— Lynda Benham

My recommendation is for people who are committing to cooking and especially committing to cook, you know, cooking no oil or forks over knives style, um, having a good pan is just a really, really good investment. And I think you can get there within your budget. Um, the, the key is from my recommendation, um, and different, you know, chefs might tell you different things. I prefer to use non-stick, which means non coated pans. Um, not that I never use non-stick, but for this application, I think that non-stick is the best thing to use. It's gonna give you the best results in terms of caramelization and color development. It's gonna give you the best results in terms of de glazing a pan and having just non-reactive, no fuss, easy cleanup type situations when you're using a pan for no oil sauteing, where you can really develop a lot of color and a lot of sugars can caramelize in that pan from your onions and whatnot. Um, so, you know, having the interior be stainless for me is an important, uh, part now for the overall pan construction. Some pans are just stainless steel, fantastic. Um, those are gonna be a little bit heavier. Those will be, uh, induction ready, meaning you can put it onto an induction cooktop, uh, which is more and more common these days. Um, but it might be more expensive. So there are some pans that recommend, uh, you know, for just cost, you know, savings, they'll recommend like an aluminum exterior, which is great for conductivity, does not work on induction. But conductivity on a standard electric stove or a standard gas, uh, uh, you know, range, uh, works great. Um, you just wanna make sure that the quality of the build is really good. 'cause you don't want those two metals, you know, the stainless steel interior and the aluminum exterior that need to be really sandwiched together. You don't want those to be at all degraded over time. And again, probably not an issue, but just make sure in that scenario it's a high quality, a high quality pan. My my biggest recommendation is, you know, buy the best pan you can. Even if it means buying it used, uh, and I buy some things online, sometimes you can find at a goodwill or, um, there's websites for, you know, buying and selling things. There's even like free websites, uh, for people who are just giving things away. Um, but it might be one of those things you just keep your eye out for, because having that pan is gonna be one of the most important tools in your kitchen. And if I had to spend an extra little bit of money on that pan and a little bit less on something else, that pan is almost like an investment you're making. It's gonna make all your cooking, all your food better. Um, over time for many, many years. I have pans that I've been using now for 25 or 30 years. So that's the way I kind of run the calculus, is if you can extend that budget up, fantastic. If you can find it used, fantastic. Otherwise, I still think you can probably find some pans in particular on sale within that budget. Um, I know that the brand Cuisinart, at least in North America, will oftentimes have, um, great sales. So like during the holiday season in November, December, sometimes you can get like a really nice Cuisinart pan for probably right in your price range, probably like, uh, you know, $50 us or maybe 40 pounds thereabouts. But somewhere in that price range is probably not, not too far off. Um, again, I would stay away from aluminum pans on the interior, and I would stay away from non-stick in this particular, uh, application.