IKEA’s $100 Cookware Set Seemed Promising (Until I Cooked With It)

When the IKEA set was unboxed and sitting next to the All-Clad set on the countertop, it initially looked promising. But upon closer inspection, the pieces seemed significantly lighter, thinner, and flimsier than their All-Clad counterparts. That could be a problem. Because thicker stainless steel cookware usually correlates with its number of layers, it’s typically associated with better heat distribution and retention, which help cook food more evenly.

“The thickness helps to distribute the heat evenly and avoid hot spots and scorching,” says kitchen writer Michael Sullivan, who wrote our guide to the best cookware set. So I measured the thickness of every pot and pan in these two sets using a digital micrometer.

Across the board, All-Clad’s tri-ply cookware was thicker than IKEA’s pieces. When I measured the All-Clad pots and pans with the micrometer, the saucepan was 2.690 mm thick, the frying pan was 3.005 mm thick, and the stockpot was 3.395 mm thick. When I measured the outermost edges of the IKEA pots and pans with the micrometer, the saucepan was just 1.331 mm thick, the frying pan was 1.841 mm thick, and the stockpot was 2.162 mm thick.

But this wasn’t a surprise. Though both the sets I tested were technically tri-ply, the construction of the pans is very different.

The All-Clad set is fully clad tri-ply. That means the pieces have “a layer of aluminum sandwiched between two layers of stainless steel that extends all the way up the side of the pot to the rim, which prevents scorching on the sides of the cookware,” says Michael. The aluminum layer warms up quickly and distributes heat well, while the two stainless steel layers offer durability and superior heat retention.

On the other hand, IKEA’s cookware has encapsulated bottoms. “Cookware with tri-ply disks welded to the bottom of the pan — also called encapsulated bottoms or disk-bottomed pans — only has tri-ply construction in the base, while the side of the pot has a single layer of stainless steel,” Michael explains.

An IKEA representative I emailed told me that the overall thickness of the sides of these pots and pans is 0.6 mm, which is even thinner than the measurements I took. They also said that the encapsulated bottoms range in thickness from 4.2 mm to 4.6 mm, but I could not confirm these measurements due to the design of the micrometer I used.

The added thickness made the All-Clad pieces slightly heavier than IKEA’s — but not uncomfortably so. Seeing the stark difference between the thicknesses made me think the All-Clad cookware would outperform the IKEA in nearly every test, but the IKEA pans had some strengths.