We own some some Calphalon cookware, very nice stuff! However, I found a downside to it this week. You cannot caramelize sugar using a Calphalon saucepan, it simply doesn't work. Its the weirdest thing, the sugar just turns into an immovable crystalline mass regardless of the heat or water content. <br><br>I was making a flan and I had to dig out an old beat up saucepan from college to caramelize the sugar.<br><br>Here was the test run (thin, to save custard for the final product). Mmmmm....<br><br><br>

What if you pre-heat the pan before putting the sugar in?<br><br>

Well, I definitely didn't try that, but I would suspect you would get burning and/or clumping if you heat too high before the sugar melts. The way I was doing it was dissolving the sugar in a small amount of water first, then as the water evaporates the sugar melts evenly and begins to caramelize as soon as the water is completely gone. Also, the biggest difference between the calphalon and a typical steel pan is that it achieves much higher temperatures with less input (I have no idea how, other than its really dense), so my first suspicion about why it couldn't caramelize is that the heat was too high... but that just doesn't seem logical. It should at least burn! <br><br>I might try experimenting a bit just out of sheer curiosity. <br><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Trog on 07/29/04 02:12 PM (server time).</EM></FONT></P>

Good to know... for my wife anyway. Cooking technology is just beyond my grasp ("I'm not much of a <strike>computer</strike> cooking person." ), but my wife was looking on getting rid of her tired Caphalon pro non-stick and getting the regular Caphalon pans (don't know what that stuff is called, but you know the ones). She originally didn't want the regular Caphalon pans because of how easily they mar, but she didn't realize that you can scrub the hell out of them without hurting them. She ruined the pro non-stick by putting them in the oven on too high a heat (she put in at 450° when I think the limit for oven use is 350° or something).<br><br>

I believe this is what we have, but not the whole set (this stuff is outrageously expensive). Except for this one anomaly, they are incredible products.<br><br>

Oooooh. You have the non-stick too. No, she wants to move on to the anodized stuff. It's tougher for clean up and scrubbing because it's not a surface treatment like the non-stick. We have a Caphalon anodized wok that works like a charm compared to the non-stick pots and pans. Plus, the anodized is much more oven-ready for fritatas and the like. Since it's aluminum in its base structure, it distributes heat better than the stainless with non-stick too—might have made your sugar thing go better?<br><br>