The 2 Best Stainless-Steel Skillets of 2024, Tested & Reviewed
However, it very quickly began to show signs of wear after the first use, which made us doubt its longevity. Because PTFE coatings have acquired the reputation they have, manufacturers use various tramontina cookware names to obscure the fact that their pans contain PTFE. Terms and brands like T-fal, hard-anodized aluminum, Dura-Slide, DuPont Platinum—the list goes on—are all PTFE by another name.
The Great Jones Large Fry—measuring just over 10 inches wide, so not that large—is aesthetically very pleasing but tripped up big on one test. While it heated quickly and made evenly browned pancakes, the fried egg stuck to the pan’s cooking surface; gently trying to nudge it free with a rubber spatula resulted in a broken yolk. Stainless steel is porous on a microscopic level, and as the pan starts to heat up, the metal expands and the pores begin to shrink—these closing pores tend to grab onto food and cause it to stick. Proteins can also create chemical bonds with heating metal, which is why meat and eggs tend to stick even more than vegetables. Shorter people tended not to like handles that arced up gracefully from the pan—those handles were too high to pick up comfortably. Opinions diverged on how easy or hard it was to toss food in the various skillets as well.
I did tossing tests to determine which skillets made sautéing foods easier or harder and had several of my colleagues of varied body types and levels of cooking experience repeat those tests to account for personal differences. I also roasted chicken in each skillet, then sautéed vegetables, and finally deglazed the pan as one would to make a pan sauce, just to run them through a more real-world cooking exercise. Many major manufacturers offer a limited lifetime guarantee on stainless steel cookware as long as they are purchased from an authorized dealer.
If you’re looking for quality cookware with a large number of pieces, this Le Creuset set is worth a close look. It includes the ones that are most useful—a frying pan, two saucepans, a sauté pan, and a stockpot—so it’s great for anyone. The pans have a full aluminum core, all the way up the sidewalls, for great heating properties with no hot spots. The exterior layer contains extremely durable titanium to guard against scorching.
As for carbon steel, editor Joe Sevier wrote a guide for carbon-steel care and you can find our favorite carbon-steel pans here. The Zwilling Carrara Pan has a beautiful white interior, and because of how well the standard pan by this brand tramontina cookware fared, we had high hopes for it. Unfortunately, the nonstick coating was questionable right out of the box, and we quickly had to resort to using more cooking fat than we wanted to during a first use in order to avoid a stuck-on mess.
Though stainless steel is less reactive than some other types of cookware, it is not recommended that you store food (especially acidic foods) in your stainless steel pots for long periods of time. Before cleaning, always let a hot pan cool down before soaking—this will tramontina cookware set help prevent warping—then gently scrub away food particles with mild, soapy water (avoid abrasive pads like steel wool). To maintain the appearance of your stainless steel cookware, use white vinegar and water to remove stains or Bar Keepers Friend to restore shine.