Very nice gift…good stuff!👍🏻

No idea if I was part of that thread but I’m glad he’s happy, as am I. It’s really good stuff, esp at the price point. My sister just ordered some based on borrowing one of my pieces, and having another avid cook/friend with the same set as mine.

Great! It's always nice to hear a report-back on advice that worked out. :0)

What! You need to send him a buffing wheel and tell him to keep the interior a mirror finish, it’ll be super slick. And you can giggle as he obediently does that ridiculous thing.

Mean!! Funny, but so mean!

As far as I can tell, the advice of experience by all who posted actually worked. That's a good thing. I don't use this kind of pan, so needed y'all's advice. And trust is good. Before he was out of high school I'd given him instructions for maintaining cast iron, and good knives. He's not taking his good stuff into shared living. There's not much the guys can do to mess up this pan beyond what BKF can fix, and the price to replace it if need be isn't prohibitive.

I’m pretty sure when I lived with other guys in college, our kitchen knife was someone’s Buck folder.

I think that's the style he's going for. I gave him a few other things, like a fridge pitcher--nothing that would be a big deal if lost--but along with his good knife and CI, it's staying home. The school makes no accomodation for dinner being scheduled during practice (!), so cooking is his best way of getting fed.

I like those pans so much, I have three sizes now. It started when I got a new stove and they did not recommend my Revere Ware COPPER bottom. The set I started using did not have a small 6” skillet. I bought an 8” Tramontina. Liked it so much I bought the 10” and then the 12”.

They are flat on the bottom and curved on the side, so they double for omelet pans and woks. Dishwasher safe, which is great!

I might have mentioned this if I posted in your other thread. Cook’s Illustrated once wrote about the close comparison between Tramontina and All-Clad. They mentioned the astonishing price difference considering the good quality of Tramontina.

Same thing with Serious Eats. And remember, the differences they find are under test conditions where they’re really trying to pick things apart. Real life whipping up some dinner, I doubt many could differentiate between cookware of ”slightly” different quality. Significantly better or worse, sure.

Sometime I’m going to run some tests to see if I notice any practical difference between my T and AC 12” skillets.

It wasn't my thread. ;) That's why I couldn't find it. It was probably crossposted to other fora because it had a lot of posts. I'd been hearing good things about Tramontina for many years, and I don't like All-Clad at all (shapes, handles, rivets, appearance). There's no way I was sending Demeyere to college athletes! It's not so much abuse--good stainless can take it--but neglect and disappearance. The price of Tramontina, especially in "Black Friday" season, for such well regarded cookware, can't be beat. I understood the "get made in Brazil" warning--The Nordicware from China is awful, but USA is fine. I doubt any differences between Demeyere and All-Clad show up in the cooking, other than the attitude of the cook potentially affecting the outcome, and I doubt either of them are better, other than adjusting to weight and shape, at cooking than the Tramontina. It might be a bit easier to destroy the T through abuse, but then, for the price one could have two. I grew up with Farberware on electric coil. It worked just fine, though I didn't like the ones I had in college on gas, and stumbled upon my current love for enamelled LeCruset on finding their soup pot at the grocery store, and buying it for the shape (optimal for soups and stews on gas) and color. True love! NOT to be sent to exposure to random college athletes!

Somewhere I have that old issue of CI with the AC and T review. IIRC the only thing they mentioned was the bottoms of the T pans had slightly less contact with the stove burners than AC. Definitely no big deal. I don’t own any T but have cooked with it. I didn’t notice any difference from my AC. Was also thinking about a “Members Mark“ stainless set (tri-ply clad) a good friend has from Sam’s Club. It’s every bit as nice as T or AC.

“because, nice things. And geekery.”

Maybe I’ll write a post about the hours and miles spent buying a new set of measuring cups. Maybe.

IME, the fuel, the shape of the burner, the shape of the pot, the power and the density of the pot, all matter. I love the constancy of cast iron for most cooking, but shape matters more. I love the immediacy of carbon steel for quick cooking, delicate things like eggs and pancakes. For hot and fast, nothing beats multilayer heavy stainless. So I have two fuels and three kinds of pans, in a variety of shapes and sizes. And the old Farberware works just as well on electric coil as ever. ;)