Personally, I’m not a fan of iron cookware. It’s heavy, has lousy heat distribution, and sticks like crazy (unless it has built up a thick veneer of polymerized cooking grease).
We own a set of massive copper French pans with a nickel lining—every cook’s dream—and we never use those either. Too heavy, and the nickel lining also sticks like crazy. They just look pretty hanging up in the kitchen.
What I want for almost everything is very thick aluminum with a very good non-stick coating. Aluminum is almost as good as copper at spreading the heat around, but it’s much lighter to handle (and costs much less)
Stuffy cooks sneer at non-stick coatings, but I’ve worked in some of the best restaurants in the US and Europe, and that’s what they use for any searing, suateeing or browning. The problem is that the coatings tend to not hold up well over time.
I think then that the best compromise might be something like the new Calphalon non-stick line. They’re heavy aluminum with a high-performance non-stick coating. I’m sure the coating will wear out eventually, but they have a lifetime warranty, so they will replace pans with a worn coating. If I were buying new pans right now, that’s what I’d get. I’d just keep sending ‘em back when the coating gets shot and get ‘em replaced.
For wet cooking (sauces, soups, etc.), the coating does nothing for you; in fact, non-stick coatings in a saucepan are worse because they can’t handle the constant abrasion of whisking. The best choice for a saucepan is anodized aluminum, like the basic Calphalon line. The anodizing provides a hard layer that keeps the whisk from scraping aluminum up into your sauces.