All-Clad Stainless Sauce Pan - 3 qt 846903

As I mentioned in some of my other reviews, we got a new oven that featured Induction heating. A few months before that I bought my wife a complete set of new Calphalon cookware. While *I* loved the Calphalon stuff, my wife never really liked it and it wasn't induction compatible. There are Calphalon lines that are and we ended up getting a few items which worked with the induction heat, but as far as the wife is concerned, All Clad is the only stuff she uses now. I help out cooking here and there but my wife is the one runs the show in the kitchen. After spending close to 1000 on the Calphalon, buying new items just so we could use the induction burners didn't sit well with me, particularly b/c of the price of what she wanted (this pot for instance was just under 200.00). I compromised by buying to pots and two pans b/c the oven only has 3 induction heating units anyway. After the first time she used the first pot, it was game over - and I knew I was going to have to go ahead and get a complete set. When you open the box, you'll swear that Apple must be All Clad's parent company. The boxes are really well done, easy to open and the products are packaged so they don't move around at all inside the box. Each item comes in a nylon storage bag (the nylon version of how your shoes are packaged when you buy Ferragamo's of Bruno Magli's). It has a very sturdy feel and you can immediately tell great care was taken when making the thing. Also, more so then with any other item we've bought, the lid fits absolutely perfectly on it. Yes, this is seemingly trivial in some respects, but when all the big things are taken care of, and every single small detail is handled equally well, it's hard not to appreciate it. To the point though - it's induction compatible but you can just as easily use it with a traditional burner. Unless you are just totally careless, it's next to impossible to get anything to burn or cake to the bottom or sides. On the one occasion that's happened, just using the sprayer from our faucet was all it took to removed the burned material. The handle is fairly long and is balanced really evenly so you get a lot of leverage on it. Even on the bigger pots that might be full of something heavy, b/c of the leverage pretty much anyone would find moving the pot around really simple. As far as heating and cooking goes - this is where the All Clad really shines. The heat is distributed so evenly it's really surprising. If you have an over than has the Dual feature on the burners, you can turn that on and it'll get things cooked faster, but as far as the heat distribution goes, it's not much different than just using the smaller inside burner. Also, b/c of how well the lid fits, you have a lot more control and precision over how far you cook things down compared to other pots. Yes, all of this isn't free and this pot costs as much as an entire set of more mainstream cookware. But even after spending a ton of money on Calphalon (which is higher end stuff ), my wife was so impressed with the All Clad that she wanted to have the complete set. This is all the more telling b/c she's quite frugal and was annoyed at how much I spent on the Calphalon stuff. The adage about "it's not what you spend, it's what you get for it" and "you get what you pay for" really comes to mind here. Many people may not care or have any need for cookware of this quality, but for those that do , I'm confident in saying the All Clad will not disappoint.