If You Only Buy One Piece of Cookware in 2022, This Is What You Should Get
What’s on your kitchen shopping list for 2022? Maybe this is the year you’re finally going to try the Instant Pot? Or maybe you’ve been saving up for a nice espresso machine? Or maybe you’re planning to treat yourself to a fancy new chef’s knife? These are all worthy purchases. We don’t want to add to your list just for the sake of adding things, but we do have one specific piece of cookware to recommend: the OXO Good Grips Nonstick 12-Inch Pro Skillet.
Of course, there’s lots of great cookware out there. (We love this Staub Dutch oven, this Lodge cast iron skillet, and this multi-purpose pot, for example.) But if you’re only going to buy one piece of cookware this year, this is what we suggest.
See, a good nonstick skillet — one that’s truly nonstick — can help you through so many meals. Fried eggs, omelets, and crêpes will slide right off it at breakfast time. During lunch, you can use a nonstick skillet to make gooey-but-easy-to-clean-up grilled cheese sandwiches. At dinner, a nonstick skillet can sear (and release!) even the most delicate fish. What’d we tell you? An all-day pan!
So what’s a good nonstick skillet? This one, clearly! Because, again, if you’re only going to buy one piece of cookware this entire year, this is the piece we suggest. For starters, it’s so versatile. Also, it won the top spot in our Best List testing when we looked at dozens of nonstick skillets.
Out of all the nonstick skillets we tried, this one performed the best — by a landslide. Food cooked evenly and slid off it test after test (many nonstick skillets will start to lose its nonstick properties over time). We found the handle to be incredibly comfortable to hold and loved that it stayed cool throughout cooking. It’s also one of the lightest we tested (just 2.43 pounds) so we found it easy to pick up with one hand. Additionally, we loved its shape; it’s got a sizable cooking surface with walls that gently slope inward, making it a cinch to add and remove food. Bonus: This pan also comes in 10-inch and 8-inch sizes.
Betcha didn’t expect us to call out a nonstick skillet for this story, or make such a compelling case for it! If you buy a single piece of cookware this year, do yourself a favor and make it this one. If you want to buy two, we’d like to go back to that Dutch oven, we mentioned above …
Shop: OXO Good Grips Pro Hard Anodized Nonstick 12-Inch Skillet, $59.90 (originally $69.99)