However, if you don’t care about the weight and want the best cookware on the market, Atlantis should be at the top of your list. So as great as Atlantis is, a lot of people are just going to prefer All-Clad because that’s what they know and are familiar with. This entire bottom capsule is hermetically welded to the pan to provide extra protection from water, fat and contaminants. For more information, see our Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad review with a comprehensive list of buying options. See also our review of Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad Cookware for detailed information and more buying options.
We were able to narrow the field a bit by eliminating cookware that failed to meet some basic criteria. Aluminum cookware is inexpensive and has terrific heating properties, but it is a soft metal that wears down easily and reacts with food. There is some evidence that aluminum isn’t safe, and it can impart off flavors to food. However, aluminum cookware is usually coated with a nonstick coating, either PTFE (Teflon) or ceramic, so the potential dangers of aluminum aren’t applicable. Most bare aluminum cookware is found in restaurant supply stores and is extremely reasonably priced.
We prefer the Multiclad Pro for its equivalent performance and lower price point. As for handles, most clad stainless steel cookware has steel handles, but a few otherwise good brands have silicone tramontina pans handles (Vollrath, for example). Silicone will wear out way sooner than stainless, leaving you with a pot without a handle. The array of clad stainless steel cookware brands is overwhelming.
Glass and ceramic bakeware can be great (again, because of their insulating properties), but for cookware, they’re a poor choice. Another shopper who said the pan made cooking fun raved over its nonstick capabilities too. “I always thought ‘nonstick’ was just a marketing gimmick for pans that were only slightly easier to clean, but this thing is legit. The stickiest foods slide off with ease.” Tramontinas Pro, Prima, Tri-Ply Clad, and Knife, collections are made in Brazil and may not be assembled in the USA.
No wonder the Tramontina nonstick skillet has over 13,500 five-star ratings. Selected pieces from Tramontina ceramic cookware range are made in Italy. Brazil is where most of Tramontina’s cookware is made with some pieces made in Italy and China.
Stainless steel is a decent heat conductor and fairly responsive, not to mention they are super versatile, since you can place stainless steel in the oven. This makes them great for searing then roasting (as you would do in this recipe for pan-roasted chicken breasts). Let’s say you’ve got your pan up to around 400°F—in the prime range for delivering maximum browning, which doesn’t really begin to take place in earnest until food reaches around 300°F (149°C) or so. Now when you add cold food to this hot pan, the food saps energy from the pan.
It features a safe and reinforced PFOA-free nonstick coating. This pan works with gas, electric and ceramic stoves, and is oven safe up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. We also have a full review of stainless steel skillets here. You can read more about why the Made In edged out the All-Clad as our top pick (price!) and our budget-friendly recommendation, which is, of course, from Tramontina. Even with the more expensive brands, we chose sets that were not only stellar quality but had decent pieces as well. This isn’t always possible, or you may have different preferences, but we did our best.
A few top cookware brands have more aluminum (Demeyere), but most brands have less; some significantly less. Some inexpensive clad stainless cookware is so thin, in fact, that it barely has enough aluminum to conduct much heat at all. If you’ve ever used a pan that had hot and cold spots that never seemed to even out, you know what we’re talking about.
And while buying a set is the most economical way to go, you also have dozens of open stock pieces to choose from, including obscure pieces like woks, fish pans, pasta pots, and more. They’re more prone to breaking, they’re harder to store, and they aren’t able to withstand as much high heat as stainless lids. There may be good quality brands with glass lids, but we eliminated them for a couple of reasons. We eliminated any cookware that had glass lids and/or non-steel handles. In recent years, though, multiple plies of cladding have become popular.
For example, the Cuisinart Multiclad Pro skillet has a better shape–i.e., more flat cooking surface–than the Tramontina skillet. But the Tramontina has a 12-inch skillet in its 12 piece set. If you’re getting a set, these are both good options that offer a lot of variety (so you can get as close to exactly what you want as possible). As we discussed above, however, there is a wide variety in quality of the stainless steel used in cookware. Manufacturers of inexpensive clad stainless use lower quality steel; they have to, or they couldn’t make a profit. No, clad stainless steel not as easy to wash as nonstick cookware, but if you use the right technique, it’s not nearly as bad to care for as some people might think.