Love the colors and graphics... those canisters are dreamy.

Can anyone tell me anything about cooking with enamelware? I have been eyeing similar brightly colored pots and pans at the thrift stores, as the Rachel Ray set my Grandmother bought me a less than a year ago is not going to last much longer. However, I know nothing about cooking with them, pros, cons, etc.

Ugh, sorry, but enough Etsy already.

They are really pretty. I was lucky enough to find a set of Catherineholm enamel bowls in a dumpster once.

Rebeldress, I have some enamel pans. My enamel on aluminum stockpot (from a thrift shop) is really light and thin, and that one is mostly just good for boiling water for corn or pasta. It's too thin to really cook with. I also have an enamel on steel that's a heavier pan, and I use it just like a stainless steel pan. My enamel on cast iron dutch oven (mine is by Lodge, much cheaper than Le Creuset) weighs a ton. It's good for long simmering foods and looks good as a serving piece, too. Enamel cookware has such a cheerful, retro look, I love it. I wouldn't want a whole set of it, but a few pieces are nice.

I have a Le Creuset enamel stockpot, and I love it.

Those prices are a little up there... I think I'll stick to snagging great finds at the antique stores in small towns that I love.

Last year I replaced all of my department store xmas sale non-stick cookware set pots and pans with vintage Dansk Kobenstyle and Catherineholm lotus enamelware, they are so much better (though now I'm working out a budget to replace with new investment pans as they wear out, sometimes vintage has it's downsides like when the external enamel on the bottom of your dansk dutch over melts onto the electric hob while you're boiling water)

My advice is don't look for vintage enamelware on etsy it's almost universally over-priced. I've seen most of the pieces I picked up via ebay on etsy for much more than I ended up paying. I'd watch ebay and hunt for deals over a longer time period. The same stuff comes up again and again and even though some weeks everything is selling for $50 or more a piece the next week you can score the same item for like $10. I'd at least see what the etsy piece's market value is first on ebay before you just give up and pay the $60 they are likely asking for it.

MansardRoof, thank you for the advice!

I would agree that for any kind of cooking that thin pots of any kind will not work well for anything but boiling water or for reheating at lower temps.

If you intend to braise, saute or anything else requiring more heat they will simply not do - especially of cheap cookware for they simply don't hold up over time and the thin bottoms will cause stuff to burn much more easily and may not conduct heat well, aluminum, while a good conductor of heat will warp much easier than stainless steel or cast iron but even cast iron should not be used on high heat for any length of time.

Stick to quality stainless steel cookware or ones that are stainless but have non stick coatings inside with solid, thick bottoms will serve you much better than just about anything else out there IMO.

Heck if you find thick walled sautee pans of "restaurant quality", they can be quite good too. I have some wearever ones of that type and they've held up really well, but my 10" saute pan is now over 10 years old and the non stick coating doesn't do as well as it once did so time to replace that.

So I'd buy and just use for decorative purposes only or simply for serving and that'd be it.

I agree with ciddyguy. I collect Dansk Kobenstyle and only use it to serve in. I've seen tons of pictures of people who regularly use vintage Kobenstyle, Catherinholm and Finel to cook with and I gasp in horror each time. These things are not easy (in some cases impossible) to replace once damaged and definitely impossible to repair. The fact that the Dansk buffet server is constantly misnomered as a paella pan is still more disturbing (do a seach on ebay, you'll see). Very few people were making paella in the states in the 1950's and 60's and the ones who were, were using pans that were made to stand up to the higher temperatures required by paella in the initial cooking stages. The Kobenstyle buffet server, which wasn't made to be cooked in at all, wouldn't last long used for this purpose.

A simple rule of thumb for vintage enamel pieces is if they don't have a black bottom, they are not made to be used on a stove top. If the bottom is enamel, they were made to be used either in the oven or, like the sauce warmers, chafing dishes and fondue pots, over a small candle.

Then again, the more pieces out there that get damaged, the more valuable the remaining pieces become...