Stainless Steel Type
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Looking for best type of cookware? Is Stainless steel a good option?
Trying to buy from places like Walmart, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond..Linens and Things, or Kohls.. please help! What is really good..but affordable 200 and less. Really like the steel look of pans
If i choose stainless steel, is there a certain type of stainless steel I need to look for? I hear stainless steel does not cook evenly..
What matters in cookware is construction and design, not brand or marketing hype. Once you know what to look for, you can buy cookware built like All-Clad for MUCH less than the All-Clad price.
Aluminum distributes heat very well, is cheap and lightweight, but it reacts with food, so it needs to be coated with something. Anytime a good heat conductor goes UP THE SIDES OF THE PAN, it makes the cookware MUCH MORE FORGIVING, which is a feature worth paying for. It means you can multitask with kids and a phone call and still not burn your food, probably. It also means that finicky sauces will suddenly start turning out the way the cookbook promised, on the first try. Suddenly you realize that you’re not a bad cook, you just had crummy tools before.
There are two main types of aluminum cookware construction.
(1) is the dark pans whose names end in –alon, where a microthin layer of the aluminum has been anodized, which makes it non-reactive with food, but also so dark that you can’t see if your food is burning or turning darker than the recipe told you to watch for. And the anodized layer eventually wears off. I don’t think these are the best value, but the whole pan is made of aluminum, so heat DOES go up the sides of the pan.
(2) is tri-ply clad construction, which means that a sheet of aluminum has been sandwiched between layers of stainless steel, then the whole thing has been industrially hammered and stamped into the shape of a pan, so that this multilayer material IS ALSO PART OF THE SIDES OF THE PAN. “Cladding” is the technical name for fusing layers of different metals together, and the word ‘clad’ should appear in the name or description of cookware constructed this way. This is the signature feature of All-Clad cookware, though not all their product lines have it. (A-C Stainless, MC2, and Cop-R-Chef have it, other lines don’t.). With tri-ply clad construction, there is no possibility that you will scratch through the stainless steel to the aluminum in 20 or 50 years. The pans are not dark, so you can see the color of the food better. They are not non-stick, but they are easy to clean up after. And I think they look nicer. Putting them in the dishwasher will not hurt their performance, though they may not look as pretty after a couple of years.
A word about stainless steel. It doesn’t react with food but it’s a TERRIBLE heat conductor. Food burns in most s/s pans that only have an aluminum disk in the bottom because the sides are still just plain stainless steel, so that heat from the bottom can’t travel to the sides. The result is that the bottom gets too hot and burns the food. You want 18/10 stainless steel—the numbers refer to the “recipe” for that grade of stainless steel (actually the proportions of chromium and nickel in the steel). Don’t settle for a different recipe than 18/10.
A word about copper. Most of the copper on cookware is a thin layer applied for cosmetic reasons only, which does nothing to improve cooking performance, so you shouldn’t pay extra for it, especially if that useless copper layer means that you have to do a lot of extra maintenance to keep it looking shiny and tarnish free. Copper is heavy and expensive. A pan with enough copper in it to affect performance will be similarly heavy and expensive.
Features to look for:
1.An explicit statement that the aluminum core not only covers the bottom of the pan but extends up the sides, or words to that effect. This is a feature worth bragging about, and if it’s not in the description, chances are the cookware doesn’t have it.
2.A picture on the box showing a cross-section of the pan, clearly showing how the aluminum layer extends up the sides. If there’s no cross section picture, this is a big warning sign about the construction.
3.The word “clad” in the name or description.
4.The phrase “tri-ply” or “5-ply”
5.The phrase “18/10 stainless steel”
6.Pans that can go from the stovetop to the oven, up to 400 degrees or whatever temperature you want. This is more important for skillets, sauté pans, and pots than for saucepans.
Heat distribution matters most for saucepans, next for skillets and saute pans, least for pots that you only boil water, pasta, or soup in. And not at all for things like colanders, that you don't actually cook in.
Brands to look for:
Don't buy overpriced All-Clad brand, unless you are getting it at some bargain price, from an outlet or eBay or a garage sale. Similar construction available from Kitchen Aid 5 ply and Cuisinart Multi-Clad (I think) for less money. Also sometimes at Target or wholesale clubs, now that you know what to look for.
Beware of pans that only have an aluminum or copper disk in the bottom of the pan. Far less forgiving and more likely to burn your food when you are multitasking. You should not be able to see the line of a disk on the pan. Sometimes the pan has a disk but it has been “encapsulated” i.e. covered with stainless steel so you can’t see the telltale edge where they fused the disk onto the bottom. Emerilware is this kind of cookware, and so is Wolfgang Puck. It’s still just a disk in the bottom.
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