Calphalon Reviews

I have this pan and love it so much I just ordered the 4-1/2 quart version. I use my Calphalon Tri-Ply pots and pans daily and love them as much if not more than my All Clad stainless. The lids fit snugly and that is terribly important when I make rice and steam veggies. My All Clad can't make the same claim and they cost a bunch more as we all know. They don't stick and clean up in a cinch, their weight, balance and design is superb as well.
Give this line a try, start with one of their "try me" collector's pans, you won't regret it!

I have an "everyday" pan from this line and like it very much. So I ordered this and it is bigger and better than I expected. Bigger is the operative word. It seems much bigger than a straight sided 3qt sauce pan. It heats up wonderfully and stays hot with medium heat. Is easy to clean, comes with directions and says can clean with "Bon Ami" or "Bar Keepers Friend" if food sticks. I really like the rim too, it is smooth and easy to pour from it. I will keep my straight sided sauce pan for fixing malt-o-meal as the bubbling up tends to splatter up out of the sides. All in all a great bargain.

Compared with the prices of other pieces in the collection, this pot is a steal! It cooks evenly,and cleans easily. What more can you ask for? I traded in my old Revere copper bottom set for Tri-ply and love it. Even the more expensive pieces are definately worth the price.

I've owned the non-stick version of this pan for about 2 years now. It's always been the first pan I reach for when cooking. While non-stick is great for a lot of things, I decided to get a pan better suited to de-glazing and other cooking techniques that don't work as well in non-stick pans. I'm very glad I choose this one.

Keeping with Chalphalon's tradition of high quality, you can feel how well constructed this pan is the moment you pick it up. It's pretty heavy, thanks to the thick layer of aluminum sandwiched between the stainless and copper. While I'm sure the copper is doing a great job of conducting heat, it's really mostly just for looks, as the thick layer of aluminum is responsible for keeping a nice, even heating in this pan. And for even heating - you can't beat it. There aren't any hotspots, and things cook remarkably well.

Plus, this pan just looks great! The copper is beautiful, and looks great paired with the stainless. I've cooked five or six things in it since it arrived last week, and was impressed each time.

Pros:
-Calphalon quality
-Food doesn't stick very well to stainless, but the absence of a non-stick coating still allows you to perform cooking techniques that don't work well in non-stick pans
-Great looking
-Will likely last forever

Cons:
-None really. You do have to wash this by hand, if you find that a con - but it cleans very easily.

I love to cook... and I swear by Calphalon cookware. I've had their non-stick version of the everyday pan for almost 2 years now - and I really do use it almost everyday. I came to amazon looking for the Stainless steel model when I saw this one. I just couldn't resist the copper finish.

Non-stick pans are great for lots of cooking... but sometimes the non-stick coating interferes with a certain procedure. For instance, if you're deglazing the pan with wine after cooking some sort of meat - it won't work nearly as well with a non-stick pan, and then end result will therefore not be as good. That's why having a Stainless steel pan like this is such a necessity if you cook (or plan to expand to cooking) some fancy dishes.

Just like all the other calphalon cookware I own - this pan is very sturdy (and heavy), and heats extremely evenly thanks to it's thick aluminum core. While the copper looks great, and while copper is a good conducter of heat - I really think that in this pan, with the little bit of copper that's really on it - it's almost soley the aluminum responsible for heat distribution. But - that's not to say the copper is useless - far from it! This pan just looks so much better than the plain stainless steel - and if you're paying to same for either the stainless, or the copper/stainless, why not get the best looking pan! Asthetics do count :)

The fact that this is oven safe to 450 is also a great help. I love being able to use this pan (or the non stick version) for a dish where you brown something on the stove top, then throw the whole thing right in the oven for the final cooking. There's no need to transfer food to another pan - making more dishes, and wasting more of your time.

Pros:
-Super even heating (no hotspots)
-Very sturdy, heavy and durable
-Great looking
-Basically screams high-quality
-easy to clean
-sized and shaped such that it will become the first pan you reach for when you cook

Cons:
-I only ordered one.(Seriously - I don't have a con - it's just too good.)

I recently purchased this pan, and my kitchen is all the better for it. Its best feature is its weight, which keeps it from being tipped over even when it holds very light ingredients. The handle is also superb, staying cool even on a very hot burner over a long period of time, and being more than sturdy enough to handle the body's considerable weight no matter what it contains.
The price is also quite reasonable for a pan of this quality. (It was so good, in fact, that I had it shipped, indirectly, all the way to Japan so I could use it for cooking local dishes).
I certainly wouldn't hesitate to buy another product from the manufacturers.

We have a huge collection of Calphalon hard anodized, but when cooking tomato based dishes, they can discolor. Adding the copper with stainless interior makes it easier to clean up tomato sauce mess! I like the rounded bottom so my spoon can touch all the places with no "corner hiding". As always, the handle is what makes this Calphalon pan as well as the other commercial items stand out! I absolutely love the handle and it stays cool in all of my cooking... BUT remember if you use it in the oven it still gets HOT!!! The size is just right for small to medium families and we love it.

The Cuisinart 2Qt copper saucier pan has become one of my favorite pans over the past year, and when I had a chance to use this larger Calphalon version, I decided to get one for those occasions when it's larger size was more appropriate. As with the rest of this line, it is a well built pan that will survive a few lifetimes of use. I would like to see Calphalon polish the stainless cooking surface to the same shine as Cuisinart (it tends to stick less), but that is a minor issue compared to having the right size and shape pan for the job at hand.

The copper exterior of the Calphalon line is more of a brushed finish than Cuisinart or All Clad pans, as one reviewer noted, but after several Months of use, it makes no real difference, as occasional scrubbing with any of the standard copper cleansers make them all look the same from the outside. That is to say that they all have that extra something to their look that no other material can duplicate. It's not too often that something that looks so good IS so good. Copper cookware is that something.

By the way, someone here remarked that aluminum is almost as good a heat conductor as is copper. I'm sorry, but that is not the case. Copper conducts heat about three times as well as aluminum, which conducts heat far better than stainless steel. That's pretty incredible, and it's also one reason why copper cookware is such a wonder to behold in the kitchen. The idea behind a copper outer layer is to spread the heat from the range or oven quickly to all points of the pan or pot. The aluminum core is a convenient way to offer mechanical stability to the structure while keeping the wonderful (from a food reaction and durability standpoint) stainless steel cooking surface as thin as possible.

Stainless steel alone can make an easy to clean pan that will perfectly burn your food every time you cook with it. Adding copper to the outside of a thin stainless interior will give you all of the benefits of the non reactive, durable stainless cooking surface, and add even heating and pretty quick response to changes in burner setting. Unfortunately, such a pan is still easy to dent and deform. Adding a layer of aluminum between the two other metals keeps pretty much all of the good properties while making it easier to stick the metals together, and making the entire mess a whole lot stronger.

Pure copper is by FAR the best pot material from a thermal standpoint now that we have real control over our stoves. Copper reacts with many foods, so a hand applied tin coating on the cooking surface "kicks it up a notch", but is still reactive with a few foods, and offers the scratch resistance and durability of shoe leather. There are some rare offerings of pans made with a copper exterior bonded directly to a thin stainless cooking surface. They perform marginally better than the All Clad/Cuisinart/Calphalon tri-ply pans, but they are not nearly as resistant to use and abuse.

That's pretty much the scoop on copper cookware. It looks great, cooks better than most anything else, and the tri-ply stuff will take abuse for generations without intensive care. The three major brands offered on Amazon are all of similar quality. I prefer the cooking surface of Cuisinart to the other two, but Calphalon also offers a reasonable price. I have pans from all three companies though, as each offers one or two designs that the others lack. This pan will get along just fine with anything else on your rack.

I have recently purchased a full set of Calphalon Tri-Ply Copper cookware. It is much like a traditional sports car -- sexy and well-performing, but high-maintenance. It's nicely designed and solidly constructed, and the thick layers of metal evenly conduct heat all around the contents. It's slow to heat but once up to temp, is easily controlled and cooks very gently. Typical of copper, the exterior layer requires polishing to keep its shiny good looks, and can easily be scratched -- that comes with the territory and is something to be expected. Surprisingly, however (and quite unlike other stainless steel cookware I've used), the s/s interior layer is also exceptionally prone to scratching. The interior's mirror-like appearance is attractive and useful for viewing the contents, but use of ordinary metal utensils leaves unsightly tracks which are there to stay (e.g., cannot be polished out). Calphalon's Tri-Ply Copper brochure advises that metal utensils will not harm the pan -- don't believe a word of it! Be prepared to use nylon or wood utensils if you want to avoid an ever-growing matrix of scratches, or go to a different brand of cookware altogether. I like Tri-Ply for its performance but am not impressed by having to use soft utensils as if it were old-fashioned Teflon.

These are some of the best pans you could own. First, there is no higher quality, heavy duty pan out there. Second, they is surprisingly cheap for such high quality. Third, I have never tackled a project with these pans that has not come out a success. It is truly professional grade for the home. Even if you are not a professional chef or a food enthusiast, these pans make building a great dish easy. You don't have to worry about those non-stick coatings that peel off but you also don't have to worry about your food sticking to the surface. Ignore the fact that it is more expensive than K-Mart Brand Pan--It is worth the extra cost! Food always cooks evenly and always seems to do so effortlessly. It is the perfect size for a family of four or five and can be used for just about any situation when you don't have the proper pan (although you should really go and check out all of Calphalon's other pans too).

Okay, let's get one thing straight. If you're the type of person who requires your cookware to remain 100% scratch free forever- you are probably not much of a cook. Sorry, but pots and pans are not invincable and if you use them . . . *really* use them, they are going to get dinged, burnished and yes, even scratched. Yet, I have found that these are actually quite resistant to the kind of wear and tear that I have experienced with cheaper products and I have most definitely USED them (metal spatulas, whisking with a fork, accidentally burning oil in them . . . those of you who wince at scratched pans are probably in the fetal position at the mere mention of such practices). Despite my rather kamikaze approach to cooking, the triply has maintained a high degree of beauty and strength. A few scratches here and there, but they conduct wonderfullly and make up for my cheesy apartment range.
The copper discolors when it is exposed to a lot of heat, but I don't really care. The burnished copper turns purple, green, yellow, even blue sometimes, but it scrubs away easily with the proper polish- if you must polish it away. I think it looks fine and is a sort of badge-of-honor to the world. Tarnishes and scratches all declare to my kitchen's visitors that I spend more time cooking with my pans than I do maintaining their pinkish-orange sheen.

I have a mix of Calphalon pans: Commercial Stainless, Commercial Nonstick and Tri-Ply stainless. I love them. Great performance and easy to care for. When looking to fill a hole in my set, I discovered Amazon carries the Tri-Ply Copper and immedaitely ordered one. It was beautiful out of the box, but doesn't stay that way. I don't like stained, grubby-looking pans so I clean mine thoroughly, inside and out. The stainless interior is a breeze to clean, but the copper exterior is a bear. I have scrubbed it until it shines and then hand dried. To my chagrin, I have found you must hand dry it at least two times because any miniscule sheen of moisture will stain the copper.

Of course it performs like any of the excellent Calphalon products. It is just that my Tri-Ply Stainless pans are easy to clean AND look good, too. I know a lot of people are not compulsive about how their cookware looks and Tri-Ply Copper will be fine for them. But if you like your cookware to gleam, avoid the copper exterior.

My favorite is actually Commerical Stainless which has a hard-anodized exterior around a stainless interior. However, Calphalon no longer makes it and existing supplies are very hard to find.

Most of my copper pots are made by Cuisinart, but they didn't have the so very useful 10" sized skillet that I was looking for this time around. Since I have had great service from other Calphalon products (knives, roasting pan, some non-stick pans), I thought I'd give this one a try.

Here is how it worked out. The shape of the pan is perfect for omelette making. I used to use non stick for omelettes, but most non stick pans just diddn't have the right shape for the job, and non stick is just not as user friendly as a proper stainless cooking surface. This pan is shaped just right. It also has the right size. Anything smaller is too cramped for comfort. Anything bigger is too awkward to flip. The handle is also very well made. It is a nice stainless casting with a thin "V" section at the pan that reduces heat transfer to the working end. Very well done.

My only gripes are pretty minor, and mostly personal preference. The nice handle is held in place with three rivets. I know that three sounds better than two, but the truth is that I have never had a quality two rivet pan loosen at the handle. Even my huge 5.5 qt. Cuisinart pan has two rivets, and never has shown a hint of deformation or working loose. Besides, they are all guaranteed for life. The reason I point this out is that rivets are a real pain to clean. It usually takes less time to clean the cooking surface of a pan than to clean around the rivets. Three rivets only make the job take half again as long to do.

The Calphalon pans are also finished with a satin/matte look. This is said to be easier to keep print free, but I think it is just a cost saving step for them. Cleaning takes the same amount of time. While the handle is polished to a beautiful shine, the copper and stainless pan surfaces look dull and lifeless compared to the mirror finish of my Cuisinart pans. This is not a functional issue though, as the cooking surface performs as well as any of it's more polished neighbors on the rack.

The last nit pick is that although these pans are priced about the same as the other brand, it appears that the tri metal sheet it is stamped from has a somewhat thinner layer of copper. Aside from looking good, the copper provides the fantastic heat conductivity that prevents hot spots like no other cooking material. It probably means little in practice, but more copper is a very good thing.

Anyway, if the look bothers me that much, I'll probably take it to the shop and polish it myself. Meanwhile, it is an overall outstanding omelette pan, and you should have one in your kitchen.

I bought this thinking that I would make omelettes every weekend, yet I find myself cooking with it almost nightly. I see that the heat is well distributed throughout the suface and that cooking is very consistent with this pan. I expected it to be built sturdy, perform well, endure rough handling and basically not let me down in the kitchen. All of my expectations were met or exceeded, so don't think that this pan is just for omelettes. I use it to sear and braise tenderloins all the time, and it handles liquids when de-glazing better than any other pan I own. My only regrets are not buying some copper cleaner, as this pan tarnished and stained after my first use. If you are a purist who likes your equipment to look good all the time, you might not like this pan as it will immediately acquire a patina of age, yet if you want something that can perform and dont mind and can handle the discoloration, then by all means, look into getting yourself a copper omelette pan...