“Everything above reduces to four rules you can run in about two minutes, standing in the aisle:
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.”