“They’re at the opposite end of the spectrum from cast iron,” Nitahara says. That means they heat up quickly and cool down just as fast, giving you more control when you’re making something you have to monitor closely, like a caramel sauce. The details: Copper frying pans are expensive, but they offer superb heat conductivity. Here are two recommended cast-iron pans from our tests.īest for: Delicate proteins like fish and seafood, melting sugar, making candy, and sauces. Because of the enamel coating, the coated pans are a bit easier to clean than the uncoated ones. We also judge how easy they are to clean. We sear steaks, brown scallops, and bake cornbread to see how well a cast-iron pan works for home cooks. Our tests of coated and uncoated cast-iron pans show how versatile this cookware can be. But the pans are heavy, and you have to be patient when heating them up because they don’t come up to temperature fast. And if well cared for, cast iron develops a patina that releases food almost as well as nonstick. That makes their typically low price even more attractive. The details: Cast-iron frying pans are practically indestructible, and they’re handed down for generations in many families. And they retain heat so well that they’re a good choice for deep-frying chicken, doughnuts, or other foods because they keep the oil at a constant temperature. Cast-iron pans are ovenproof, so you can use them to roast meats like beef or pork and to bake cornbread, deep-dish pizza, shepherd’s pie, and more. Here are two recommended stainless steel pans from CR’s tests.īest for: Almost any food that needs searing, including steak and burgers. You’d think that all stainless pans would be about the same to clean, but our tests show that some require a lot more scrubbing than others. We also conduct a cleaning test to see how easy it is to remove cooked-on food. In CR’s tests of stainless steel pans, we measure heating evenness by cooking pancakes, and we gauge how evenly a pan sautés by cooking potatoes until they’re tender. He adds that the shiny surface of a stainless pan makes it easy to see whether your food is browning. “The only time we don’t use them is on egg day, when we use nonstick,” he says. The details: Nitahara says that 95 percent of the pans used in the CIA’s teaching kitchens are stainless steel because they can take a lot of punishment. Because it’s ovenproof, stainless is also a good choice for foods that you start on the stovetop and then move to the oven to finish, like thick pork chops. You can see how all the pans we test perform in our frying pan ratings and learn more about the different types of pans in our cookware buying guide.īest for: Almost any food that needs frying, browning, or searing. But each does a different thing.”īelow, you’ll find advice on how to choose the right frying pan for how you cook, plus highlights of top-performing pans from CR’s tests, listed alphabetically and not by rank. “On the low end of the price scale are nonstick and cast iron copper is on the high end. “There are a few things to consider when you’re buying cookware, including how you cook, durability, and price,” says Lance Nitahara, an assistant professor at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in Hyde Park, N.Y. And that’s why Consumer Reports tests several types of frying pans, including nonstick, cast iron, stainless steel, carbon steel, and copper. That makes sense because not every skillet is appropriate for every cooking task. Frying pans are the workhorses of the kitchen, and if you’re like most home cooks, you probably own more than one-and more than one type.
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