The All-Clad D3 strikes a great balance between sturdiness and maneuverability. It has riveted handles, a seamless base, and comes with a stainless steel lid (All-Clad also sells glass lids separately if you prefer those).

What we’d leave: Compared to the Made-In stockpot, the handles are a bit smaller, but we’re really splitting hairs here. The biggest gripe here is the price. $350 is quite a hefty price to pay for a single piece of cookware. While it’s a fantastic stockpot, you should definitely consider how often you’ll use it before buying. Then again, you’ll never have to buy another stockpot in your life, so it is certainly worth it in the long run.

---

Best budget stockpot: Goldilocks 8 Quart Stockpot

What we loved: We really like Goldilocks cookware. At a glance, these stockpots can easily be mistaken for All-Clad. And many of the things we like about the Goldilocks stockpot are what we like about the others above. It’s wide, spacious, and lightweight (it’s a touch heavier than the overall winners, but only a touch.) Its handles are larger than All-Clad’s, as was the pot’s actual demonstrated liquid capacity. The biggest difference? The price: $95.

What we’d leave: Through cooking tests, we’ve definitely noticed differences in the quality between it and more premium brands. The pan’s surface finish is slightly rougher than All-Clad, which we’ve found makes it prone to slight discoloration over time. The pans can also be a bit more prone to scorching at high heat. When comparing to cookware with a similar price point, Goldilocks wins out on performance and design.

---

How we tested stockpots

When evaluating stockpots, we considered all the tasks that only a large pot can handle: big batch cooking, meal prepping, home canning, and, of course, making stock. These are the following tests we put each pot through to determine the winners.

---

What makes a good stockpot?

---

Other great stockpots we tested

Cuisinart Chef’s Classic Stainless-Steel Stockpot

This is an excellent budget choice for a stockpot. It has cool-grip handles and a superb, tight-fitting lid that minimizes drips and spills when you lift it to check on food. The pot is taller and narrower than our winners, though, which we weren’t as crazy about.

New in this update: After a few additional months of testing, we found an additional budget cookware set to recommend from the DTC brand Goldilocks.

The best cookware set is a 7-piece cookware set

In the grand scheme of cookware sets, a 7-piece set is relatively small. But after much conversation and debate, we think it will cover all the most common cooking tasks. The specific pieces that make up a cookware set vary slightly from brand to brand—some include a steamer insert, while others have a second saucepan instead—but 7-piece cookware sets are generally consistent in what they offer. Most have a stockpot, a 2- to 3-quart saucepan, a medium- to large-size skillet (between 10″ and 12″ in diameter), and a sauté pan. The other three pieces are actually just the lids.

With these four tools, a home cook is able to accomplish a large swath of stovetop tasks in the kitchen: pan-frying, deep-frying, sautéing, boiling, braising, searing, stewing, saucing, melting, tempering, steaming, and the list goes on. As for specific cookware sets to buy, we picked out a few below. Two are top choices from our product tests and the third comes as a recommendation from deputy food editor Hana Asbrink.

---

The best cookware set overall: All-Clad D3 or D5 7-Piece Cookware sets

All-Clad has long been an industry standard for professional restaurant kitchens in the United States. Their brand has a strong and well-regarded reputation that stands up to scrutiny, as we’ve found year after year in our product tests for the best stainless-steel skillets, saucepans, and stockpots. The D3 line is a tri-ply clad stainless steel that boasts excellent heat distribution across the cooking surface with no cold or hot spots. The D5 set is more expensive but adds two additional layers of cladding for improved heat retention. We recommend them both here. The pieces are sturdy and comfortable to handle, making them easy to maneuver across a cooktop. All-Clad cookware is expensive, but it is high-quality cookware that will last you a lifetime with good care, which is why we feel confident in recommending it to people.

---

The best budget cookware set: Goldilocks Cookware Set

As far as affordable picks go, the Goldilocks cookware set impressed us quite a bit in recent tests, and we now consider it a favorite to recommend as a budget alternative. In terms of the shape and design of each piece, the cookware strongly resembles products made by All-Clad. Are the pans a little thinner and a little more volatile and scorchy in comparison to All-Clad? Sure, but for the price they’re about as good as you can get. The set comes with two different saucepans and doesn’t include its sauté pan—the budget pick in our product test. Unfortunate, but we still think it’s worth recommending this set due to the quality it offers, and if you really want the sauté pan, you should just add it to your cart when purchasing the set.

---

Another good budget set: Ninja EverClad Commercial-Grade Cookware Set

Ninja is newer to making stainless-steel pans, but this set impressed our tester Allison Robicelli in a recent review of the best stainless-steel cookware test. We consider Ninja to be a quality budget choice compared to the higher-end options above. These pans definitely have some shortcomings; they don’t have quite the even heating of a pricier All-Clad set, and they are definitely on the heavier side. But at a fraction of the price, they are a good, affordable alternative. You also get glass lids rather than full stainless steel, which let you see the food more easily, but are more fragile. They are tempered glass, which means you can put them in the oven, but some people may choose not to.

---

A favorite from our test kitchen editor: Fissler M5 Pro-Ply 5-Ply Cookware set

Deputy food editor Hana Asbrink has an affinity for German-made cookware brand Fissler, which has become more readily available in the US in recent years. The brand’s pans can go toe-to-toe with All-Clad in terms of quality, design, and reputation. Like All-Clad, these are multi-clad stainless-steel pans with an aluminum core (this particular set is 5-ply, which means it has two additional layers of metal on top of the three the All-Clad D3 has). They heat evenly and are lightweight and comfortable in the hand. Unlike All-Clad, Fissler cookware has a welded construction instead of riveted handles, which makes it easier to clean up. It’s also got cool to the touch handles and sealed edges. This is definitely a premium cookware set, but it’s one that will stick with you for life.

---

The best cookware set for tiny a** kitchens: All-Clad 5-Piece Cookware Set

Living spaces are getting smaller, meaning that more people are using kitchenettes or similar reduced set-ups to prepare their meals at home. I’m talking efficiency apartment renters, van life people, tiny home dwellers, and steadfast minimalists. The question is then, what is the smallest arrangement of pans that allows for the greatest variety of meal preparations? Or in other words, what’s a set that takes up little space, but is versatile enough that you never feel like you’re missing a tool when cooking a typical meal?

In our tests, this pan performed phenomenally, and it got stamps of approval from both Chris and senior editor Shilpa Uskokovic in the Test Kitchen.

What we’d leave: The hardest part about owning a carbon-steel pan is building up the seasoning at first. You really should use it regularly and often from the beginning to prevent it from developing rust spots, which can happen if you don’t dry off the pan carefully in the beginning. Yes, you can just scrub it off, but it’s annoying if you are new to using these pans. However, don’t fuss too much about seasoning; the best advice is simply to keep cooking.

You can read our full review of the pan for more on how it performed.

---

How we tested carbon-steel pans

We tested each pan by cooking several batches of skin-on chicken thighs and fried eggs, judging heat distribution by looking at how evenly items cooked on different parts of the pans. For the skillets that did not come pre-seasoned, we went through the process of seasoning them ourselves with an initial layer of grapeseed oil before we got to cooking.

---

What we looked for in carbon-steel pans

---

Other carbon-steel pans we tested and liked

Smithey Farmhouse Skillet

Smithey’s entry into the world of carbon steel is, without question, one of the most ornate pieces of cookware you can buy in the category. It works well too. Once seasoned, we got slick results from the cooking surface, and if you want a statement piece to hang from a pot rack, this would be it. However, we don’t think carbon-steel pans should be expensive, and this one costs $300, so we can’t make it one of our top picks.

Matfer Bourgeat Black Carbon Steel Fry Pan

This is a carbon-steel pan preferred by many French chefs, and it can be found in the bustling kitchens of countless Michelin-starred restaurants. The brand is 200 years old and is sort of the old guard when it comes to carbon-steel cookware. It’s a heavier pan (3 lb., 14 oz.) and is pretty barebones, with a welded handle and an unseasoned cooking surface. It is designed to get the job done in high-volume kitchens that don’t have time for niceties.

De Buyer Mineral B Fry Pan

The basic Mineral B pan from the maker of our top pick comes with a welded-on handle with a heat-resistant epoxy finish that makes it easier to grasp and easier to clean because it doesn’t have rivets poking out. The problem is that the finish can melt above 400°F, making stovetop to oven cooking (something we find ourselves doing a lot with carbon-steel pans) to be a bit of a problem. De Buyer recommends keeping oven time to 10 minutes even at 400°F. The Mineral B Pro, which we’ll test in an upcoming update to this piece, comes with an oven-safe stainless-steel handle

Mauviel M’Steel Black Carbon Steel 11″ Pan

This is another classic professional chef’s workhorse similar to the de Buyer Mineral B, though slightly heavier. It also has a protective coating that took us over 10 minutes of scrubbing to remove. It’s a nice pan, just be prepared for a project when it comes out of the box.

Merten & Storck Carbon Steel 10″ Skillet With Stainless-Steel Handle

The Merten & Storck pan aced our egg test. From first use, testers noted that “a fried egg slid right off with the ease of Teflon.”

This skillet has moderately sloped sides and a generous cooking space, making it easy to sear a batch of chicken thighs or a large steak without too much cramping. The stainless-steel handle is easy to maneuver and stays relatively cool. It’s also one of the lightest pans we’ve tested, yet it still manages to retain heat well. There is a slightly more inexpensive version with a simpler carbon-steel handle, but it gets a lot hotter than the stainless, so we’d say the extra dollars are worth the additional comfort the stainless-steel handle provides.

While this pan is one of our faves, it seems that it tends to go in and out of stock pretty regularly.

---

Carbon-steel pans we don’t recommend

---

How to season a carbon-steel pan

You will find online that people can get quite opinionated about the proper way to season a pan. Sure, some people insist on certain oils, a specific number of seasoning rounds, and so on, but it all comes down to this: You have to heat a thin layer of oil on the surface of the pan to create a layer of polymerization that protects the pan from corrosion and creates a nonstick cooking surface.

With a new pan, it’s a good idea to wash it with soap and water and give it a nice scrub to remove any protective factory layer of oil or beeswax that is typically added to protect it during shipping. Once that’s done, you can season the pan in the same way you’d season a cast-iron pan. Crank the oven up to 500°F, coat the entire pan in a thin layer of oil (I like seasoning with Crisco), and then wipe off as much as you can with a paper towel—you only need a thin layer of oil. If you use too much, the seasoning might flake off. You’ll know you have the right amount if you can just barely see the oil’s sheen across the full surface of the pan. Place it in the oven for an hour. Turn off the oven and allow the pan to completely cool down inside. This last step is important because if you take it out early you may have a tacky feeling pan.

To maintain the seasoning, you can do a shorter version of the process on the stove top, by wiping the interior with a thin layer of oil and heating until the pan smokes, (remember, less is more with the oil). You’ll know you have it when your carbon-steel pan boasts a lustrous black patina.

---

Read more shopping stories on Bon Appétit

If you’re interested in finding more of the best cookware, check out our reviews of our favorite cast-iron pans, best carbon-steel woks, and best Dutch ovens.

---

Additional testing by Melissa Knific, Julia Heffelfinger, and Allison Robicelli

Very few of us are afforded the luxury of a full arsenal of All-Clad pans when we move into our first apartment. As nice as it would be for your first set of cookware to be the only set of cookware you ever have to buy, it’s much more likely that the foundation of your first kitchen will be an eclectic medley of economical cookware.

Having tested pots and pans for years now, I must (somewhat reluctantly) admit that well-made, more-expensive cookware consistently performs better than budget counterparts. By “performs better,” I mean it distributes heat more evenly, is less likely to scorch food, and tends to be more comfortable to handle, both in balance and weight. (But you can read more about all that in our reviews here.)

But this doesn’t mean budget cookware is patently unusable. Cheaper pots and pans are often less forgiving of common mistakes. It’s easier to burn food if the heat’s too high, and they’re more prone to warping if you accidentally shock them with cold water—two things green cooks tend to do. However, this doesn’t make them useless. If anything, they might help you become a better cook as you learn through the process of trial and error…and I’m speaking from personal experience!

That said, some lines of budget cookware are certainly better than others. Taking price, performance, design, and overall quality into consideration, my go-to affordable recommendation is definitely Goldilocks. Here’s why.

What I like about Goldilocks Cookware

Goldilocks pots and pans consistently impressed us with their performance and design during testing. We were able to brown onions and crisp up chicken thighs with relative ease. They’re lightweight, making them easy to maneuver with one hand. The pans have spacious surface areas for better searing and browning, and the cooking surface isn’t particularly sticky either.

In general, the shape and design of the skillet and sauté pan are similar to the broad and shallow dimensions of All-Clad pans. Goldilocks strays more with the saucepans, opting for a more typical ratio between diameter and height (All-Clad saucepans are notably tall and more narrow), but it’s clear that the makers of these pans have thought these things through.

The pans are made with tri-ply construction: two layers of stainless steel surrounding an aluminum core. For a while, cladding was synonymous with high-end cookware (hence the name All-Clad) because this layered construction distributes heat more evenly across the pan. These days, cladding is standard on most decent stainless-steel cookware, but it’s still a reliable marker of quality.

Goldilocks sells two main cookware sets simply named The Cookware Set and The Cookware Set Plus. The basic set consists of two saucepans, a 10″ skillet, and a stockpot, and three lids, with the largest fitting both the skillet and the stockpot. The plus set includes an additional 12″ skillet. They also offer a couple of other pieces, like a 3.5-quart sauté pan and a 6-quart Dutch oven. For these cookware sets, the price-to-quality ratio is pretty fantastic, with the 7-piece set going for $235.

What I don’t like about Goldilocks

Praise aside, these pans do suffer from some shortcomings. They are a bit more volatile over the heat, prone to scorching and burning if you aren’t keeping an eye on your sautéed onions. (It should be noted that similarly priced pans we’ve tested were just as, if not more, prone to this as well.) Higher quality stainless steel cookware heats at a more consistent and even pace, allowing for gradual yet expedient warming that encourages browning rather than burning. So a more reactive pan requires more attention.

The metal finish on these pans isn’t quite as polished as more expensive cookware, with an ever-so-slight rough finish on the cooking surface. While this surface texture didn’t significantly impact the pan’s performance, it did make the pan more prone to discoloration with repeated use.

Bottom line: These pans are still great.

Despite a few criticisms, I think it’s important to note that these differences in quality are really only perceptible when comparing pans in a controlled side-by-side environment. Cookware is as capable as the hands that wield it, so if you have a basic understanding of how to cook, I am confident that these pans will serve you well. Who knows, you might end up holding onto these for years and years to come.

---

Read more shopping stories on Bon Appétit