Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized 7-Piece Cookware Set

What's in the Box
10-inch omelet pan; 2-1/2-quart saucepan with lid; 4-quart chef's pan with lid; 8-quart stock pot with lid

(1) Read all the other reviews and you will see that almost all of them are five-star. Yes, the set _is_ that good and there is no need for me to repeat what others have said, perhaps better than I might have been able to.

(2) It's not just cookware, it may turn out to be an investment. About a year and a half ago, I bought the Calphalon Commercial Hard-Anodized Limited Edition 5-Piece Super-Sized Set, which has been discontinued. At the time, the price was one hundred dollars. As of the time of this writing, an Amazon merchant is offering the same set for three and a half times the price I paid.

(3) All the pieces in _this_ set are made in Toledo, Ohio, USA, and the quality is first-rate. The same cannot be said for some of the other pieces of Calphalon hard-anodized cookware made in China.

(4) At the time of this writing, there are exactly 59 entries for the Amazon product search for "Calphalon hard anodized". This is the only set being sold. All the others have been discontinued. Of the individual pieces listed separately, almost all have been discontinued and few have third-party sellers.

(5) So why buy it NOW? Because when it is gone, that's it. There wil be no more. Calphalon is already switching to its new Calphalon One line of semi-nonstick cookware to mixed reviews...and at a very much higher price. At one hundred sixty five dollars for this set, reduced further by a twenty five dollar Amazon promotion, it is almost as low as I have ever seen.

Happy cooking!!


Harder to destroy than THE ONE RING   March 22, 2004
 14 out of 14 found this review helpful

Having used Calphalon pots and pans in our kitchen 20 years or so, and my wife and I both being avid cooks, and having raised four children in the process, I feel I can give some pretty good advice here.

Some reviewers contend that you can't wash these pots in the dishwasher, you can't use brillo, or that the anodized coating will wear off, or that the handles get hot.

Yep, all true, But, errr, so what?

I have purchased Calphalon for my family many times, and most recently for my recently wedded son in law and his bride.

What I figure about Calphalon is this:

You got two choices with it:

A. You can use brillo, toss it in the dishwasher and don't worry about it, OR

B. Take very good care of it, meaning don't put it in the dishwasher and don't use brillo.

Now in comparison, All Clad Stainless steel can be put in the dishwasher, but you're now using a stainless steel pot around an aluminum core, and I think Calphalon on a gas burner is the cat's meow as far as I'm concerned cooking. Copper pots are pretty, super expensive, but they are a REAL pain to keep pretty. (My wife snorts reading this...you DON'T know, she says. I guess she does clean our copper pots and I don't.)

What I like about Calphalon is that you CAN toss them in the dishwasher over and over. (By the way it's the harsh dishwasher detergent that causes the problem of metal discoloration.) And I do use brillo. YES, eventually some of the anodized coating wears off (on the inside) and this way of cleaning them results in metal discolorations over a period of months or years.

So what, I ask? They're just POTS, for gosh sakes. We don't need to mystify them. I still use the original pots I bought 20 years ago, and like the ONE RING, I don't think you can destroy these pots. I've dropped them on concrete floors, left them on burners and in the oven.

And yes the handles get a bit hot. Use a hot pad. With metal handles you can toss the whole thing in the oven at any time.

And I like the metal lids over the glass. They don't break. I can take off a lid to look inside the pot if I need to.

I'm not trying to be smart alecky, it just seems to me that if you want eternal pots and don't EXPECT them to look brand new ten years down the road, you can clean these pots anyway you want to and they'll remain completely functional for YOUR lifetime, at least.

If you're THAT picky about looks, you can get copper and work yourself to death using copper polisher, and alternatively brillo will still scratch All Clad in stainless steel (even though you CAN toss those in the dishwasher without discoloring the finish). So since no pots are PERFECT, then the PERFECT, but expensive solution will be to buy pretty copper pots to hang up and display above your stove (but don't actually use THEM), and buy the Calphalon to use, take shortcuts, be lazy, abuse the heck out of them and store them in the cabinet...

But I just buy the Calphalon (and a couple of copper pots and cast iron items for other things), and the copper pots aren't looking so swift either cause we (errr...she) got tired or cleaning them meticulously years ago.

Pax,

Chris