The short story: This cookware is an All-Clad Stainless type of design, but with more comfortable handles, nicer, double-walled lids. Performance is within the ballpark of All-Clad Stainless in terms of even heating.
The long story: Thermo-Clad (ThermoClad or Thermo Clad) is a decent All-Clad Stainless knockoff, but the bang for the buck is poor for this cookware when you consider the alternatives, and Thermo-Clad marketing is potentially misleading (below). [Read more…]
If you are interested in cookware, you should know the names of the two largest cookware companies in the world: Groupe SEB (France) and Meyer Corporation (Hong Kong).
There are already very comprehensive articles about Meyer Corporation out there, such as this article at SFGate.com.
Highlights:
– In the 1960s, an aluminum factory owner in Hong Kong sent his son, Stanley K. Cheng, to the U.S. for college. Cheng returned home and converted the family’s aluminum production from cheap things like ashtrays and flashlights into cookware by the early 1970s. This aluminum business would become Meyer Corporation. [Read more…]
The Problem
Here in the SF Bay Area, crab season is in full bloom, so to speak, and I’m loving it. However, something that has always unnerved me about buying seafood is that I know there is a substantial chance that I’m getting ripped off. Various newspapers have written articles about how difficult it is for merchants to figure out what they are really getting from fishmongers. And end users of fish are often fooled as well. [Read more…]
I sometimes see marketing claims about “surgical” stainless steel, which is a meaningless term. I’ve even seen regular 304 stainless steel being advertised as “surgical” before. 316 stainless is just more corrosion resistant than 304; it’s not worth paying a premium for it unless you are a commercial kitchen or cook a LOT of acidic/salty meals. You can also find nickel-free stainless, but unless you suffer from nickel allergies, that’s not worth a premium. And titanium, while nice as a hardening agent, is unnecessary for cookware.)
Then there are companies out there that promote their cookware as “waterless,” when really they just mean “steaming without a steamer basket, like a low-tech pressure cooker without the pressure.” If you have a decent-quality pot with heavy-enough lid, you can steam food without a steamer basket if you measure the water very carefully so that most of the water is water vapor during cooking and so there is very little water at the end of the cooking process. I’d rather have a larger margin for error, so I use steamer baskets instead.
None of this means that so-called waterless cookware is bad. In fact, some waterless cookware is quite good. But oftentimes you can get similar performance for a lot less money. Generally speaking, think twice about buying from companies that:
Ann and I are real people, cooking real food, in real consumer kitchens (ours, and those of friends and family). In contrast, supposedly “professional” reviews are often flawed and follow a herd mentality. For instance, Cooks Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen’s methodology is flawed in many ways:
Celebrity TV chefs don’t cook realistically, either. They often get free stuff as part of their sponsorship deals with kitchenware companies. They often cook on pro-grade gas stoves as well–not realistic for most home chefs. And they don’t really comment on handling, heating performance, value, corrosion resistance, or ease of cleaning. After all, some poor intern is the one doing the dishes.
Then there are typical, low-quality internet review sites, most of which don’t do their own homework; they just crib notes from others or copy and paste from manufacturer brochures. Some sites even take free or discounted samples from manufacturers and then claim that they are unbiased. Yeah right.
And don’t get us started on the biased reviews that plague the internet where companies send samples to reviewers who are pressured into giving high ratings or else the flow of free stuff ends. (But at least those biased reviewers might have actually used the product at all. My advice would be to disregard any online “review” site that only has stock photos. A genuine reviewer would have shots of the product in action, like I do.)
This site is not like others.
We actually use stuff like a home user would, with photos to prove it. We do NOT take any free samples or any other incentives. We pay for everything ourselves. We’re cooking enthusiasts, not paid shills for some megacorporation. This site is a labor of love, and we cook like home chefs actually cook: on residential-grade electric coil, induction, and gas stoves. We talk about pros and cons. And we use testing equipment properly. Many readers have written in to say that they love the unique, detailed reviews on this site, so we’ve continued to review products.
This site did not start off as a cookware review site (which for better or worse is the most popular part of this site right now), but we happened to have a LOT of different cookware because of our obsession with even heating and avoiding creating carcinogenic chemicals due to overheating. That might sound extreme, but when your spouse develops colon cancer in their 30s and the blood tests show that the cancer was not caused by genes, it makes you worried about environmental carcinogens.
Okay, off the soapbox now. Let’s get to how we rate kitchenware products:
Ratings are inherently subjective, except for even heating. Nevertheless, you can use these subjective rankings as a rough guideline. 5 = Excellent, 1 = Very Poor.
Overall ratings are derived from various factors and subfactors:
THE COMPANY
NOTE: As of 2021 this produt line appears to be discontinued.
Berndes (BURN-dez as pronounced in the USA, or BAN-dez in German), formally known as Berndes Küche GmbH, and formerly known as Heinrich Berndes Haushaltstechnik GmbH & Co. KG, is a German cookware manufacturer established in 1921 in Arnsberg, Germany.1 The Berndes family eventually sold the company to an investor that moved nearly 70% of production to China to cut costs, with underwhelming results. There was a January 12, 2012 news article on German broadcaster Deutsche Welle about how Berndes subsequently brought production back from China to Germany. The clip is below: