It depends on the construction of the pan itself. Most clad pans – like your Copper Core and D7 – can't compensate for small induction coils, since they simply don't have enough conductive material to spread the heat laterally. But aluminum disc-based cookware and hybrid designs work extremely well and can manage even when much wider than the induction coil.
For most recipes, I'd rather have an even-heating pan than a fast-reacting one. The only exceptions are things like delicate sauces. Plus there are plenty of dishes where temperature stability is paramount – long braises and stews, for example. Pans with high responsiveness tend to either over- or under-shoot the mark in these situations. Heat capacity and evenness are much more important for these sorts of dishes.
I got the MC2 skillet, only 2 layers compare to the 3 layers of other All Clad, but the aluminum layer is over 3mm thick so the heat retention and evenness should be one of the best in their line.
I am trying to figure this out. I have 1 small MC sauce pan which is very handy as I like the rounded bottom. MC is thicker than MC2 from what I have read. I have 2 LTD fry pans 1 being a 10-inch and 1 being 14-inch which is really new. Plus, I have all my copper core pans.
I ordered one. It is kind of small and thin, but it is a good way to test it.
Seems like a great deal, let us know how it performs.
I am a huge fan of MC2. I once had d3, MC2, and D5 in 10” skillets. D5 was slow and unresponsive. D3 was too responsive and more uneven and it didn’t hold enough heat to sear. MC2 hit the sweet spot between responsive and searing. I got rid of d3 and d5 skillets.
Yep.... this is one of the reasons I think at some point it's better to fix the stove than to fix the pans. You can to some extent fix a bad stove by just making the pans stupid thick, but it also means they get a lot heavier, take forever to heat up, respond far slower, and become far more expensive. It's a bit like putting the horse behind the wagon IMO.
Honestly I think the difference might not be due to one pan being carbon steel and hte other being copper, but simply due to boiling out some of the seasoning in the carbon steel pan. If you had used any other clean pan with a stainless lining I think the results would likely have been similar to the copper pan.
I was replying to btbyrd, who uses induction. With induction (and to a lesser extent, with gas) there's not a downside to using aluminum disc-based cookware with between 3-6 mm of aluminum in the base. They're still far lighter than just about all copper cookware, far less expensive, and take minimal time to heat up. Their only real downside is downward responsiveness, which as I indicated in my previous post is only truly important when making delicate sauces. If I kill the power on my induction cooktop to a thick (6-7 mm aluminum) disc-based pan, the heat will stop rising immediately, and begin to fall after about 10 seconds. That's not going to ruin any dish. And the difference in pan floor evenness is astonishing.
The pan was clean no carbon build up as I use chain mail to clean my carbon steel. If you look at the carbon steel pan in my picture you will notice where there is black burned on. This came out of the bones and the carbon steel pan burned it. My copper pan had none of this. The black burned on which happened as it was roasting is the reason the fond is black ugly. The copper pan had none of this. I am guessing but I would say a better heat sink to where there were no hot spots. And if you look at the link I have a before it went into the oven picture. Don't read the whole thread just go to the end of the thread to where I have the frozen meat in the pans at the start.
If it's in the oven, the oven tends to smooth out any conductivity problems so copper shouldn't offer much of a benefit. Whenever I brown my bones (usually chicken scraps) in the oven I literally do it in ultra cheap thin stainless crap. Like I said, I think the fact that the copper pan is stainless on the inside might be a bigger factor here? But I don't really have the means to exhaustively test this.
I found this tid bit on the internet about All Clad. It sounds like both D3 and MC2 are 3 ply just arranged differently.
So, using your logic the LTD is better than the MC2 because it has more aluminum?
Yeah, and Demeyere proline should be the top end of this, downside they are heavier.
I can't find thickness of the different All Clad pans? This used to be somewhere on the net.
Here's a general database, weight isn't a factor when different material and construction are involved, thinner copper pan is going to weigh more than thicker aluminum. But if similar construction and materials are involved I'd say thicker means better heat retention and distribution.
I have no way to measure the bottom. That is the sides measured with a caliper. I always thought the bottoms snd sides are the same but that may be wrong.
