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Pans and Potato Salad
I would recommend only getting nonstick in the frying pan. It's indispensable for cooking things containing eggs (and for warming tortillas), but for almost everything else, you want to encourage the development of fond. A stainless interior also makes it easier to see when this is happening and to make sure that it doesn't burn. I will never own one of the anodized aluminum pans for this reason.
I own a bunch of the Cuisinart Everyday Stainless pans. In tests by Cooks' Illustrated, they were pretty good but not quite as good as the All-Clad. If I had a bunch of money, I'd get those. For non-stick, you should only spend enough to get you a pan with a good heavy bottom that won't warp, because the nonstick coating, no matter how careful you are with it, will wear out before the pan will. I recently bought a nice heavy-bottomed 12-inch nonstick frying pan on sale for about $15 at Fred Meyer (cf Target).
The pots I use most hang on my pot rack:
small and medium stainless saucepans
large saute pan (straight-sided) with lid
6-qt dutch oven
nonstick stir-fry pan (I use this for risotto)
12-in nonstick skillet
The pans not on the pot rack that I get out most often are:
8-in nonstick skillet
5-qt dutch oven
12-qt all-in-one pot (with pasta and steamer inserts, which are used much less frequently--this particular pot has a nice heavy bottom and work perfectly for making my blue-ribbon-winning caramels)
16-qt stockpot
Next on my purchase list are some cast iron pans--skillet, griddle/grill and abelskiver pan.
If anyone wants a really, really good potato salad recipe, let me know. It involves a boiled dressing, lots of hard-boiled eggs, and sweet pickes. It's the one I grew up with, and I've never had another one like it.
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