND the clean up brings a smile to your face. A drawback is that pot and skillet warping exists. The poor heat distribution and conduction exists also, but to simply fry an egg, burger, minute steak, sauté anything, etc. etc. and clean the cookware with a wipe and a little wash is just too pleasing.

In overview, if you are familiar with what your cookware can and will do, you are miles ahead of those trying to make something work that they think they should be using but can't. As Dirty Harry so aptly put, "A man's got to know his limitations".