Comments: The Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli once compared his voice to a thoroughbred horse – powerful and dynamic, but perhaps requiring a little more attention than a standard horse. We'll get back to that in a moment.

Fissler, the German pan and cookware manufacturer, wants to be sure you know that a steak is not an omelet. That is their way of saying you really need to have two distinctly different frying pans in your kitchen – a nonstick pan (for the omelet) and a high-heat pan (for steaks). To that end, it offers the Ultimate Frying System: an 11" Crispy Steelux Frypan, an 11" Protect Steelux Frypan, a Clippix spatter shield, and a Comfort turner.

The Crispy 18/10 stainless steel fry pan features Fissler's "Novogrill" bottom, a honeycomb texture for high-heat non-stick grilling and frying without the use of any oils. The company promotes it as a healthy way to grill indoors. The Protect non-stick pan, which is 100% PFOA-free, won a major European test for chip-resistance, durability, longevity, evenness, heat distribution, safety, ease of cleaning, and quality of coating after abrasion tests. The pans have wonderful handles that are easy to grip, and are shaped to provide a heat shield and keep your fingers from slipping. The bottom's of the pans feature Fissler's all-stove base – one of their hallmarks – which will never separate or warp, and can be used on all heating surfaces, including induction cooktops.

The spatter shield hooks into either frypan's handle and is a necessity for spatter-free frying. When the shield is placed in the upright position over the pan's handle, drips fall back into the pan. Finally, the set includes a large heat-resistant synthetic spatula, which will help you curb any relentless urges to use metal utensils on non-stick pans.

The set performed as expected and as promised. The pans heated evenly, cooked well, were restrained from spattering, and didn't scratch. The nonstick pan is absolutely nonstick, and while we were not outrageously rough with it, we didn't baby it either, and it showed no signs of wear.

With regard to our thoroughbred comment, it was occasionally a little challenging to get all the fried-on grease off the stainless-steel pan. Fissler suggests you deglaze the pan with water while it is still hot to prevent grease from sticking. If we had cooked a roast or something else that wanted a 20-minute rest, we would do that. But cooking a steak, where the resting time is barely long enough to get everything else on the plate – well, we didn't necessarily want to clean our pan right at that moment. We wanted to eat.

Fissler recommends a detergent and cleaning pads (Goodbye Detergent) if you're like us and want to tend to your thoroughbred after you've tended to your own needs.