Your Kitchen Aid cookware looks like great stuff... thick aluminum is great for any cooking. My personal bias is against most non-stick surfaces when using a lot of heat. I would suggest something else for searing and pan frying.

A cast iron skillet is good to have too - inexpensive, durable (just follow a few basic cleaning tips), heats evenly and able to easily withstand higher BTU's.

I don't know anything about the KA pans in particular, but I'd agree with the suggestions about high heat and non-stick surfaces generally. It's useful, IMO, to have a cast-iron skillet, as well as a stainless saute pan of some sort (and I'm assuming you have a stock pot that's different). High BTU burners shouldn't always be on high, but sometimes you'll want high heat. Also, any sort of pan cooking where you want to develop a fond for a sauce or gravy is better without the non-stick surface. For all other purposes -- and there are many -- I don't know that there's anything wrong with your pans. If you're happy with them otherwise, maybe supplement them with a couple of useful pieces instead of replacing all at once?

I am sure those will work fine but they wont last very long.

I have gone through countless types of what is supposedly the best non stick cookware over the past 30 years and have come to the conclusion that they are ALL just plain manure in the long run. They cost a fortune and even the best only last 5-10 years tops. Although the Swiss Diamond cookware is good about replacing any pots/pans that bite the dust over the years, just cost about $8-$10 in shipping.
The best by far is cast iron, it only gets better with age and is barely broken in good after 10 years and is every bit as non stick if not more-so than the very best nonstick ever will be.
I plan to replace ALL of my cookware to Cast Iron, just plain like Lodge and also a few enamel coated pots like Le Creuset for stews and soups plus a couple of the DeBuyer Mineral iron pans.

Nothing comes close to beating Cast iron be it plain, enamel or spun.

I'm not sure what your KA pots are like, exactly, but I'm guessing they might be like my Belgique stainless cookware, which has the disk bottom with the thinner sides. Mine like that are holding up just fine, but are only really OK for boiling water, or cooking things in ample water. Otherwise, the heat coming up the outsides will actually burn things on the sides, where the metal is thinner.

To avoid this problem, any cast iron is great, as mentioned, and also tri-ply cookware, which is equally thick on sides and bottom. In other words, your KA will work, but won't be the most satisfactory in most circumstances.

You guys will be surprised what kinda pans are used in commercial settings.. range from 5-10 bucks - 15 bucks per pan max.

Having said that all or any pans will be fine... majority of pans are not made for high heat/flames so pans with plastic handles or pans with teflon/non stick coated whether anodized or not wont last long.

Like someone suggested keep the pans but buy some cheapish steele and or steel/nickel pans.

If you want to go into even heating distribution nothing beats the all clad followed by the calphalon lines... there are probably dozens of others plated options i.e have a thick base thats glued, be careful as on high heat after a while those bases may come off so make sure the pans have good warranty.

I rarely use non stick.

jmith is absolutely correct-- if you have a nice hot burner you don't need much in the way of fancy cookware. Having been using a mixture of Calphalon and All clad for the last decade and a half I am now convinced that they are just trying to make up for poor heat. That's why they are so heavy.

I have finally switched to this:
Vollrath EZ series

Cheap as dirt, light weight, spectacular non-stick coating, rivetless interior, stay cool handle, and, for crying out loud, free shipping. Nothing against the rest but it's just another example of how "residential professional" is a pile of BS.

As for cast iron, I have a couple pieces but I certainly wouldn't use it for everything. I need a pan to cool as rapidly as it heats and that surely does not happen with cast iron.

Check out the link. The 8" version is all of $22!!

-Stooxie

Ah, this thread has turned into a debate on cookware. So I will disagree with stooxie's statement that "if you have a nice hot burner you don't need much in the way of fancy cookware."

The worst cookware is thin cheap stainless steel, or that Revere ware, with the thin copper bottom that is absolutely useless. Good cookware, on the other hand, is a pleasure to use.

I would say especially with high heat. The cheap stainless stuff doesn't cook, it just burns. But I would agree with most of the other posts. Disc bottomed pans (aluminum bonded to a stainless pan can be pretty good on the bottom, (and great as skillets for pancakes and the thick bottoms are great as stockpots) but the thin sides can indeed get hot and burn sauces.. and if the encapsulated bottom isn't welded and you forget it's on the burner, it's likely to melt off (this has happened to me on a pan similar to what Rhome uses).

The all clad, or all tri-ply are the most reliable, and easy to clean. They don't warp and last forever. Are they the best? well it depends.

For instance, while I wouldn't make sauces with it, I think a cast iron skillet and a porcelain coated French oven pot are very important to have. My Griswold skillet is my go-to pan for eggs, potatoes, etc. And like Nunyabiz says, nothing sticks to it when it's seasoned well. Yes they hold their heat, but sometimes you want that.

There is a reason why traditionally, thick copper pots have been used at home and in French restaurants. But they are heavy, very expensive and hard to maintain, even the newer ones with stainless interiors...

I have some non-stick (and I only paid $4.99 for my 8" thick aluminum pan from the restaurant supply store), but I only use it occasionally for melting cheese.

Interesting discussion. I don't have an answer but I'll do what I do best--making the matter even more confusing.

I have a gas burner (18k btu) and an induction cooktop (the biggest element is 3kw, which should be > 20k btu). I mainly do wok cooking.

When I use my cheap, thin, carbon steel wok on the gas stove, no problem! So I know where Stooxie's comments come from.

When I used it on induction, it was a disaster. alexr said it well--food got burnt, not cooked. After several tries, I found an expensive, heavy, 7-ply wok that worked for induction.

Can someone explain this?

To OP: I'm sorry for hijacking your post. I think you should try your current cookware on your new professional rangetop. My guess is they'll do just fine.

I also have grand luck with a cheap carbon steel wok on my gas stove, but that cooking method doesn't work for everything. Other than wok-cooking, my experiences bear out what Alexr wrote. Thankfully, none of the bottoms of my old cookware burnt off! ;-)

I forgot about a BIG pot of beans I started yesterday...Cooking over medium heat in my 16 qt triply stock pot. They cooked away for hours without any attention or stirring. No sticking and no burning...I was shocked. If they'd been in the stainless cookware or anything cheap and thin, I'm quite sure I would've been throwing them away and figuring out how to clean the mess out of the pot. Not that this is my typical cooking behavior, or that I'd recommend trying it... lol.

dapitou, I'll try to answer part of your question. But first, thin carbon steel is a better conductor of heat than thin stainless steel.

And stir fry/Wok cooking is indeed very hot cooking. I watch them cook at the restaurants with their 100+ BTU burners and it's quite interesting. Hot pan, cold oil, and brief cooking times, and throwing or shaking or quickly stirring the food around and it's done. Noodles are boiled separately, and meat is cooked first and then set aside while the veggies are cooked then added back at the end. A whole meal is cooked in less than 5 minutes. And if liquid is added that will also drop the temperature.

So I think the cold oil and the extremely brief cooking time is what keeps things from burning.

Because the pan itself doesn't 'hold' a lot of heat, powerful burners are necessary to cook so fast-and a thin carbon pan will stay almost red hot with all that flame-there's basically very little metal to heat up.

Perhaps the induction is more efficient than your gas and you're not cooking fast enough or throwing, stirring the food soon enough.

Or maybe the opposite is happening because of the bowl shape of the wok. That is, the magnetic base of the burner is not inducing enough heat because of the small pan bottom. And either only the pan bottom is hot, or you're cooking a longer time or the oil is burning at the bottom.

What I do know is that your 7ply or even a traditional cast iron wok will hold more heat and be less susceptible to a temperature drop when too much food is added or if the burner is underpowered. The 7ply would re-heat faster than a cast iron wok, and conduct the heat more evenly through the pan. Lifting the pan off the induction to bounce the food around might also enter into the process of how it cooks compared to gas.

Without having used induction, all I can suggest is that you make sure the pan is heated hot enough before adding the oil (people usually sprinkle some water drops on the pan to test how fast it bounces on the pan bottom,(very hot) or steams off- (less hot) , add your oil and cook FAST!

Alexr,

Not sure what you are trying to address within my post, the link I included was for aluminum cookware, not "cheap stainless steel."

I never said that you should switch to garbage cookware, just that you don't need to spend $150 on a fry pan to cook well. RIF.

-Stooxie

Stooxie, Perhaps if you re-read your own post, you'll better understand why I responded. You wrote: "if you have a nice hot burner you don't need much in the way of fancy cookware."

You follow that with: "Having been using a mixture of Calphalon and All clad for the last decade and a half I am now convinced that they are just trying to make up for poor heat. That's why they are so heavy."

So I think those statements are misleading and just wrong, so I suppose I thought I would dispute them. Just my opinion.

And I don't think your choice of Vollrath is a good overall choice because it's non-stick. Non-stick finishes out-gas at hotter temperatures. As I also stated, RIF, I own some cheap aluminum non-stick pans as well, similar to your Vollrath.

Alexr,

I'm glad you find my statements misleading. Just gives me more confidence that I am on the right path. Find me a restaurant that uses such heavy cookware day in and day out and I'll gladly retract. Non-stick pans are fine until they approach 500 degrees. I am able to manage my heat. If others are not, they shouldn't use them.

Enjoy!

-Stooxie

As I wrote, many fine French restaurants use copper, which is very heavy. Julia Child used a lot of copper and Descoware (Belgium made cast iron). Anyway, it's good to hear that you seem self satisfied. It also begs the point that you have high BTU burners, but "manage my heat". Ah well, that's the funny contradictions of life!

By the way, pans can reach 500 degrees deceptively easily. Good housekeeping did some tests on this subject as well as several other research groups. And the manufacturing of the stuff isn't very healthy either. I refer here to article from S.F. Gate....

"DuPont says that off-gassing from nonstick pans does not occur until the pans are heated to over 400 degrees, in which case, at worst, fumes can lead to brief flulike symptoms in humans, called polymer fume fever. DuPont scientists point out that birds can die from many different types of fumes, including those produced by burning onions or butter."....

"The Environmental Working Group has collected data from several industry, government and academic studies that have been done on off-gassing of PTFE- coated pans heated to various temperatures. The tests revealed that more than a dozen types of potentially toxic particulates -- including hexafluoropropene, hydrogen fluoride and difluoroacetic acid -- are released. But whether the fumes occur in enough quantity to harm humans has not been determined.

"DuPont says that gasses aren't released in normal use, but academic and peer-reviewed studies show that pans get hot enough to release toxic gases at normal cooking temperatures," Sucher says. But pan fumes are nothing compared to the heat DuPont has gotten over environmental contamination (see story, above). It's not clear whether health and safety considerations have any effect on sales of nonstick cookware..." http://articles.sfgate.com/2005-06-15/food/17376314_1_nonstick-pans-teflon-frying

Here is a link that might be useful: Julia Child's Pots and Pans

Honestly, must everything on the Internet be a fight?

Page 39:

Julia's Kitchen Wisdom

The trusty Wearever pan she speaks of? It's now made by Vollrath, which can be had with or without nonstick coatings:

Wearever Professional Weight pans

Say what you like, but we apparently agree on this: if it was good enough for Julia it's good enough for me.

-Stooxie

Alexr, thanks for trying to answer my question. I thought about those but suspect there is something else. I'd like to have a further discussion with you, but not here; I've made too much digression already. Thanks again.

Stooxie, by your own admission, then heavy copper and cast iron is also O.K. by you, because they certainly were good enough for Julia. And I have nothing against thick aluminum pans per se, as I wrote to the original poster.

But just look on the internet about the dangers of non-stick- something that Julia Child would not have known about back then. Just as some people didn't know about lead paint or asbestos and even tobacco. 300 dead cows cannot be wrong(see the previous link I gave). Let alone your pet bird. Anyway the worst of it (PFOA)will probably be banned in the near future.

Bottom line is that any and ALL non stick regardless what kind, brand, thickness is no where near as good as just plain old Cast Iron or Spun/Hammered Mineral iron or carbon steel.

The carbon steel Woks are meant for fast high heat type cooking so are thinner.
The pans like the Debuyer Mineral Iron pans are much thicker, dead flat, are great for "both" super high heat and simmering or lower heat cooking and all are every bit as nonstick as ANY nonstick will ever be plus they have the added advantage of being lifetime cookware.
In fact they are multiple lifetimes cookware you could pass these down to your children and they will last their lifetimes.
They are virtually indestructible and only get better with age.

I have yet to buy a nonstick skillet of any kind that last more than about 5-7 years tops, even the pots just boiling water and making soups and stews in them don't even last all that long.
To me all nonstick is a complete waste of money and they just simply do not work nearly as well as Cast Iron or Mineral Iron, especially on a nice gas stove.

Try searing a nice steak over high heat then putting it under your 1600+ degree infrared broiler in a nonstick skillet and see how long it last.

I cannot think of a single application where nonstick is superior to Cast/Mineral type iron.
Then factor in that most nonstick cost 5 times more.

Plain stainless steel pans are OK but they are not nearly as nonstick as mineral/cast iron.

To echo Nunyabiz1, there seems to be a misconception that "cheap" means "not good". Commercial kitchens use "cheap" pans on their 30k btu burners at high heat and turn out James Beard award winning food. How? They are thick.

By thick, think in terms of 2.5 to 3 millimeters (commercial pans provide that spec on the manufacturer sites). The best thing for home use is a mixture of types and materials. You need at least one cast iron skillet for searing. Your pots should be either copper or Aluminum with stainless interiors. Your fry pans can be anything, but the $30 de Buyer Carbonne Plus pan is to me invaluable (Matfer and Vollrath make great ones too, just a little thinner generally). The cast iron and the carbon will need to be "seasoned", but once seasoned are phenomenally non-stick.

Restaurant kitchens do use non-stick (commercial grade) with are thick and cheap. They are just careful to not let them overheat. The pans are so cheap they don't really need to choose one over the other.

Most of these can be bought on line from restaurant supply stores. One source I've used is bakedeco.com. I'd guess that for under $4-500 you could get completely outfitted. I hope this helps.

For anyone that wants to read an informative essay on cookware, followed by a discussion, I suggest "Understanding Stovetop Cookware. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/25717-understanding-stovetop-cookware/

Here is a link that might be useful: Article on Stovetop cookware

Well, you all have fun with 'em. I'll keep my Costco hard anodized non-sticks. They last about 5 to 6 years and then a new set costs 149.00. for everything. They cook EXCELLENTLY. I have a carbon steel wok and my Le Creuset dutch oven, but most of stuff just doesn't require specialized pans and the non-stick + sloping shoulders of my frypans allows quick pan-flips and little to no spatula for most stuff. I love non-stick!

I love "nonstick" also, just prefer the best nonstick that last forever AND can sear and go under the broiler if needed.

No better nonstick made than Cast Iron and Mineral Iron etc.