Obviously, none of us wants to pay more than they have to for cookware and such, but it sometimes bothers me when Consumer Reports, Cooks Illustrated, and others conduct reviews and issue ratings or rankings without taking into account more expensive, admittedly less common, options. The recurring obvious ones are pot and pan rankings that invariably put All Clad at the top of the list and put Wusthof at the top of the knife list. Sure, those are readily accessible and high quality products, butâŚfirst of all most of us do a lot (or all) of our shopping online, so availability in stores is not as important as it once was; second, since arguably better options are never included (such as heavy copper or artisan or similar knives), the shopper using those rankings may not even be aware they might do even better; and third, these rankings pretty much assume everybody buys retail or retail but on sale. They ignore the world of eBay and the like. They do not even touch on restaurant supply. These rankings not only assume retail or retail light purchases, they seem to place a disproportionately (to some) high premiums on ease of upkeep and visual appeal. I recently read a review and ranking of non-electric tea kettles. Not surprisingly, they did not rank the Simplex Buckingham, presumably because it retails for almost $500! It can boil water extremely quickly, much more quickly than any of the kettles reviewed. I got a mint one on eBay for under $75. I read a ranking of mandolines, and the nearly $200 Bron was not considered. Yes, I know it has plenty of detractors, but it will also do things many mandolines will not do. You can usually find them mint or NIB online for $50 or less, presumably from people who bought them and were afraid to use them. And we all know heavy, tinned, vintage copper can be found at prices that are competitive with (or better than) high end clad. It may be that simply including such alternatives in the evaluations and rankings would be a waste of time, but maybe a little text box adjacent to the rankings of products just describing the alternatives and citing the online bargains would be nice. Of course, if the reviewer is relying on gratis stuff or, worse still, emoluments, this just would not work. However, it might bolster the credibility of the reviewers.
And then thereâs the whole world of restaurant supply. I think my aluminized steel jelly roll pans and cookies sheets at $5 each stack up well against the $30 options from W-S the reviewers rank.
My observations about consumer reports is that for any category, they only rate whatâs absolutely in the public eye. Most of their reviews of cookware appear to be of nonstick stuff purchaseable at chain stores. If they reviewed cutlery, I canât see them reviewing liberty tabletopn, the US made brand thatâs amazingly nice. Whatâs interesting is they donât even mention Lodge cast ironâŚ
Itâs frustrating, as I sometimes feel their ânon biased outlookâ simply is no longer true.
I suspicion the issue is more related to the cooking interest level of the crowd hereâŚ
âthe general publicâ probably is not as finicky as posters here.
when I check the price of solid copper ala Bourgeat today vs what I paid for it 30+ years ago . . .
no - donât care what the reviews say, not spending that for a pot. . . .
the two âbig deals inventsâ of recent times, methinks, are âmultiplyâ and ânon-stickâ
the advertising has done a pretty good job of instilling âTeflon will kill youâ
the ad men have had some success convincing people â25 ply is superior to 3 plyâ
essentially the mass media push is to convince people that their newest advertising twist means âthisâ non-stick is better than everything else on the planet. itâs not true, but repeated often enough . . . . people buy into it.
I have a Blue Diamond non-stick. it worked as a non-stick for . . . mebbe two weeks.
it replaced $20 Teflon pan(s) that âwore outâ after 6-9 months.
naked, it is not as good as Teflon, but with a thin smear/rub of butter, it is âsortaâ just as goodâ - and has lasted a lot longer.
itâs the same with multi-ply. in my experience 3 ply is the upper number for âitâs worth itâ
the âshowsâ select stuff that âmost peopleâ are likely to be $$-wise interested in.
for the same reason, Car&Driver does not review Bentley or Rolls Royce . . . good, bad, indifferent . . . the product is rejected outright by âaverage consumersâ
I agree with the two observations so far, but I would think even the average consumer would jump at the chance to save a lot of money on something high quality like the clad cookware and baking sheets at restaurant supply stores.
Not that I care about rankings but anything in rankings should start from âregularâ prices and not some artificial priced from ebay or similar which have no relevance as they are outliers
That might be relevant to people on this board but not for people who are much less interested in cooking. They wonât look for the 1-2 restaurant supply shops in even large cities when they can get things in regular shops
