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Cookware
With nearly 40,000 Amazon reviews and a price that rounds to fourteen dollars, the HIWARE 9-inch springform pan is one of the most-bought baking pans in the US. It promises a double-layer non-stick coating, a sturdy stainless steel latch, and a leakproof design — claims that deserve scrutiny before you plan your next cheesecake. Short answer: it largely delivers, with one honest caveat you should know upfront.
The OXO Obsidian 12" Carbon Steel Frying Pan is a pre-seasoned, lightweight skillet that bridges the gap between cast iron durability and nonstick convenience — without the PFAS coating of either. Named Wirecutter's 2025 Best Pick for carbon steel, it earns that recognition, though carbon steel isn't a drop-in replacement for nonstick and first-time owners should know what they're getting into.
The GreenPan Valencia Pro is America's Test Kitchen's pick for best ceramic nonstick frying pan — a hard anodized skillet with a diamond-infused, PFAS-free coating that's earned 4.4 stars from over 8,600 Amazon buyers. It's the pan for home cooks who want reliable egg performance and easy cleanup without the PFAS chemistry of traditional nonstick. The honest caveat: ceramic nonstick is a different category than PTFE, with a shorter coating lifespan, and the Valencia Pro is no exception.
Nordic Ware invented the Bundt pan in 1950, and the Original 12-Cup in Graphite is the direct descendant of that design — a 1.8-pound cast-aluminum pan with a premium PFAS-free nonstick coating that holds a 4.8-star average from more than 8,500 Amazon ratings. Wirecutter recommends the Nordic Ware Original as the best Bundt pan after head-to-head testing, and the brand has won America's Test Kitchen approval in every bundt pan review they've run. The short version: this pan produces beautiful, evenly browned cakes for under $35 — but only if you grease it correctly every time and never put it near a dishwasher.
Lodge's L8GP3 is the round 10.25-inch pre-seasoned cast iron grill pan that has quietly become the default answer to "how do I get grill marks indoors?" It is heavy, simple, and cheap. After living with one through steaks, chicken thighs, smashed zucchini, and a lot of overpriced lemons, here is what it does well and what it does not.
The Le Creuset Bread Oven is what happens when a brand best known for enameled Dutch ovens looks at the home sourdough movement and builds a purpose-shaped vessel for it. It is heavy, it is not cheap, and yes — a generic enameled Dutch oven will also bake bread. After regular use, though, the case for the dedicated bread oven is stronger than it sounds on paper.
The Carote 10-piece set is one of Amazon's quietest cookware juggernauts — tens of thousands of ratings, a four-star-plus average, and a price that puts a full starter kitchen under a hundred dollars. The honest review: it does exactly what its price suggests, no more and no less. Whether that's good news depends entirely on what you need cookware to do.
The Lodge 14-inch cast iron wok is what happens when a 130-year-old American foundry decides to interpret a Chinese stir-fry pan through the lens of suburban stovetops. It is heavy, flat-bottomed, pre-seasoned, and built to outlive its owner. If you want the wok-tossing romance of a carbon steel pan, look elsewhere — but for searing power and zero learning curve, this is the easiest "real" wok you can buy.
The original Always Pan was a marketing triumph more than a cookware one — beautiful in photos, mediocre in practice, with a ceramic nonstick that wore through in months. The Always Pan 2.0 is the version that should have shipped first. It keeps the Instagram-friendly look, drops the gimmicky wood-handled spatula trick, and replaces the slick-but-fragile coating with something that actually survives a year. At $150 it is still a premium ask for an 10.5-inch ceramic skillet, but it is no longer just a pretty pan.
The Field Company No. 8 is the skillet that re-opened the conversation about American cast iron. It's lighter than a comparable Lodge, polished to a smooth machined surface, and priced like a piece of cookware you're supposed to hand down. After everyday cooking — eggs, steaks, cornbread, sheet-pan-style roasts — it earns most of its hype, but not all of it.
The classic Lodge 12-inch skillet is the default first cast iron pan in millions of American kitchens — heavy, capable, and cheap. Lodge's Chef Collection version is the same idea built for people who actually cook on a stove every day: thinner walls, smoother cooking surface, sloped sidewalls, and a much friendlier handle. After putting one through searing, eggs, cornbread, and a few weeks of daily abuse, it's the Lodge I'd buy if I were starting over.
The Caraway 10.5" ceramic fry pan is the piece most people end up holding when they decide they're "done with Teflon." It looks great on a stovetop, the coating is PTFE- and PFOA-free, and it slides eggs around like a dream out of the box. The question — as with every ceramic pan — is how it cooks a year from now.