Customer Reviews

All Clad Stainless Steel 4-Quart Brown and Braise Pan

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

FYI, I looked at this pan carefully in a store and it is exactly the same pan as the All-Clad Stainless 4 Quart Saute Pan (which sells for quite a bit more) but with a different lid. This model comes with a domed braising lid, as opposed to the flat lid that comes with the regular 4 Quart Saucepan. Unless you really want the flat lid, this is a much better value.

This is a great size and shape for a Saute Pan. It's about 11" in diameter and on the inside the sides are about 3" high. I think this is a great height to help keep things in the pan but still allowing good access. Perfect for cooking pasta sauces and then marrying the pasta with the sauce before serving. Also good for sauteing chicken or pan-roasting 2 or 3 steaks.

This pan offers exceptional heat retention and very even heating. Several tasks have produced equal caramelization throughout the entire pan. Weight and balance are perfect (it is a rather heavy pan), and it is, with Barkeeper's Friend, a breeze to clean; it returns right to its brand new, shining image. The lid is nicely shaped and will incorporate any number of tall meats. The piece appears as a work of art, as most All-Clad pans do. The domed lid aesthetic is really something. It is a 4-quart deep saute, but the pan's cooking surface matches the All-Clad 3-quart cooking floor--the difference here is that the sides are much higher than the 3-quart deep saute (I appreciate the higher sides of this 4-quart much more) and, of course, the lid is designed to accommodate taller items. I highly recommend it. It is a real mult-tasker.

I haven't found much I can't do with this pan - excellent for "one pot" meals like sweet and sour chicken, or pepper steak. With a little Barkeeper's Friend, it cleans up beautifully. At first, it was a little weird never having the stove top set above "Medium", but this pan works very well. Feels like it will last a good long time. Definitely in the category of "a little more expensive, but worth it in the long run."

I can't believe how much we use this pan! It wasn't a replacement for a size we already had but it it just so versatile. The taller sides make it great for things like adding a huge bunch of spinach to wilt down. The stainless makes cleanup a breeze (get the Barkeeper's Friend cleaner if you have anything that look like it's not coming off, it will.) The weight and quality are perfect. We're now planning to very slowly replace most of our cookware with All Clad.

This is my first braise pan and it is beautiful as well as functional. Now I want a complete matching set of cookware!

I've been looking for the ideal 4 Qt. Sainless Steel Saute pan for sometime. I have used the Chef's Classic which was adequate for even heat distribution, but not ideal. Then, I recently purchased this All Clad pan and a Technique Cucina saute pan (stainless steel with aluminum clad base) from QVC. Tonight, I did a side by side test by browning crab cakes in the All CLad and Salmon cakes in the Cucina. I used equal amounts of olive oil and butter in each pan, and applied equal amounts of gas flame to each. The salmon cakes were perfectly browned all at the same time in the Cucina (which only cost $50.) Unfortunately, the crab cakes in the All Clad did not brown equally as well. The one cake in the middle of the pan was dark brown, the rest, around the edge of the pan were only slightly browned on the half of the cake near the center, and the other half at the outer edge of the pan were not browned at all. I honestly expected the results of my test to be the opposite. For me, the even heat distribution is the most important function of a saute pan. I have decided to keep the Cucina, and return the All Clad.