Cooking temperatures with non-stick cookwear

The temperature guidelines are for frying and can be completely ignored if boiling. Being full of water is a very effective way to limit the maximum temperature of a vessel. You'd avoid boiling dry in any container.

To be honest, the guidelines are essentially nonsense for any use. "Medium" varies too much between stoves and burners. For example with my large non stick pan, medium on the big burner would be only for very fast frying while medium on the middle size burner would be very gentle.

I'm looking at replacing most of my cookware ...

Some considerations are:

• Buying piece-by-piece or a complete set

  • A complete set will match and cost less, you might also either end up with things you won't use or be forced to buy a smaller set and need to buy some additional items in any event.

  • Buying piece-by-piece gets you exactly what you want and at differing price points, you can allocate a larger amount for one specific item and purchase more budget friendly items for the remainder.

  • You can try to buy a smaller set and buy additional items to increase your options but usually even a small set will already contain the main item that you wanted to spend a lot more on to get the best you can afford, leading to an unwanted duplication (you could gift it away).

• Weight

  • Heavy pots and pans are better at distributing the heat evenly and less subject to warping. They can also be much more difficult to handle during cleaning and especially more challenging to move when hot and filled.

  • Light weight equipment is quite the opposite in all respects. Mid weight is a better choice if you don't want to lift hot weights and don't need cookware to last many decades and pass down to grand children.

• Type of metal

  • Cast iron is the most durable and most useful for a frying pan, least useful for a soup pot or deep frying a whole chicken in peanut oil; where lightweight stainless steel is preferable.

  • Hard anodized aluminum - lightweight and durable.

  • Copper is expensive and high maintenance. It's more durable if lined with stainless steel and can be non-stick coated. If you intend to whip eggs then you want an uncoated copper bowl.

  • Stainless steel offers good performance and durability, at a midprice range. Stainless clad over the top of an aluminum core distributes heat more evenly than stainless steel alone.
    
    You should also decide if you will ever use your cookware on an induction range, you'll need cookware with a high ferrous metal content or a magnetic grade of stainless steel.

• Handles

  • Wooden and plastic handles don't conduct heat as well as metal handles though they usually will have a metal insert for strength. They won't be of any use in an oven either.

  • Metal handles are more durable but are also great conductors of heat. You will need gloves or a cloth to pick up your cookware unless you pay extra for removable handles.

    • Removable handles offer many advantages:

      1. A better way to store your pans - removing handles saves a lot of space in our cupboards.

      2. To clean pans easier - easier to fit in the sink or dishwasher.

      3. To place pans in the oven - long handles have more leverage but take up a lot of space in the oven. Allows wooden handles to be used.

      4. To use our fry pan as a casserole - just remove the handle, cuts down on the number of pots and pans to be purchased.

      5. To turn our pan into a cake mould

      6. To cook everything in the same pan - stovetop to oven and back

• Lids - Glass let you see the progress of the cooking but are breakable. Metal lids and much less prone to damage but heat up more. Mesh lids have some advantages of both glass and metal lids but don't hold as much heat in.

• Warranty - At least a few years, but lifetime warranties are available.

Finally:

A lot of what I've been looking at is various brands of non-stick options. However, I've noticed a trend. The descriptions say to avoid cooking above medium heat ...

• Non-stick coatings

  • Diamond crystal embedded nonstick coatings are super hard and heat up four times faster than copper. Relatively lightweight, dishwasher safe, and oven safe (to 480°F) including lids and handles. Cost several hundred dollars for a 10 piece induction range set.

  • Teflon is a durable and modestly priced non-stick coating. It is safe if not overheated.

  • Hard Anodized Aluminum Cookware is durable, lightweight, scratch-resistant, and stick-free.

  • Enamel over steel gives you a wide range of color choices.

  • Glass-ceramic and silicone are useful for specialty cookware such as casserole dishes, baking sheets or steamers.

... am I just doing it wrong and I should be cooking more at medium or maybe medium-high heat and almost never using high heat?

Different foods are cooked at different temperatures, that's a few hundred more questions in and of itself. The short version is low heat (but sufficient to kill bacteria and other organisms) preserves more of the nutrition, medium heat is usually a good choice (but not always), and high heat tends to cook the outside faster than the center (for thin foods that's less of a concern and increases cooking speed).

The way you are thinking about heat levels such as "medium heat" it is widespread, but so useless, that I consider it to be a misconception and would urge people to drop it.

If a recipe directs you to cook something at "medium heat", then the real parameter you want to get right is the rate at which things in the pan are heating up. The dial position is only one of the many factors which determine what heat level you have reached. For more details, see this answer I once wrote to a question on how to find out the settings for heat levels.

So, if you use this definition of heat levels, you are always boiling water on slow heat. When you boil water, the stuff in your pan or pot is not really heating up and browning, which corresponds to the behavior of cooking on slow heat. It doesn't matter how much your dial is turned. If you put a 20 liter pot on a domestic hob, you may never even get it to boil even at the highest dial position - this doesn't mean that "high heat isn't enough to boil 20 liters of water", it means that you just didn't reach slow heat despite turning the dial up.

With that definition, the recommendation becomes correct: boiling water is not problematic for coated pots, because they are exposed to slow heat only, not to above-medium heat. Were you to apply the "dial position corresponds to the heat level" interpretation, then most recommendation based on heat levels become wrong, including the recommendation you are concerned about.