The typical wok is lousy for home cooking. With a round bottom that doesn’t heat on a flat American burner, poorly conductive steel and low-quality construction, most woks don’t perform well enough to be worth the storage space. That’s why we designed the Milk Street Hammered Wok specifically for American home cooks. After dozens of hours testing 10 woks of varying shapes, sizes and materials, we understand the features that make a great wok. Our redesigned 13-inch wok has high-quality construction, oversized handles for better control, a special dimpled surface for nonstick cooking and a tight-fitting tempered glass lid. It will last a lifetime, and it’s guaranteed to improve your day-to-day cooking.

This mini saucepan from Victoria, made from high-quality cast iron, is designed for your smallest jobs. Cast iron is prized for its ability to heat up evenly and retain heat—this saucepan is finished with a textured surface that clings to seasoning better than artificially smoothed pans. The pan is seasoned with a coat of Kosher-certified, non-GMO flaxseed oil, made with zero synthetic chemicals. Like all cast iron, this saucepan will grow more nonstick with use and time.

The base of the pan and handle are balanced to avoid tip-overs. It works on most heating surfaces—including induction, ceramic, grills, ovens, gas stoves, under the broiler and even in a campfire—and is our pick for heating up small servings of soups or sauces, melting butter, prepping marinades, making desserts, heating basting sauces and making dips like queso or fondue. Made in Colombia by a family-owned company.

Clocking in at just 1.2 pounds, this mini skillet from Victoria, made from high-quality cast iron, is designed for your smallest jobs. Cast iron is prized for its ability to heat up evenly and retain heat. The pan is seasoned with a coat of Kosher-certified, non-GMO flaxseed oil, made with zero synthetic chemicals. Like all cast iron, this saucepan will grow more nonstick with use and time.

Use this skillet for serving, cooking, baking, grilling and oven-to-table recipes, as it works on most heating surfaces—including induction, ceramic, grills, ovens, gas stoves, under the broiler and even in a campfire. We like it for making eggs and baking cheeses, like feta and Brie, but it’s also excellent for broiling small items. (Arguably, our favorite use is for single-serve skillet cookies and mini desserts.) Made in Colombia by a family-owned company.

As attractive as they are functional, yukihira pans are traditional Japanese saucepans that date back centuries for cooking soups, broths and stews. What sets them apart from European-style sauce pans are the thin construction and textured hammered finish—and this one from Wahei Freiz comes with a custom-fit sieve. The pot’s thin stainless steel bottom heats up fast, perfect for boiling water or reducing sauces or soups, and the hammered surface has two advantages: It both strengthens the thin metal and creates more surface area to help foods cook fast and cut down on reduction time. The wooden handle will stay cool during use, and dual pour spouts—perfect for left- and right-handed cooks—minimize spills while serving.

Hitting the right balance between fine and coarse mesh, the sieve allows for efficient drainage without leaking, perfect for washing anything from rice to leafy greens and draining pasta or grains. Try the set together for simmering, boiling, frying, steaming and draining—we like it for blanching vegetables, boiling eggs, reheating pasta, preparing soups, stocks and sauces, particularly soy sauce tare, miso soup or Japanese dashi stock. And since they’re made of stainless steel, these pots are easy to clean, and work well on gas, electric and induction cooktops.

Made by expert metal craftsmen in Tsubame, Japan, Wahei Freiz’s Enzo Frying Pan is the small and medium pan built for frying. It’s made from carbon steel, a lighter weight professional-grade iron durability of cast iron without all the heft, with a wide, thick bottom that heats evenly and deeply sloped sides that are perfect for saucework. The pan won’t cool down if you add more ingredients to it, a benefit of Wahei Freiz’s proprietary carbon steel, and the custom shape has to be finished either by hand or lathe, since it’s optimized for maximum surface area, efficient cooking and hard sears.

This lightweight pan is easy to maneuver and lift; we could toss and flip its contents with ease during testing. It’s fabulous for steaks, chicken thighs, fillets of fish, eggs and even stir-fries, thanks to the higher sides. The pan works on gas stoves as well as induction stoves. Like other premium carbon steel pans, the pan will get even better with time. Very limited availability in the United States.

Most woks are bigger than necessary for just a few people at home—so we looked to Japan to find one that’s just right. Ideal when cooking for smaller groups of two or three, this compact wok is the perfect vessel for side dishes and quick stir-fries. Made from durable carbon steel with a hammered finish, the Wahei Freiz Enzo Wok heats up quickly, retaining and distributing high heat beautifully to achieve crisp veggies, well-seared meat and more.

Designed to be ultra-lightweight and fashioned with a sturdy beechwood handle that’s comfortable in the hand, tossing, saucing and stirring is quick and easy, unlike cooking with other heavier woks. Plus, the wooden handle stays cool and won’t burn your hand. And unlike most woks that aren’t compatible with certain cooktops, the flat bottomed finish on the Enzo means you can use it on a gas, electric or induction stoves.

When a recipe calls for charring vegetables, what do you do? Well, you can fire up the grill but that is a lot of work for just one eggplant or two bell peppers. In Turkey, however, they have a better solution called the Közmatik, a metal disk that fits perfectly over the burner of a gas stove. Evenly spaced holes allow heat to circulate around the vegetables, so you are truly roasting, rather than searing as you would on a skillet. The holes are close enough to hold even small veggies, like slender spring onions, and the disk is large enough to keep several bulbous eggplants from rolling off. It’s also less messy than charring directly on the burner: The Közmatik catches nearly all of the bits of charred vegetable skin and juices that would leak onto the surface of the stove. And, once cooled, it can be thrown in the dishwasher for easy cleanup.

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Here at Milk Street, we’re big proponents of cooking with cast iron to get a good sear on food—which is why we designed our Cast Iron Sizzling Plate. The thin yet sturdy construction heats up quickly—over any burner or grill—and holds its heat well. The cast iron surface, when taken care of, prevents foodstuffs from sticking, so you can get an excellent sear on scallops, fish, jumbo shrimp, chicken, pork, steak, vegetables and more. With its sturdy birch wood base and detachable handle, the griddle can also easily be brought to the table and used as much as a hot plate as a cooking pan. Heat it in the oven and fill it with appetizers like warm, spiced nuts or baked feta drizzled with fruity olive oil, herbs and pepper flakes. Or use it to serve sizzling fajitas or stir-fried noodles. Plus, the ingenious handle removes easily for serving and storage.

Historic French company's Choc Intense line of nonstick pans use the latest generation of nonstick coating—designed to have a 50% longer lifetime than other models—so they release food easily and are a breeze to clean with a soft sponge. These Round Frypans also feature robust forged aluminum walls and induction-friendly stainless steel bottoms, so they are fast-heating and provide even heat distribution when sautéing and searing. The attractive matte black pans are weighty but not cumbersome, with sturdy triple-riveted stainless steel handles. De Buyer even includes a cloth bag with each pan to protect the nonstick surfaces during storage, so you can stack Choc Intense cookware without worrying about scratching the material.

 

Inspired by the communal style of grilling thinly sliced meats, our Cast Iron Stovetop Korean Barbecue brings the experience of Korean barbecue to your table. Simply place thinly sliced meat on the ridged, domed center—the juices will slide down into a reservoir, where vegetables pick up that flavor as they cook. The cast-iron construction means the grill heats evenly and retains that heat well even after it’s removed from the source. It fits well over any type of burner or cooktop, including portable stoves, so you can use it just about anywhere. And besides grilling sliced meats, it’s also great for thin fish filets, sliced vegetables, flatbreads, tortillas and more—perfect for entertaining groups. Plus, two side handles make for easy maneuvering.

Our kitchen team was, quite frankly, stunned by the Vermicular 10-inch skillet. Weighing in at 2.4 pounds, it is at least 50% thinner than other cast-iron skillets, making it the lightest skillet we’ve tried. Durably designed and nonreactive, it features a heat-resistant enameled surface and an oven-safe aluminum handle. The pan cooks more like stainless steel than cast iron thanks to its thinness, which makes it heat more quickly, but it offers the nonstick and cleaning advantages of enameled cast iron. And it still retains heat well and evenly like cast iron. It’s the perfect skillet for searing or stir-frying. The skillet also comes with a stainless steel lid with an attached cast-iron handle that’s designed to be stood upright to avoid touching a dirty counter. Use to sauté veggies, fry an egg, sear a steak or make the perfect crispy grilled cheese.

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Crafted from carbon steel, this lightweight pan features high sloped sides, a wide flat cooking area and a long beech wood handle (which won’t overheat). Carbon steel is the best cooking surface for methods like searing, sautéing and stir-fries, because it’s an an excellent conductor of heat. It heats up quickly and is perfect for dry cooking methods, like frying, searing, stir-frying and sautéing.

Unlike other pans with chemical coatings, the pan’s glossy black interior undergoes a special nitriding process, which produces an iron nitride layer that increases durability and prevents rust. The inside is then polished to a shine and given a hammered fish-scale finish to promote air flow under food, both of which ensure incredible nonstick properties straight out of the box with a quick initial seasoning. This sauté pan provides even and intense heat across the entire flat cooking surface. Plus, it works with any cooktop (gas, electric, ceramic and induction) and the accompanying lid, plus its stay-cool handle, is ideal for steaming as well.