It is, admittedly, slightly taller and narrower than other sets, and this feature is noticeable when you place the pot on a large burner. That said, I found there was still enough surface area at the bottom of the pot to make an excellent fond on the marinara, which is the true test of a good pot. If you have a large kitchen stove or want to batch-cook often, you may want just a hair more room. A gleaming set of stainless steel cookware is a beautiful sight to behold, and Cuisinart’s stainless steel offerings deliver in that regard. By properly preheating your cookware and using enough fat, you can cook anything without it sticking.
The stick handles on the Anolon Tri-Ply Clad Stainless Steel 12-Piece Cookware Set were too short and not as comfortable to hold as the wide, longer handles on the Tramontina cookware. The Goldilocks Cookware Set Plus is the best budget cookware we’ve tested, and it performed almost as well as our other picks. It heats evenly, cleans up well, and costs under $250 at the time of publishing. You can still file a claim even if your pans haven’t been damaged by dishwashing but were purchased between the aforementioned dates. To be clear, we’re not concerned about the quality or durability of our All-Clad picks, as long as they are cared for properly. This Tramontina set comes with a lifetime warranty that covers manufacturer defects.
On top of that, the lids have tiny handles that we found difficult to grasp, and the set comes with only one skillet. The Cuisinart MultiClad Pro Stainless Steel 12-Piece Cookware Set was our previous runner-up pick. However, after a new round of testing, we found the skillets warped cuisinart pots and pans set over high heat. The bottom of the pans bowed so much that they wobbled on a flat surface. We tested multiple skillets to be sure this wasn’t a fluke, but all of them had the same results. Although the pans were still usable after warping, their damage voids the warranty.
In our Lab, our testing confirmed all of this—fairly even heating, easy to cook with, and beautiful, even crusts when searing, with very little sticking, even with eggs. It has a hard anodized aluminum exterior, a pure aluminum core for fast, even heating and an inner non-stick Quantanium layer. Anodized aluminum is considered twice as strong as stainless steel so this makes the set very durable.
If you want the most durable non-stick cookware with easy food release, choose one of the collections that features a PTFE-based non-stick coating rather than ceramic. The side grips, helper handles, long handles, and lid handles on other Cuisinart cookware collections are similar if not identical in shape and construction. They use a mix of stainless steel, heat-resistant silicone, or a stainless/silicone combination, such as the Cuisinart Advantage collection. Although this fry pan does not come with a matching lid, there are similar options with lids, such as the Chef’s Classic skillet or the upgraded construction of the Multiclad Pro 12-inch skillet.
The Cuisinart Multiclad Pro has all the features of a top class stainless steel cookware set. Most other sets with this quality on the market are twice as expensive. But according to a user of Cuisinart hard anodized cookware, it is like ‘Teflon on steroids!