Welcome to Flavortown: Guy Fieri's laser titanium cookware sizzles with style

Have you been to Flavortown? What about Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives? Please give a rocking welcome to Guy Fieri's Flavortown Cookware Set. It certainly made a major impression when it arrived — it's big! The set includes seven pots and pans, and five coordinating lids. It's made of a type of aluminum the brand calls Laser Titanium (a chemical-free nonstick surface) that is immune to metal utensils, is dishwasher safe and boasts oven safety up to 700°F, a top temperature I've never seen before.

Whether you're a fan of the Food Network star or you'd just like to feed a crowd, this bundle will cover all the bases. I’m a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, a discerning home cook and the resident cookware tester here at Yahoo. Here's my honest review of Guy Fieri's Flavortown Laser Titanium 12-Piece Cookware Set.

Guy Fieri's Flavortown Laser Titanium Cookware Set: Getting started

My first impression of this giant box of cookware was, whoa, this is a lot of pots and pans! In truth, Guy Fieri is a "go big or go home" kind of personality and his new cookware line fits right in with that. After I unpacked the 12 pieces of cookware (five of which are glass lids), I realized that some of these pieces feel redundant (I probably don't need a 4-quart and a 5-quart saucepan), but that's fairly common in large nonstick sets, like the Ninja Foodi NeverStick that I tested and reviewed in the Best Cookware Sets for 2024. Alternatively, you could order a 2-piece frying pan set or a frying pan and a saucepan separately.

Then I read the hexagon-shaped card that came in the box and stopped in my tracks. The card explains that you must season each piece of laser titanium cookware before you use it. I have seasoned a few cast-iron skillets in my day, but to have to season every one of the seven pots and pans seemed daunting.

I took stock of all the pots and pans in the set and decided to start with the 10-inch frying pan and the 2- and 4-quart saucepans. As instructed, I washed and dried the pans and set them on the stove over low-medium heat. The directions say to heat the dry pans to 300 degrees, but I have no idea how anyone would know their pan had reached a specific temperature. I simply waited about two minutes and then spread some avocado oil around the pans. The directions say to heat the oil until it smokes, but mine never did. The pans got very hot and I eventually turned off the burner and left them overnight while I went to sleep. In the morning I washed and dried the pans and put them to work.

The pots and pans are relatively lightweight with easy-to-grip, cool-to-touch handles. They can withstand high temperatures, making them ideal for searing or achieving a perfect crust. However, the laser titanium cooking surface on the 8- and 10-inch frying pans is somewhat limited due to the sloped sides, which reduces the amount of usable cooking area.

I'm not sure what to think about the brand's claim that its cookware is oven safe up to 700 degrees. Is it a gimmick? No one has an oven that reaches that temperature. Most home ovens, even high-end ones, reach a maximum temperature of 500-550 degrees, and for everyday cooking (i.e., not running a pizza parlor), you're not going to need anything hotter than that. That said, these are definitely going to hold up under your broiler — so there's some versatility there.

Guy Fieri's Flavortown Laser Titanium Cookware Set: 'Nonstick Magic with No Chemicals'?

The brand says this cookware is made from aluminum and the nonstick surface is coated with Laser Titanium, which is free of PFAS, PTFE or PFOA (commonly referred to as "forever chemicals" and are used in many nonstick surface coatings). I recently tested a bunch of the best nonstick pans on the market and these perform as well as most of those pans with traditional nonstick coating. For reference, the Flavortown pan performed about as well as the Oxo one I tested but boasts a level of oven safety that that pan did not. It remains to be seen if this set will retain its slickness over a longer period of time, but so far, so good.

Guy Fieri's Flavortown Cookware Set: Is it a good value?

Anyone who enjoys a nonstick cooking surface and likes to have lots of large pots and pans on hand would benefit from this jumbo Guy Fieri Flavortown Cookware Set. The larger pots and saucepans are particularly useful if you host frequent dinner parties or cook in big batches (think chili or chicken soup).

If you're cooking for two or have limited kitchen storage space, this might not be the best choice, but if you're cooking for a family or like to host large parties, this set could be for you. If you are intrigued but intimidated by the full set, you could always take advantage of this innovative nonstick cookware by buying one or two pieces à la carte.

We receive complimentary samples of some products and purchase others ourselves, but we review all products using the same objective criteria.