Induction Cooking:
All-Clad Stainless-Steel Cookware

About All-Clad and Stainless-Steel Cookware

(Been to this page before and want to cut the cackle and jump right to the price/buy pages list? Sure: just click here.)

About Stainless-Steel Cookware in General

While the characteristics of a piece of cookware are determined in part by its shape and size, they are mainly determined by what the cookware is made of. Materials for cookware differ in many ways, but the chiefest of those are: the ability--or inability--of that material to readily conduct (and thus evenly distribute) heat; and its "structural" qualities. The cookware materials of common choice are metals: copper, aluminum, iron, and steel, especially "stainless" steel.

Steel is iron with a slight (c. 1%) admixture of carbon, which changes the qualities of the iron. Stainless steel is steel with some chromium alloyed with the steel; if the chromium content is at least 12%, the alloy qualifies as "stainless" steel, but 18% chromium is the norm. Stainless steel can also, and often does, have some nickel mixed in as well; nickel is not essential to steel being "stainless"--though it does add a little further corrosion resistance--and it is chiefly used to enhance the characteristically bright, shiny surface finish of stainless steel (it does also somewhat increase the metal's hardness and temperature tolerance). Stainless steel with the usual 18% chromium but no nickel is referred to as "18/0" stainless; if nickel is present as, say, 8% of the alloy, that alloy is designated "18/8" stainless. Top-of-the-line cookware commonly contains 10% nickel, and is thus "18/10" stainless steel.

(According to those who determine such things, we are no longer supposed to refer to stainless as "18/10" or the like, but pretty much everybody continues to do so, formal standards notwithstanding.)

Now as it happens, steel has excellent structural characteristics for cookware: it is strong and immune to the acids in many foods. But it does not transfer heat very well at all. Meanwhile, copper and aluminum transfer heat very well indeed, but have failings as structural materials (aluminum combines with the acids in many foods, while copper is soft and hard to clean).

Sigh. What a shame that we can't develop a cookware material that shares stainless steel's structural qualities with the heat-related virtues of copper or aluminum. But, if we can't (yet) roll out such a material, we can do what's almost as good: combine those materials in the construction of our cookware. That is accomplished by making cookware that constitutes a "sandwich" with stainless steel on the outsides--as the "bread" of the sandwich--and copper or aluminum between, as the "meat" of the sandwich. We refer to the heat-transfer material, be it copper or--more commonly--aluminum, as "clad" in stainless. In some fancier constructions, the base is not merely a 3-layer "sandwich", but can have 5 or occasionally as many as 7 layers.

By using clad "sandwiches" of materials to construct cookware, we get most or all of the heat-related virtues of copper or aluminum combined with the structrual advantages of stainless steel. While no one suggests that such cookware is the only satisfactory form--many like pure copper, despite the perpetual grief of keeping it clean and shiny, others like other things--it is an excellent one that is very widely used by both professional and home chefs.

About All-Clad Stainless-Steel Cookware in Particular

When we first began reviewing cookware, we started to make a list of known induction-ready clad cookware lines--but we quickly abandoned that effort, because the list was becoming comically and tediously long, yet would obviously still be far from all-inclusive. We instead decided to go at it the other way round: identify excellent cookware, then see what's induction-ready.

That still did not make the task simple. The world is full of cookware of undoubted excellence, and to abstract from that fullness a few particular brands necessarily requires some harsh and perhaps arbitrary chopping. We're not in a position to ourselves relentlessly test brand after brand of cookware, so we necessarily have to rely on what other say; that, in turn, requires not only extensive reading, but also the judging of the probable expertise or reliability of the sources being consulted. Here are some of the places we looked, and what they had to say.

One useful resource, Consumer Search's Cookware review, does just what we were engaged in doing, "meta-reviewing": it's a review of cookware reviews, so to speak. You can (and should) check their material for yourself, but two things emerged clearly from it: the overwhelming majority of review sources went for stainless-steel cookware, and of stainless, the definite preference was the All-Clad Stainless Steel Uncoated cookware line.

The updated Cook's Illustrated list, The Ideal Cookware Set à la Carte, sets forth different cookware makers item by item (as the title phrase à la Carte suggests); most of their stainless choices were from All-Clad, the exceptions being the stockpot and the non-stick sauté pan. Interestingly, in their older listing, for a stockpot they recommended the cheapest thing not actually trash that you could find, inasmuch as all they recommend using it for is boiling large amounts of water, as for pasta; for true stock-making, they prefer a Dutch (aka French) oven--and we think that is still a better idea than the rather expensive item they now list.

Our own conclusions, after reviewing those sources--and quite a number of others--is that when push comes to shove, All-Clad is the winner, the end. It's not so much that this or that more or less qualified authority praises it, it's the cumulative weight of one after another after another after another, all in glowing superlatives. It's not so much that nothing else is really any good--as we said, there's lots of good cookware--it's that apparently nothing else is quite this good.

(But, again, note carefully that this refers only to All-Clad's Stainless line, so named: they have other lines, some made of stainless steel, that are not induction-suitable, so make sure you're looking at the correct product line--and read also the buying notes below.)

All-Clad is not inexpensive. (Though as one cooking-school chef said, When it came time to upgrade from the Calphalon Commercial Nonstick set that I have at home, I considered All-Clad, Mauviel Professional and Demeyere Sirocco. I chose All-Clad because it is good and inexpensive compared to other cookware in its class [emphasis added]. You don't always get what you pay for, but you never get what you don't pay for. If your idea of cookery is centered on microwaves and Hamburger Helper, you don't need or want All-Clad; if you take cooking in the least seriously, then consider that you're buying cookware that you can, with only modest care, pass down to your descendants. What is its cost when amortized over its useful lifetime? Not a major factor. (And no one says you have to buy every scrap of cookware you'll ever want all in one swoop--if budget is a consideration, add pieces over time, making do with whatever till you can get The Real Thing--indeed, Lodge cast-iron cookware is a nice, inexpensive way to get going.)

All-Clad Stainless-Steel Cookware: Lists

Here it is: the list of All-Clad Stainless-Steel cookware, with details, current (never over an hour old) best prices from Amazon and other vendors selling through Amazon, and a chance to review all such offers and buy the one of your choice.

(We cannot of course absolutely, positively guarantee that on any given day for any given item the best price shown below will be the very lowest on the internet at that moment--but it usually will be, and the differences will never be much. A zillion retailers carry All-Clad, and prices shift day to day at many; we use Amazon and the many merchants who sell through Amazon, and our price will always be the lowest that can be had through either Amazon or one of those merchants--and our experience is that those prices, with shipping figured in--unduly high "S&H" costs being one way many small retailers clip a profit margin onto "low prices"--are just about always the best, plus you know Amazon stands behind the deal.)

The entries are mostly self-explanatory, but let's add a few words. First, the type of cookware is color-coded in the category headings and the stripe down the left edge:

The prices shown in green are each the lowest total-cost costs: that means the nominal price plus any shipping costs (a lot of vendors, in and out of Amazon, lowball on prices and make it up on killer shipping charges).

Our listings are assembled on the basis of All-Clad's item numbers; the descriptions you see are as supplied by the individual sellers, which is why they often differ a bit even between very similar items. When Amazon's database provides the item dimensions and weight, we show them; if they are shown as simply a ? that means that the data was not made available to us from that Amazon database. (The reason length and width can vary on circular items like skillets is that the longer dimension includes the handle length.) The "features" lists are also as provided by Amazon's database, not as compiled by us.

(Incidentally, we include the ovenware portion of the line, even though it's not relevant to induction cooking, because it seems silly to list most of the line but not all of it; but do be aware that some All-Clad ovenware is not suitable for use with induction--which shouldn't matter, as it is ovenware, not stovetop cooking vessels. Check the tabulation above if you have concerns about induction compatibility.)

Finally, note that clicking on a "buy" link does not immediately buy the item: it takes you to a detail page for that particular item on which are displayed the same data as shown here, plus each of the sell offers for that item; that way, you can see whom you're buying from, check their ratings and references, and choose the one you want (which may, for one or another reason, be the very lowest-cost one). So don't hesitate to click away: it commits you to nothing.