New stainless pots pans? Tramontina sucks! Page 2
The cookware can be used in the oven or under the broiler, and the pans and glass lids are dishwasher-safe for easy cleaning. As long as you follow preheating instructions and keep heat low to medium, there should be no problems with food sticking. During tramontina cookware set our tests, this warmed up thoroughly and uniformly when we needed subtle heat for eggs or scallops. It also seared steak beautifully, leaving a restaurant-worthy crust. That steak did leave behind a bit of fond that can off easily during our deglaze.
That said, stainless steel, by nature of how it cooks food, is prone to (harmless!) stains that require a smidge more effort to get out. We like using Barkeeper’s Friend or a Mr. tramontina cookware set Clean Magic Eraser to help remove stains; they usually do the job well. Some pans were unanimously denounced as too heavy, others as having unbearably uncomfortable handles.
The non-reactive properties of stainless steel make it ideal for cooking sauces with acidic ingredients (think tomato sauce or meats stewed in wine). Many stainless steel pieces are oven-safe, allowing you to finish a dish under the broiler if needed. When purchasing a set of cookware, you’ll want to consider how many pieces you actually need, along with how much space to have to store them. We’ve tested more than 40 different stainless steel cookware sets in our Lab’s dedicated test kitchen over the past two years. We gathered this data, along with feedback from home testers, and gave each set a rating. Our top picks have been put through their paces more than once, proving time and again why they deserve a spot on our list.
Choose from a variety of durable materials, including felspar porcelain, stoneware, and treated glass that allow oven dishes to double as elegant serving dishes in any Scandinavian décor style dining room. Meanwhile, stainless steel roasting trays are built to go from the oven to the stove for help in making gravy after roasting chicken or lamb. The Tramontina Professional Aluminum Nonstick Pan heated up extremely quickly and came with a nifty removable silicone grip sleeve for the handle, but after just one use, the light metallic bottom of the pan showed some signs of scorching. Almost all of the skillets brought water to a boil within a 30-second window of each other, except for one outlier, the Breville, which took a full minute longer than the next-slowest pan.
The cooking surface has a starburst finish for stick resistance, and the pots have flared rims that make it easy to pour liquid from them. The ergonomic handles stay cool while cooking, though some might find them uncomfortable. Lids are made from stainless steel so you can’t see what’s cooking, but they’re unbreakable and you can use them in the oven along with the pots. As we mentioned above, we aren’t crazy about cooking on plastic nonstick coatings. They only last a couple of years, most are prone to scratching and wear, and there’s a lot we still don’t know about the overall safety of PFAS nonstick coatings.
For easy cleaning, all pieces are dishwasher safe; however, we recommend hand washing. Since the lids are stainless steel rather than glass, you can’t watch what you’re cooking, but it means the lids are also oven-safe and unbreakable. These are made with a 5-ply bonded construction that has alternating layers of stainless steel and conductive aluminum for warp-free strength and thorough heating. While testing, we consistently experienced excellent heat conductivity with beautiful crusts when searing, and very little sticking, even with eggs.
Those with smaller hands tended to find wider, fatter handles too big to hold securely; those with larger hands found those very same handles comfortable. Some people liked the ridges built into some of the handles, others said those ridges pressed uncomfortably into the Tramontina online discount store palm. I was still staring at 29 skillets and did not have much of a sense of just how much better one was than another. It was time to put them into the hands of many people to find out if there were strong preferences around weight, handle comfort, and tossing ease.
If you don’t have the budget for a high-end set of cookware, this collection will fit your budget while it looks good on your stove. The pans have a mirrored finish inside and out, an encapsulated base for even heat distribution, and can be used on all cooking surfaces. Now that you have a high-quality nonstick pan picked out, you need to make sure to care for it properly. Here are a few tips to keep your cooking surface in top pancake-sliding shape for as long as possible. The weight was perfect and the handle felt very easy to work with, but it didn’t outperform the Zwilling and it cost more. The GreenPan Venice Pro performed similarly to the Paris pan, but thanks to its stainless-steel core, it’s noticeably heavier.