A while back, I did a review of Le Creuset cookware, and some of the more affordable copies of that cookware. Overall, my experience up till that point had been that the clones seemed to hold up well, and would probably be fine with a little bit of proper care. Well, when I did our anniversary dinner a couple weeks ago, I found out different.
Those who saw the post may recall that after cooking the steaks low and slow on the smoker, I put them into a hot pan on the stove top to give them a quick sear.
In fact, it was the pan in the above picture. I took a better look at it a day or so ago, and here’s what I noticed:
The heat had caused stress fractures in the ceramic coating. Apparently they should have included a warning that said “Don’t use with the stove burner on high”.
Admittedly, I’ve had good luck with the other 3 off brand pans, but I’ve never used them on more than medium heat. Well, live and learn… You do indeed get what you pay for.
This particular pan was a Crock Pot brand product by the way.
Silk Chatters 
I’ve been happy with my Lodge enameled Dutch ovens (3 qt and 6 qt). Much less expensive than some of the others and they’ve held up to my abuse in the kitchen.
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Good to know. Crock Pot at least used to have an excellent reputation for quality, so I’m more than a little disappointed to see this happen literally the first time the pan gets used.
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I have never used ceramics in cooking.
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After finding seasoning bare cast iron to be a nightmare, coated cast iron is the only way I’ll use iron pots and pans.
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I’ve been using regular cast iron for years.
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I want to invest in ceramic cookware. Going to read your review!
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Hope it helps. 🙂
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I love Utopia Kitchen cookware. I recently purchased a 3 size skillet set. I cook on a very low setting and I found that it doesn’t take long to cook my food. If you take care of your cookware then it should be okay.
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I have to admit, that’s a really good price on solid cast iron cookware for the Utopia stuff. Presumably it’ll need to be re-seasoned at some point though, and I’ve had bad luck with that process.
One of the things with ceramic is that it’s supposed to be highly heat resistant. They used it on the space shuttle’s reentry shields. 🙂 That crock pot pan fractured all over the place on a stove top though.
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So far things are going great with my set. Hopefully it will last awhile. Happy cooking. 🍳
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Great to hear. 🙂
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