All-disappointing
All-Clad's usual high quality and performance is missed with this highly disappointing colander insert. I have attempted to cook numerous pastas at varying temperatures and been frustrated every time. The water either boils over (regardless of water level in the pot) or just doesn't simmer. Ordinarily I'd blame my incompetence, but attempts by friends and family to better my performance with the pot returned similar results. I thoroughly enjoy cooking with the rest of my All-Clad collection, but have relegated the colander to the basement cupboard and pulled out the old, but reliable Reverware.
Worst thing all-clad has ever made
I love all my all-clad products, and would give them all four or five stars, with one exception--this pasta colander. I bought mine as part of the set with the 7 quart stockpot. As other reviewers have pointed out, you can't put enough boiling water in the pot to actually cook pasta without the water bubbling up the side of the pot and out the crack where the pot and colander meet. I can only boil about 1-inch over the bottom of the colander without this occuring. Can't cook much pasta in 1-inch of water. But as another review pointed out, it does look very cool, and if you have a lot of something to steam, this might just fit the bill.
5 stars for steaming clams in 7qt pan
0 stars for using with the 3 or 4 qt pans. 1 star for using with noodles. What are they thinking? This insert orginally came with the 7 qt stock pot and for steaming clams or a heap, like 2 bunches, of asparagrass, or steaming a pile of brocolli, or new potatoes, its great. It's too small for steaming corn on the cob, at least more than 4 ears. Using it as a "pasta" insert has been a bloody failure. For Pasta, just put the noodles in the water, forget the insert. The only reason to use an insert is if you are making multiple batches of noodles. Only resturants do that, at my house everyone eats at the same time. I mean really, you have to move 6qts of water and both the pan and the insert to the sink before you can lift out the noodles then what? How are you going to put olive oil and garlic on the noodles? You need to dump the water from the pan, in which case you might as well have dumped the whole mess through a collander. (A good collander is well worth owning.)
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