So you've decided that the $5 frying pan you bought in college to cook hash browns at 3 a.m. for a bunch of stoned people you didn't really even know... this is becoming too personal. Let me start again.
So you've decided that you might be in the market for a frying pan. Either you didn't have one before (no shame, no shame, welcome, we're glad to have you) or you had one which was... not up to snuff, shall we say. But now you've been to stores and seen seven thousand pans, and you've looked online and there are now seven million pans, and you went to Consumer Reports and they told you that the best pan was made by a little old man in western Germany and he only makes three pans a year out of meteorite iron and they cost how much?!
So you've decided that maybe pans aren't for you. Maybe you'll just eat out for every meal. Or maybe you'll eat nothing but raw food, like a cave man. That's supposed to be good for you, right?
Maybe this isn't quite your situation, but you're looking for a pan, and I can help. That was a heck of an introduction. But I want to reassure you that not only will I not tell you what pan to buy, but I am not in the pocket of Big Meteorite Iron.
What to look for:
Material
Basically, there are three different kinds of pans: the nonstick kind, the not-nonstick kind, and the cast iron kind.
Let's get this out of the way: cast iron is great, and if you're comfortable with it, there are many advantages to owning a cast iron pan, to say nothing of the fact that there are many more options out there than there used to be because of a resurgence in cast iron cookery. Wal-Mart sells them. They seriously have their own model. Do not buy it.
But cast iron is quite intimidating for the newcomer, so if you're looking for a cast iron pan, just remember the three things about cast iron: it should be reasonably smooth to the touch, it should be made entirely out of cast iron so you can put it in the oven, and it will weigh a ton and a half so make your peace with it. Incidentally, the reason not to buy the Wal-Mart generic cast iron pan is because it's rough as sandpaper, so you can imagine that food will stick to it like nobody's business even if you season it well.
Okay, you're not looking for cast iron. Let's talk normal-people pans. In the not-nonstick category we have aluminum and stainless steel. There's also carbon steel but that's basically lighter cast iron, so lump that in with the previous two paragraphs.
Stainless steel is great. It's nonreactive so there's very little you can do to stain it, and it won't give your food any flavors either. It usually costs more than aluminum, but there are many people who swear by it, and if you read through the rest of this discussion and decide you want to go stainless, by all means do so.
Aluminum is the workhorse of the pan world. It conducts heat extremely well, it's cheap, and most non-stick pans are also made of it. Not-nonstick pans made of aluminum are usually anodized, which means they hooked it up to electricity and did various chemical things to it which make it harder and less reactive. That's why most aluminum pans are darker colors than aluminum foil. Don't worry about it, but that's what the word means if you run into it.
My feeling is that, if you're buying aluminum, you might was well buy a nonstick pan. Yes, there are some cooking people out there who have various feelings about nonstick pans and fond building and so forth, and yes, you may sometimes get better browning and caramelization in a not-nonstick pan, and if this matters that much to you, buy a stainless steel pan. We'll talk about what to look for in a second.
If it doesn't (and it really shouldn't unless you're really serious about certain things, as I have gotten wonderful fond from a nonstick pan for years) then we're on to nonstick land. Nonstick pans are frequently made with aluminum, though you do sometimes see some steel pans because they're cheaper than aluminum. My first wok was nonstick carbon steel. Go figure.
Anyway, nonstick pans have various coatings and miraculous technology applied to them which supposedly makes them not only able to fry an egg at 4000 degrees but also withstand a bullet at ten paces. These claims are pretty much all garbage. Yes, a more expensive coating will be better than the cheapest coating available (if you're like me, you learned this when you bought that $5 pan in college) but most of it is marketing. Price and other factors being equal, if you can buy a nonstick pan from a name brand you know, like Cuisinart or Calphalon, rather than the as-seen-on-TV miracle diamond coating, sure, buy the name brand, but all other factors won't usually be equal.
Price
By now I hope I've talked you into buying either a stainless steel pan or a nonstick one. Either way, price is certainly a factor, but in two different directions.
Stainless steel pans should last. Maybe they're not "give as heirloom to grandchildren" long-lived like cast iron can be, but you should only ever have to buy one stainless frying pan (unless you need another size). Because of this, spend a bit more. Get yourself a decent pan here. You know your budget, but unless you've found a second-hand store that's selling a stainless pan that's perfect in all other respects for $10, a good stainless steel frying pan should probably cost more than $50.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, nonstick pans are not going to last. Look at the other factors in this guide and then pick the cheapest pan that satisfies them. Seriously, you'll have to buy another in 5-10 years, even if you buy the best pan out there. And you probably won't, because no one knows the best pan out there. I certainly don't. If you do, please let me know.
Size
If you only have one frying pan, it should be 12 inches. That's the workhorse size. If you must, get a different size, but the closest to 12 you can get is best. Bigger and it starts to get unwieldy (ask me how I know). Smaller and you can't fit enough in there and you start to steam things instead of browning them because you crowded the pan. A 12 inch skillet (that's just another term for frying pan, really) can fit four chicken breasts with some space, and that's what you'll need to make dinner for four.
If you can get two pans, get a 12 and then get a smaller one. Larger is almost never the way to go unless it's a specialty pan, and at that point you're not looking for a general frying pan. Maybe someday we'll talk other pans. That day is not today. Get a 12 and an 8 so you can make fried eggs or pancakes in a pan which is lighter and more maneuverable. Learn to flip them in the air for a cheap party trick that will sometimes end up with a pancake on something it shouldn't be on. 12 and 10 are close enough in size that there's almost no reason to get the smaller one, but 8 will do things a 12 can't do.
Shape
There are two different shapes: sloped sides and straight sides. Straight sides are more of a specialty pan. They're great for some things but you'll have a harder time getting a spatula in there to flip things or stir frying. I recommend sloped sides, and that's what most of the pans you're going to find will have.
In terms of slope, the more gradual the slope, the less surface area of the pan will be in contact with the heating element. There's an Indian pan called a tawa which is like a hub cap and is basically all slope, and it's great for some things but you need some experience with it. Most American cooks prefer something less gradual than that. Obviously the best way to figure out what degree of slope you like is to try things out, but failing that, try for one which looks like you could put a ball into the corner and it would touch the whole side. A circular cross section, if you will. More shallow and you lose surface area, but less shallow and it becomes harder to get utensils in there.
Shape, quite honestly, is the least important aspect of pan-buying, particularly if you have a gas stove. All other things being equal, go for a middle ground, but rarely will this be the deciding factor.
Core
This is more important for stainless steel pans. If you're looking at solid aluminum, you can skip this section completely.
In stainless steel pans, the entire pan often won't be made of stainless steel because it's more expensive but mostly because stainless steel, and steel in general, is a lousy conductor of heat. That means it retains heat well, which is the reason why people like cast iron pans and we'll discuss more a bit later on, but it means it heats unevenly and takes a long time to register heat change. You may find a solid stainless steel pan, but unless it's cheap and has all the other qualities you're looking for, skip it.
Most manufacturers make stainless steel (or in the case of a nonstick pan made from it, regular sheet steel) pans by laminating a surface of stainless steel together with a core of aluminum (or copper, another good conductor, but that's pricey) to provide the non-corrosive nature of stainless with the conductivity of aluminum.
Some stainless pans look like they've got a puck of metal welded to the bottom of them, and they do, in fact. That puck is the conductive metal. Other pans just have a thick bottom, which means the core of conductive metal has been made part of the pan.
Steer clear of the puck pans. What you want is something that has a core which is in both the bottom and the sides of the pan. If it's just in the bottom, as with the puck pans (and sometimes with other pans, so it pays to look for this information) the sides won't heat evenly and you'll have issues, trust me. It's worth paying a little extra for this because your pan will be better and last longer, and as I said above, pay a bit more for your stainless steel pan. If you happen to find a nonstick pan which has a core, make sure the core goes all the way through the pan, not just a puck at the bottom. You'll thank me when you stir-fry.
Ergonomics
This is a fancy word for comfort and usability, if you're not familiar with it. Basically, you want a pan which is comfortable. The size, weight, and shape of the pan factor in here, but we discuss those elsewhere, so mainly this is about the handle.
If you're a cook who uses the handle a lot, flipping, moving around, etc. then handle shape and comfort are a big deal. If you, like me, tend to only use the handle when you've got to move the pan from the stove to the oven or when you're serving, this may be less of a factor.
I can't tell you what handle will work for you because it varies by hand size, strength, and even just personal preference. The good news is that you can try all the handles under the sun just by going into stores and holding pans by their handle, simulating common cooking situations. Me, I wouldn't buy a pan just because it had a really good handle, but I might pick a pan from a bunch which are similar because the handle was a little better.
Handles are also important when thinking about whether you can put the pan in the oven or not. Plastic usually means no, though that's become less true over the years. If the pan says it's oven safe to a certain temp, then the handle obviously can handle (oy) that temperature too. Again, not a deal-breaker in most cases, but something which is good to know. Nonstick pans often aren't as oven-safe as not-nonstick ones, and of course cast iron is the king of the oven.
Weight
Okay, here's where I break from some other people, so take what I'm about to say as one opinion.
You want a pan which, if you hit someone with it, they stay down.
That's very "rule of thumb" (which, by the way, has nothing to do with spousal abuse no matter what you've heard), but basically you want a pan with heft. When presented with two pans which are identical in all other respects, I choose the heavier of the two.
Why? It goes back to heat conductivity, or in this case heat retention. A heavier pan holds on to heat longer, which means that it stays a more even temperature and doesn't scorch food. There's physics there if you want to look it up, but bottom line, a light pan will burn where a heavy pan doesn't.
This, again, is why people like cast iron. It holds on to heat to the point that it's a giant heat sink. You can get a cast iron skillet up to temperature, turn the stove off, and fry an egg in the pan with no additional heat.
Aluminum, being a good conductor, won't do that, but more mass means more heat capacity, and thus more pan-ly goodness.
Now, I've given my opinion, and I should say that I'm large, with corresponding strength from manual labor, and I still like a pan which is heavy enough that I wouldn't want to enter a pancake-flipping race with it. And while I like cast iron, I'm talking about a nonstick, aluminum pan here.
Others will say that you want a pan which is as heavy as it can be while still being comfortable, and this all goes back to ergonomics. I maintain that, if you find yourself in that aforementioned pancake-flipping race, you should get yourself a $5 pan which is light as a feather, but if you want good browning, to be able to walk away from a dish without coming back 2 minutes later to find scorch marks, and to be able to cook both eggs, fish, and burgers in the same pan, then comfort of picking up takes a back seat to weight.
All of which is why I say that if you want a good pan, choose one which you could wield as a weapon and if you hit someone, they'd stay down. I'm not recommending testing this, but check the heft. If it's light enough to swing but heavy enough to do some damage, that's the weight you're looking for, and that'll hold true whatever your strength/comfort ratio.
In closing:
That was a lot of information, and congratulations for making it this far. If you're very confused and don't know what to do, I'll make it simple.
Buy a nonstick frying pan which is solid aluminum and is as heavy as you can cope with. Don't spend more than $50 because you'll have to buy another sooner or later.
That's the simple version. The rest is advice to people who already have a decent idea of pans and are maybe looking to expand their stable with a stainless or something. But my advice, to everyone, is consider weight and composition (mostly whether it's solid aluminum or has a full core of aluminum), then if you've still got five pans in the running, worry about the rest of it.
It really is that simple. You can do it. This is cookable.
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