Pots and Pans

A truly exceptional pan range is Kuhn Rikon's Swiss Chef, which not only goes on the Aga, it goes in it too – at a fraction of the price of Aga branded pans, and three times the range of sizes. Swiss Chef will work efficiently on any stove top, including induction. Our copper bottomed pans are from Beka's White Heat Collection, as as well as being stylish and lovely pans, they have a brooding picture of Marco Pierre White on the box.

Alternatively you can get what's called tri-ply or multi-ply, where the sheet metal has two layers of stainless steel sandwiching a layer of aluminium, which is then formed into pans (some multi-ply pans have more than 3 layers, which is not strictly necessary but sounds impressive). This results in a heavy-ish pan of uniform thickness with superb heat conductivity. Our favourites are SKK and Scanpan.

Copper is an excellent heat conductor. It is also (a) expensive, (b) soft and (c) highly poisonous. For reason (c), it will be lined with either tin or stainless steel. Look for the proportion of stainless steel to copper: Mauviel's 10% stainless steel to 90% copper is clearly going to be a more efficient pan than 30% stainless steel to 70% copper. Don't even bother with a pan that has simply had its bottom sprayed with copper, the only discernible difference will be that it's harder to keep clean. Lining copper with tin is traditional, and perfectly safe. However, you should use wooden utensils on tin linings, as metal ones will scratch the tin off.

For slow-cook one-pot recipes you can't beat traditional cast iron casseroles. Properly looked after, they will last a lifetime. Chasseur cast iron comes in a range of stylish colours and is a better quality product at more affordable prices than that other well-known French stuff. If you find cast iron a bit too much like unattractive weight lifting, alternatives are cast aluminium (SKK, Berndes and WMF), and Emile Henry's Flame range, which is an extraordinary earthenware product that goes on the hob.