Best Place To Buy All Clad
Looking for new cookware that will last? Right now, the All-Clad factory outlet sale is back for a limited time with crazy deals on the brand's coveted cookware. Below, we rounded up the best All-Clad deals you can score before the sale ends tonight, July 18.
best place to buy all clad
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If you don't mind using pots and pans with minor cosmetic flaws, the warehouse event is a great place to shop for high-quality kitchen essentials on a budget. You can pick up tons of top-tier All-Clad kitchen tools for well under retail value during the factory sale.
"This sale is the best time to shop for All-Clad pots and pans, hands down," Reviewed managing editor Kate Tully Ellsworth said. "The cookware on sale may have packaging damage or have been overproduced by All-Clad, so if you're OK with an occasional scratch or dented cardboard, you can get solid All-Clad cookware for hundreds of dollars off retail prices. It's the best sale to shop for pots and pans or kitchen accessories."
On a personal note, after my initial testing, I permanently replaced my old nonstick set, and instead have these pans on constant rotation. More than nine months in, I can easily reconfirm that my test findings were correct: This set is a winner.
I conducted a wider series of tests to determine the best nonstick cookware on the market, and the All-Clad set came out on top. To review all of the different sets, my first goal was to assess whether each respective pan could cook recipes in a standard timeframe, and whether the resulting food was the expected color, texture, temperature and flavor. I also took note of how comfortable the handles were to grip and how tightly the lids fit and stayed on as I cooked.
You won't find much information online about the All Clad Seconds Sale, but if you listen to local radio stations you will likely hear ads for the sale in the weeks leading up to it. It's typically the first weekend in December from 9 AM to 7 PM on Friday, and from 9 AM to 4 PM on Saturdays. (A June event took place in previous years; however, we are not aware of the event returning for a June session as of now.)
All-Clad was founded in 1971 by metallurgist John Ulam, the man who invented the cladding process. At the time, most cookware was aluminum, which was cheap, abundant, and spread heat evenly and quickly. However, aluminum is soft and not very durable, and it reacts with certain foods, imparting an off-taste (as well as possible health hazards).
Groupe SEB, as well as previous owners, considered moving their clad stainless production over to China to cut costs, but were reluctant to relinquish the "Made in USA" brand. Today, All-Clad clad cookware is still manufactured in the US.
All-Clad now makes a few clad stainless pieces in China, such as this disc-clad multi-cooker. If a piece is not specifically labeled as D3, then it could be made in China. The quality of these pieces is good, but they are not made in the US.
All-Clad's D3 line (tri-ply) remains its most popular line, and despite substantial competition in the marketplace, it is successful, top-selling cookware.. This is a testament to the quality and durability synonymous with the All-Clad brand.
We list all of All-Clad's current cookware offerings (as of November 2022) in the table above and review each of them in detail below. But before we get to that, let's talk a little more about clad cookware in general.
As simple as this sounds, the cladding process itself is difficult to do well. Dissimilar metals bond together only under intense pressure. And even then, not all metals bond to each other easily. Copper, for example, is notoriously difficult to bond to stainless steel (which is why Copper Core has two thin layers of aluminum around the copper). And only certain alloys of aluminum and copper will work for bonding to stainless steel at all.
Cladding combines the durability of stainless steel with the excellent heating properties of aluminum, copper, or both. Clad stainless cookware is the most durable and versatile cookware on the market today, and is hugely popular among home cooks and professional chefs alike. A good brand of clad stainless cookware provides rapid, even heating and durability that makes it last for decades.
Part of the reason All-Clad costs more than other cookware is that it's made in the USA, and labor costs are higher here. But that is only one piece of a bigger picture. All-Clad makes top quality clad cookware that lasts a lifetime, and that's an expensive thing to do.
Manufacturers of clad cookware are always looking for ways to cut expenses, so the quality can sometimes be poor. Cuisinart Multiclad Pro and Tramontina Tri-Ply Clad are two imported (Chinese) brands that give All-Clad D3 decent competition, but aren't quite at the same quality level as All-Clad.
-Bottom (or "disc") cladding only: some cookware only has the heat-spreading aluminum on the bottom. It's cheaper to make, and in some cases it is good quality cookware. But if a price seems extraordinarily low and you can't figure out why, it may because it's bottom-clad (like this set from Duxtop).
To understand why clad cookware is the optimal choice for most cooking tasks, it's helpful to understand the attributes that make cookware great at what it does. Here at The Rational Kitchen, we break this down into 6 categories: Heating properties, durability, stability, ease of care, design (i.e., usability and aesthetics), and value.
A material's ability to spread heat is called its thermal conductivity. Copper and aluminum have the best thermal conductivity of all cookware materials, meaning they provide rapid, even heating (and rapid cooling as well). Copper has about twice the thermal conductivity of aluminum, depending on the specific alloy of each. Essentially, it means that you need about half as much copper as aluminum to get similar results.
The same is true for clad stainless: the heavier and thicker a clad stainless pan is, the higher its heat capacity is going to be, regardless of the type of cladding. So thicker clad stainless will have a higher heat capacity than thinner clad stainless, though not as high as a cast iron pan of similar mass.
All cookware is a trade-off between thermal conductivity and heat capacity. Heavy clad stainless cookware--Demeyere Atlantis, for example--will heat evenly and hang onto heat well, but the greater mass causes it to heat more slowly and hold heat longer than thinner clad stainless (like All-Clad). Cast iron will hang onto heat extremely well, but it heats slowly and unevenly.
This is what most people prefer, largely because of the lighter weight and greater maneuverability: If you can only afford one skillet, an All-Clad D3 clad stainless skillet is one of the most versatile you'll find.
(In fact, when you buy clad stainless cookware, you can feel good knowing that all the materials in it are recyclable. This is not the case for many other types of cookware, including "green" ceramic cookware and nonstick cookware, which may not be recyclable at all.)
If you have a nickel sensitivity, you may want to avoid clad stainless cookware, or buy a nickel-free brand (although stainless without nickel is more prone to rusting and corrosion). Hestan NanoBond is also an option if it's in your budget.
You can see that clad stainless like All-Clad is very reasonably priced, as the cost-per-year-of-use is extremely small. (Example: If you spend $200 on a skillet and it lasts you for 20 years--a conservative number--that skillet costs you $10 per year of use. Compare that to cheap nonstick cookware, which you have to replace every few years. Which is the better value?)
It's also usually not smart to buy from the manufacturer's site (like All-Clad.com). These tend to have the highest prices anywhere--although that is no longer true for All-Clad's new D3 Everyday line, which is their lowest-priced line of clad cookware and only available on their website.
However, negative reviews can be equally unhelpful. For example, people often give clad stainless cookware negative reviews because they're accustomed to nonstick cookware and dislike the stickiness of stainless steel (but they don't know how to use it properly). These types of negative reviews should be disregarded.
One of the worst places to buy cookware is at a mall. Although there is an advantage to trying the cookware in person, you are likely to pay the highest price. While websites are going to be competitive, the same brick-and-mortar stores can have higher prices. You have to be careful if you don't want to spend too much.
Like nonstick cookware, you will have best results if you use lower heat settings with your clad stainless pans. High heat tends to cause grease to bond to the pan, and it's hard to remove. It also causes food to stick more.
D3's 1.7mm of aluminum is pretty much the industry standard against which all other tri-ply cookware is measured. It's not the best-performing cookware out there; the Demeyere Proline skillet has 3.7mm of aluminum (yes, more than twice as much), and Demeyere Industry 5 has 2.1mm of aluminum. Thus, Demeyere performs better than All-Clad tri-ply. However, all Demeyere is considerably heavier cookware, and it's also more expensive than All-Clad.
While all stainless cookware can be sticky, having a highly polished finish makes a difference. D3 has a super high quality polished finish, so it's less sticky and easier to care for than some less expensive clad stainless cookware. The finish can be one place where cheaper brands cut corners, so with D3, you know you're getting the best finish around.
All-Clad D3 is a good value. You get fantastic heating, durability, and design for a reasonable price. Yes, it's more than other brands of clad cookware, but the quality is hard to beat. And with a lifetime warranty, your cost-per-year-of-use is low; even lower than cheaper cookware you have to replace every few years.
If you love D3 and want to pay less for it, D3 Everyday is a great choice. The design upgrades include a smoother handle, grooved lips on all the pieces, and slightly larger skillets, all at a lower price. But internally it's the same D3 that All-Clad has been making for decades--so if you don't mind buying directly from All-Clad's website, D3 Everyday is one of the best cookware buys on the market right now. 041b061a72