Pots and Pans

By The Editors

Credit: André Baranowski

Our saucepans are the most popular pots in our kitchen: we recruit them for gravies, for delicate sauces like béchamel, and even to boil our morning egg. The best are made with a sandwich of different metals; our favorite is the 3-ply, 3-quart ANOLON ULTRA CLAD SAUCEPAN (shown in picture to left, top left), which includes layers of fast-heating aluminum and durable, nonreactive stainless steel.

Copper pots are the most efficient conductors of heat, so foods get hot lightning fast and cook evenly. The downside? They're expensive. We think the stainless steel–lined 3.1-quart MAUVIEL COPPER WINDSOR SAUCEPAN (shown in picture above, center) is well worth the price: its flared sides (the signature feature of a windsor pan) speed up evaporation, a boon when you're reducing sauces and sautéing. The pot is heavy enough that we can stir without holding the handle, leaving one hand free to tend to dishes on other parts of the stove.

From Germany to Morocco, home cooks rely on pressure cookers, which use steam to create a high-pressure chamber, to get dinner on the table fast. Pressure promotes speedy cooking, allowing dishes like beef stew to get done in half the time, without losing any of their tender juiciness. Our favorite is the 6-quart FAGOR DUO PRESSURE COOKER (shown in picture above, top right), with its comfortable handle, stainless-steel body, and easy-to-control settings.

A nonstick pan is our choice for frying eggs and delicate fish filets. The 10-inch T-FAL ULTIMATE FRY PAN (shown in picture above, bottom right), from the French company that pioneered nonstick cooking in the 1950s, is the sturdiest around. Unlike Teflon-coated pans, it has a hard surface, made of a plastic-based resin called PTFE, that is virtually scratchproof and stands up to metal utensils.

The 4-quart ALL-CLAD STRAIGHT-SIDED SAUTÉ PAN (shown in picture above, bottom left) is a multipurpose workhorse with a stainless-steel exterior and a quick-heating aluminum core. Its wide, flat surface offers maximal contact with the stove-top heat source, and the straight sides help trap moisture.