if you're buying cookware....

I know I've mentioned this site before for product reviews. This article is a deeeeeeeep dive into cookware: pyrex, pots and pans, knives.
What was good, became crap, what stayed good, and all the money-grubbing drama in between.
https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookware-got-worse-on-purpose
The tl;dr:

Look up the owner, not the name. The name is the cheapest part of the company to preserve. If the ownership trail ends at a private equity firm or a licensing group, assume the product and the reputation are no longer aligned.

Read the warranty before the reviews. Its length is the company's own estimate of how long the product lasts, and its exclusions are a list of the ways they expect it to fail.

Buy bare metal where you can. Cast iron, carbon steel, plain stainless. No coating means nothing that dies at cycle 40 and nothing to rebuy in eighteen months.

Distrust a name that's on everything. When the same brand appears on your pan, your knives, your toaster, and a box fan, nobody who owns it makes anything.

What to buy instead wrote:
(links in the original article at https://www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookware-got-worse-on-purpose )
Cast iron
Lodge: Owned by about 40 members of the founding families, two foundries in South Pittsburg, Tennessee since 1896, and still under $30 for a skillet your grandchildren will likely inherit.
Smithey: Founder-owned in Charleston, South Carolina. Smooth-finish heirloom pieces at heirloom prices.
Field Company: Brothers-owned, cast at US foundries. The lightweight, vintage-style pan.
Stargazer: Founder-owned in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Machined cooking surface, honest price.
Lancaster Cast Iron: Founder-owned in Conestoga, Pennsylvania with a fully domestic supply chain.
Borough Furnace: A husband-and-wife shop in Owego, New York that pours its own recycled iron in-house, which almost nobody in this country still does.

Enameled cast iron
Le Creuset: Privately held, and the cast iron still comes out of the same French foundry it has since 1925. The stoneware and accessories come from Asia, so buy the iron.
Staub: Still made in Merville, France under Zwilling, the German family conglomerate that has so far acquired without gutting.

Stainless and carbon steel
All-Clad: The bonded lines are still made in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, sharp-rim settlement and French owner notwithstanding.
Heritage Steel: Family-owned in Clarksville, Tennessee, building on old Vollrath tooling. The fully American clad alternative.
Tramontina: Family-controlled in Brazil. The honest value play; their clad line embarrasses pans at twice the price.
de Buyer: The carbon steel standard, still made in the Vosges. It belongs to Groupe SEB as of January 2025, so it’s one to watch over the next few years.
Matfer Bourgeat: The French commercial standard, family-held, and what a lot of commercial kitchens use.

Knives
Victorinox: 90 percent owned by a foundation built to prevent exactly the kind of sale this essay is about. The Fibrox chef's knife is the best $45 in any kitchen. All my knives are Victorinox - I plan to cover their story in an independent article.
Wüsthof: Seventh-generation family ownership, forged in Solingen.
Dexter-Russell: The knife in every American commercial kitchen, made in Southbridge, Massachusetts since 1818, still family-held.

Bakeware and glass
Nordic Ware: The family that invented the Bundt pan still makes it in Minneapolis.
USA Pan: The retail arm of the Bundy family's commercial bakery-pan operation, which equips actual bakeries.

On glass bakeware, the unfortunate truth is that both American options are soda-lime. If you want borosilicate, buy European Pyrex online or thrift the old stuff.

Dinnerware and flatware
Corelle: Still made in Corning, New York and still the best cheap dinnerware going. The risk is the owner, not the product.
Fiesta: The last big American dinnerware factory, still family-owned in Newell, West Virginia.
Liberty Tabletop: America's only flatware, made in the very Sherrill, New York plant Oneida walked away from, bought by two former Oneida executives.

Special mentions
Vitamix: Barnard family since 1921, Ohio-made, repairable. The appliance that gets willed to people.
All American 1930: The pressure canner, cast since 1930 by a family foundry in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the same town Newell abandoned and got sued by. The town that lost Mirro still makes the best canner on earth. Some receipts write themselves.

It's a real shame when a good name gets bought by a company that simply wants to grab what they can before it goes under. Buyer beware has never been more important.

This makes it difficult. If someone asked me what pots I use, I could tell them, but I couldn't tell them if they had any hope of getting the quality I got in the order of 20 years ago (maybe longer...)

I do believe I started earlier than many people at trying to buy for quality - not name or "the in thing" - good basic quality. I also learned early from my parents' mistake that dishwashers do more damage than you might think, so I hand wash almost everything except our Corel dishes and casseroles and our cutlery.

I would love to get more cast iron, but I don't have the strength to lift much of it one handed, so I really need the cast iron that is designed with two handles, one of which has to give me good leverage. These aren't as common, and second hand can be pretty hard to find. There used to be some antique stores up island that had some interesting cast iron, but I haven't been up that way with extra time to go hunting since I realized how great cast iron is despite its weight.

I would also respectfully note that a lot of brands with secondary manufacturing sources have stepped up their game enormously over the last decade.

Case in point: Henckels International started off as offshore crap many years ago. (I'm a knife sharpener, and I see this stuff as it crosses my workbench.) But through its many iterations the quality has improved to the point where I will happily pluck this brand (knives, steels) out of thrift shops and garage sales.

Cookware, my most eclectic side.  It has come to me from everywhere I ever lived, and from anyone I’ve ever truly known.   Old, worn, and crafted for a lifetime lasting longer.  Held close for many years, loved then enshrined on the lazy susan.  My mother’s kitchen-aid mixer, beats anything like pure passion.   Cast iron pans pitted deep from both sides of the family came overland in sod huts.   Steam canner, made concord jelly every year until I was 13.  Obtuse large pink and blue ball jars full of cherries, peaches, hot beans in the basement pantry that was my room for a year.  A sauté pan my best friend’s mother gave me when I moved to Missoula.  A gift I accepted without a word.  Just a look from the most giving person I ever knew.   Friends, family, people that live deep within my soul re emerge each time to help me stew, baste, and boil.  I use the best pots, pans, cutlery from those who taught me how to craft ideas into food.  Cooking is still a pure art for those that savor time, truth, and a quiet love of real food.  Pass it on with the pans.