Editor-Favorite Tramontina Cookware Product Reviews
The skillets in the Williams-Sonoma Signature Thermo-Clad Stainless-Steel 10-Piece Cookware Set have a very small cooking surface. The handles on this set are also very long, which we found awkward—especially on a crowded range. At 3 pounds 14.8 ounces, the Signature Thermo-Clad pan was a bit hefty for some tramontina cookware set of our testers. To avoid liability for damage caused by misuse, cookware manufacturers routinely advise against cooking over high temperatures. However, judging from our years of experience, as long as you reduce the heat after preheating your pan on medium or medium-high heat, you won’t damage your pans.
We also experienced some minor sticking while sautéing chicken in the skillets, but it was minimal. Overall, the Goldilocks set performed better than any other set we’ve tested in this price range. The Great Jones Family Style set is unusual among the cookware sets we looked at in that it includes a nonstick pan and an enameled cast-iron Dutch oven. For one, when testing the Great Jones Saucy for our guide to the best small saucepan, we found the loop-shaped handles uncomfortable to hold. Also, the nonstick pan is only 8½ inches, so it’s not as versatile as the 10-inch pans we recommend in our guide to nonstick skillets.
A good induction-compatible cookware expedites the cooking process, while the even heat distribution prevents hotspots, ensuring that your dishes are cooked to perfection. Choose a cookware which can help you spend less time fretting about unevenly cooked food and more time savoring the delicious results. Though a lot of stainless steel cookware claims to be dishwasher-safe, we still recommend washing it by hand whenever possible.
One exception was the Demeyere 5-Plus 10-Piece Cookware Set , which heated impressively evenly. That said, the pans in this set took longer to heat up than those in the All-Clad set. Five-ply cookware also holds onto more heat, so it’s slower to react when you lower the heat on your stove. However, most of our testers preferred tramontina pans skillets that weighed between 2 and 3½ pounds; these were still light enough to toss ingredients in a pan without placing too much torque on their wrists. We took the advice of our pros and looked at many cookware sets in person before testing, to get a feel for the weight and actual size of the pots and pans.
To be effective, nonstick pans do need some fat, so we recommend that you rub your cold pan with a bit of vegetable oil. Because copper is such an excellent conductor of heat, we decided to test the All-Clad Copper Core 10-Piece Set to see how it would perform against regular tri-ply stainless steel cookware. In our tests, the Copper Core cookware heated up so fast we had to swirl the pan more when making caramel, to prevent it from burning. Unlike the tri-ply All-Clad set we recommend, the Copper Core skillets discolored badly over high heat.
And if you’re partial to keeping your cookware bright and shiny, note that in our tests this set was one of the few that looked like new when we cleaned it—even after years of testing. If ceramic cookware is more your vibe, you’ll love Tramontina’s Ceramica Deluxe set. The entire set is free from PFOA, PTFE, lead, and cadmium, so you can cook easy knowing your food is safe. The Goldilocks pot lid handles, and those on the sides of the stockpot, are wide with a slight dimple (similar to All-Clad’s handles); this makes them easier to grasp and more comfortable to hold.
We did this by using an infrared thermometer to make a heat map of their cooking surface. We also sprinkled the surface of each large skillet with a dusting of flour and placed the pan over a medium-high flame to see how evenly the flour browned. Then, to evaluate how uniformly the skin browned, we sautéed chicken pieces in the skillets. Using the large saucepan from each set, we prepared small batches of caramel to check for hot spots; then we simmered a large batch of tomato sauce in each stockpot to test for scorching.
The Cuisinart 77-7 Chef’s Classic Stainless 7-Piece Cookware Set was our former budget pick. The single layer of stainless steel around the perimeter of the pan is too thin to evenly distribute heat and causes food to burn. In our test kitchen, we long-term tested an older (now-discontinued) version of this set for two years, and all of the pots and pans distributed heat evenly. The skillets became a bit more discolored after searing meat over high heat, but their performance remained the same. Don’t put this pan in the dishwasher, and don’t use a harsh scrubber (like the green side of a heavy-duty scrub sponge) to clean it.