To summarize, the material a Dutch oven is made of, especially cast iron, has a huge impact on its use and functionality.  The cast iron Dutch oven's versatility, durability, and even heat distribution make it a valuable tool in the kitchen.  Whether you're frying, stewing, or baking, a cast iron Dutch oven is a reliable and essential piece of cookware for any home cook or professional chef.

Non-stick fry pans are a preferred choice when cooking on low heat as the external coating suffers damage when exposed to excessive heat. You could use non-stick pans for more delicate meals like crepes, eggs, pancakes and more. However, non-stick cookware cannot produce the searing effect, which means it excludes many of the more popular recipes.

Stainless steel cookware, being the workhorse of your kitchen, can be used for making pretty much anything, including steaks, pork, chicken, and braises.

A multi-ply frying pan with an aluminium core is recommended for the best results when cooking at high temperatures.

The geometry of a pan can affect how easily moisture is driven off of food, and how rapidly a sauce will reduce. It's often claimed that the sloped sides of a skillet help moisture exuded by cooking meats evaporate more rapidly, allowing you to sear more efficiently. And this is true, but only given the same cooking area. In other words, a 12-inch skillet with a 10-inch cooking area will sear foods more efficiently than a 10-inch sauté pan. The corollary to this, of course, is that, given an equal amount of food that needs searing over super-high heat (some steaks, for example), the large surface area of a sauté pan does not offer any significant advantages over a skillet—you'll still have to cook in just as many batches.

The details: These pans solve the frustration of food sticking, and they require little oil for cooking. Plus they’re lightweight, easy to clean, and affordable. But they can’t take the high heat of a cast-iron or stainless steel frying pan. “You’re not going to get much of a sear in a nonstick pan,” says Cindy Fisher, who conducted Consumer Reports’ cookware tests.

And they don’t last as long as cast-iron, stainless, or copper frying pans. “Nonstick is going to wear out the fastest,” Nitahara says. “The nonstick coating is fragile, and once you scratch it, it’s hard to flip an egg.”

In our tests of nonstick pans, we cook four eggs in quick succession. An excellent rating means all four eggs easily slid out of the pan. A poor rating indicates that some egg residue was left behind. To test nonstick durability, we rub the pan with steel wool for 2,000 strokes or until the coating has worn through.