Kitchen Tools: Starter Cooking Sets

You made the decision to be a home cook and start practicing it daily, but what will you do without the pots and pans to cook things in?  There are a lot of options ranging from cheap to expensive, different colors, different materials, even things made for different stoves!

It may be a bad experience for you if you go to Bed Bath & Beyond and pick out the cheapest set to use.  Then, after maybe a month of daily use, your pot is warping and your pan is discoloring. There are things to look out for when selecting your pots and pans:

1. What type of range do you have?  Is it an electric, gas, or induction cooktop?
2. How many people are you cooking for regularly? Just yourself?
3. How often do you expect to cook?  Daily?
4. What kind of meals do I want to cook? Will it be larger or smaller portions?

Once you determine your answers to those questions, you can get a sense for the sizes and number of pans you may need.  You may want a decent range of sizes or you may only need one or two.  For information about the different types of materials, check out this House Beautiful article.

For myself, moving into my first apartment as a senior in college, I was cooking for me and my boyfriend.  I purchased one 12" pan with a glass lid, one small saucepan, one larger saucepan, and had a set of three glass pots (small, medium, stockpot) taken from home.  These functioned well for me since I liked to cook daily and I am cooking for myself and my boyfriend.  Also, everyone else in our apartment often wanted to borrow my large pan because they wouldn't spend the money to get their own.  I shared, but now, I regret letting my housemates abuse my pan or else it would've lasted longer (I had to throw it out after 2 years).

Moving into a new apartment this past year with only myself and my boyfriend, I was happy to buy myself a nice gift of a full set of matching pots and pans.  I spend a long time debating on how much I preferred to spend and what type of set I want to get.  Sales on Amazon finally convinced me to go ahead and buy a nonstick, decent-priced starter set.  I decided that should it last me long enough through when I have a house of my own and a gourmet kitchen,  I would upgrade and get a real stainless set.  So, without further adieu, these are the reviews for items I have owned and recommend.

• Anolon Advanced Hard Anodized Nonstick 12-Inch Covered Ultimate Pan
• KitchenAid Hard Anodized Nonstick 10-Piece Cookware Set