The Best Cookware Sets, Based on Years of Testing Pots and Pans

If there’s something to know about food people, it’s that they have strong convictions regarding their favorite cookware and tend to develop steadfast preferences for particular tools and brands. As a result, the whole idea of a preassembled cookware set is a source of controversy here at the Bon Appétit offices. The consensus among our crew as to what constitutes the best cookware set has been a sort of non-consensus, because for us, the best cookware set is one you assemble yourself, over years, that includes the cookware you use and love the most.

The best cookware set overall: All-Clad D5 7-Piece Cookware Set
The best budget cookware set: Ninja EverClad 7-Piece Cookware Set
A new favorite from our test kitchen editor: Fissler M5 5-Ply Cookware Set

But that is easy for a bunch of culinary professionals with professional training to say. I know that there are a lot of people out there who don’t have the time, experience, or opportunity to experiment with different types of cookware in order to curate their collections of pots and pans just so. The most helpful advice for them will be providing a strong starting point. So to put together this list, I encouraged our seasoned culinarians to look beyond their firmly held beliefs and really take a hard look at the cookware sets out there to determine which ones constitute the best “starter pack” for people building their home kitchen arsenal from the ground up.

A good cookware set should be the beginning of someone’s collection of pots and pans, not the final product. It will continue to grow and expand around your own wants and needs (you can always add the Le Creuset a bit later). All we think a cookware set should do is equip you with enough tools to cook through a majority of the recipes you can find in cookbooks and online.

To come up with this list, we approached things a bit differently compared to the way we do most of our product tests. We analyzed the most commonly available cookware sets online and determined which collections contained the pans that offered the most utility, filtering out items we felt were superfluous or unnecessary. Once we narrowed down the essential pieces, we cross-referenced our extensive testing of individual pieces and chose sets that included those lines. Check out our top picks of the best cookware sets below, and read on for more information on our methodology and reasoning.

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.

In the grand scheme of cookware sets, a 7-piecer is relatively small. But after much conversation and debate, we think it will cover all the most common cooking tasks. , The particular pieces that make up a cookware set varies slightly from brand to brand—some include things like a steamer insert, others have a second sauce pan instead—but 7-piece cookware sets are pretty consistent in what they offer. Most have a stockpot, a 2-to-3-quart saucepan, a medium-to-large-size skillet (between 10"–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.

All-Clad D3 3-Ply Stainless-Steel 7-Piece Cookware Set

$600

Amazon

$890 $500 (44% off)

All-Clad

$549

Williams Sonoma

All-Clad D5 5-Ply 7-Piece Cookware Set

$800

Amazon

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.

Fissler M5 Pro-Ply 5-Ply Stainless-Steel 7-Piece Cookware Set

$900 $675 (25% off)

Fissler

$1,000

Amazon

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.

Ninja EverClad Commercial-Grade Stainless Steel Cookware 7-Piece Set

$200

Ninja

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.

Goldilocks 7-Piece Cookware Set

$215

Goldilocks

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.

We had a big conversation on staff about what the most necessary components of a basic cookware set are. There were a lot of opinions and hot takes, many of which resulted in fantasy cookware sets that aren’t actually available anywhere (much to a couple enthusiastic staff members’ chagrin, there are no stainless-steel cookware sets that feature rondeaus or Dutch ovens). We analyzed the available assortment of cookware sets online, taking note of the most common assemblages, and tried to identify redundant or unnecessary pieces. We came to the conclusion that it would be best to start with fundamental pieces of cookware you’d most likely use, and encourage expanding a collection based on your needs on a piece-by-piece basis.

For selecting specific lines of cookware, we used our testing data for previous product tests to inform our recommendation choices, as well as the industry expertise of the professionals in our Test Kitchen. For the tests and the methodologies we used to select our winners, check out our tests for the best stainless-steel skillets, saucepans, and stockpots.

But if a 7-piece set really is too small…

Here are some larger sets that we know will deliver on quality and performance, and are still practical for larger kitchens. If you're going to add on more, we'd say having two saucepans and two skillets of different sizes is useful for less intensive cooking projects. Especially for families, a smaller saucepan is great for making a box of mac and cheese, and a 9" skillet is great for a kid learning how to fry an egg themselves.

All-Clad D3 3-Ply Stainless Steel 10-Piece Cookware Set

$800

Amazon

This is an extended version of our favorite cookware set above that includes an additional, smaller frying pan and an additional smaller saucepan.

Ninja EverClad Commercial-Grade Stainless Steel Cookware 12-Piece Set

$280

Ninja

This is an extended version of our top budget pick with two additional smaller skillets and two smaller saucepans; this version comes with a 1.5-quart and a 2.5-quart instead of a 3-quart saucepan.