Gotham Steel Cookware Set: A Chef’s Honest Review of this Collection

If you have even a slight interest in cooking or cook at home more than once or twice a week, buckle up, because Gotham Steel cookware is going to totally change the game for you. It made cooking a million times easier and more enjoyable for me, and I’ve been used to using high-end cookware for a long time now. Let me explain why I feel so strongly about these products.

What’s Special About Gotham Steel Cookware?

The main thing: They’re nonstick without sacrificing the high quality of ceramic and titanium. Usually, those things don’t go hand in hand.

I’ve spent countless hours cooking — first as a line chef in a few restaurants, then just as a hobby/passion. It’s so difficult to find a pan that can evenly distribute heat (which is the purpose of high-quality materials like titanium and ceramic) while also being nonstick and easy to clean up.

With Gotham Steel, I may have found my holy grail, and I feel compelled to share my experience with other chefs (amateur or otherwise).

If nonstick doesn’t seem like such a deal breaker to you — you can put up with scraping your fried eggs off the pan, no big deal — consider this: With these pans, you literally don’t even need to use oil or butter. I’ve tried it. Sauce, eggs, fried vegetables, pan-seared salmon, whatever — it all slides right off, as if the pan is doused in PAM!

That’s just crazy. I wouldn’t recommend cooking without oil or butter. They’re usually essential to the taste and overall flavor profile of whatever you’re cooking. But the point is that you COULD. If you’re trying to lose weight, lower cholesterol, track calories, etc., and one of your main ways of doing that is by eliminating butter and oils, this is the perfect product for you.

You can use the stove and the oven again without relying on avocado spray or whatever it is you like to use. I can’t think of another cookware line that can claim that while also being able to withstand such high temperatures and evenly distribute heat.

How Does Gotham Steel Cookware Work?

That’s another thing I want to point out. You can put these pans in the OVEN. They’re made to withstand up to 500 degrees. If you buy the right set, you’ll be set up with all the cookware you need — safe for the stove, safe for the oven. Excluding the types of frozen meals you throw in the microwave and nuke (which, in my slightly biased opinion, does not count as real food), that’s everything you need to cook right there.

Plus, proper heat distribution is absolutely essential for successfully cooking on the stove. (And in the oven, too, although it’s maybe a little less important.) Especially if you’re cooking multiple items on one pan, or trying to prevent runny eggs or a sauce from burning, you want a pan made out of materials that evenly conduct heat rather than distributing it only to the center or to one side of the pan. That’s a non-negotiable for me in all the cookware I buy, so that was one of the main reasons I was initially attracted to Gotham Steel.

What Kind of Sets Are Available?

Take the Gotham Steel 7 Piece Set as an example. For $80, this set comes with 9.5-inch and 11-inch frying pans complete with matching lids, a three-quart pot with a lid, and a double grill. Buy one set and you have nearly everything you could possibly need for cooking on the stovetop and the oven.

The grill will work perfectly for cuts of meat, vegetables, and anything you want to oven-roast. The frying pans give you some leeway with different volumes of food, while I found the three-quart pot to be perfect for most average-sized meals (serving one to three people).

Or, if you’re really into baking, you could go with the five-piece bake set. This comes with a cookie sheet, a round pan, a loaf pan, a square pan, and a muffin tray. Of course, there are some baking pans that aren’t included here — you wouldn’t be able to make a Bundt cake with this set, for instance.

But for someone either a) just starting out in the world of baking or b) looking for high-quality ceramic or titanium pans that aren’t a total pain to clean up, this set will get you set up to bake like a pro.

Do I Have To Wash the Pans by Hand?

Before I forget, let me mention maybe the best part of Gotham cookware: Everything is dishwasher safe! Yes, you heard that right. It’s another thing that usually is mutually exclusive with high-quality cookware. You spend a lot of money on a pan or a baking tray, and you can be almost guaranteed to find those tiny letters at the bottom: HAND WASH ONLY.

Not with Gotham. Use your pans and throw them right in the dishwasher. Thanks to that nonstick coating, I’ve found that even the most difficult residue — hardened and condensed sauces, burnt and blackened bits stuck to the pan — slide off in the dishwasher. Maybe I’m just lazy, but I thought this made cooking so much less time-consuming and involved.

Is Gotham Steel Safe?

I actually didn’t realize this until after I’d bought a couple sets, but the materials are free of PTFE, PFOA, and PFAS too. If you’ve missed all the hoopla in the media lately, these “forever” chemicals are found in a lot of materials (including nonstick coatings) and have made their way into nearly all parts of the environment. They’re basically impossible to get rid of, and we don’t know all the long-term health effects yet.

My embarrassing confession is that I’ve basically been ignoring the existence of PFAS and other forever chemicals because what am I supposed to do? Toss out my collection of very expensive cookware? Eat raw vegetables forever? It just seemed like another thing to worry about that was also totally out of my control.

But now that PFAS-free cookware has started to infiltrate the market, there IS actually something I can do about it. So it was a really nice surprise to learn that this cookware line is free of all those harmful chemicals.

Try Gotham Steel Today!

As I mentioned, Gotham sells their cookware in sets. I’ve bought the seven-piece set, the five-piece bake set, and the 10-piece square set. (I’m kind of addicted.) But you can also buy pieces individually if you aren’t quite sure what you want yet. Or maybe you want to test out one pan to see if it really lives up to the hype before investing in a whole set. Either way, the option is yours. (But if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath. I guarantee you’re going to buy one item and be completely sold.)

Speaking as a former line chef, I cannot recommend Gotham Steel more. If you don’t spend a lot of time cooking or are perfectly content with the cookware you already have, then don’t waste your money — this won’t be for you.

On the other hand, if, like me, you LOATHE scraping off your pots and pans or are sick of being forced to handwash your cookware, definitely check it out. You might become as obsessed as me.