Stainless steel pans are chef’s favourite cookware its high resistance against heat and durability. It also resists most common damages that may arise during a long and continued use in kitchens. However, stainless steel is a heavy material that also does not usually have non-stick coating, which means cooking process must be very careful: you will need to add liquids and to stir frequently during long cooking recipes to avoid food from sticking on the stainless steel cooking surface or get burned. This is very easy when you are a professional chef working in your magnificent professional cooking, but how do we do the same at home without all facilities available in catering kitchens and without the experience of a chef?
Advantages and disadvantages of stainless steel pans
First you must learn about the main properties of the material you are cooking with. Stainless steel is one of the cleanest and most interesting cookware materials. Thanks to its manageability pans remain as new for a long time but, on the other side, common stainless steel is not as energetically efficient as other cooking materials, such as aluminium or iron. Luckily, not all stainless steel pans have the same low conductivity, basically because not all stainless steel cookware has the same quality.
If you are a food lover and you are looking for the best choice among stainless steel, we recommend you tri-ply Trimetal stainless steel cookware. Thanks to its three-layer structure, tri-ply stainless steel pans are heated three times faster and homogenously than conventional ones because they include an inner aluminium layer.
Even though cooking with stainless steel cookware has many advantages, it’s necessary to be aware that most stainless steel pans doesn’t come with non-stick coating. This can be a great inconvenience, especially if you use just a little bit of oil to cook. If we don’t want food to stick on the cooking surface of our stainless steel cookware, we would need to use some trick to create a natural non-stick layer.
The most common mistake is start cooking when the pan is still heating. We must wait until it gets the right temperature to avoid food from stick on the cooking surface of our stainless steel pots and pans. This means the hotter the pan is, the better results we will achieve.
Need more information? You can learn all secrets to grill like a chef in this post. And if you have troubles to cook tender veal roast, here we explain all you must know to cook the perfect fillet steak.
How to avoid food from sticking on stainless steel cookware
– Heat the pan at medium temperature during 4 or 5 minutes. You will know it has reached the perfect temperature when water creates the so called «mercury ball effect». This effect is only achieved when the pan is so hot that water stays together in a single drop as if it was floating on the surface of the pan.
– Add a stream of olive oil and spread it well over the entire surface.
– Remove oil excess with paper kitchen by circular movements. This way food won’t be too oily and won’t get stuck.
Be careful, even though we create this natural non-stick layer some food is prone to stick. For this reason, stainless steel is not the best option to cook low-fat meats or vegetables poor of water, such as turkey or onions, neither to cook an omelette. In this case, we recommend non-stick cookware to get the best results. Here you can learn to choose the best one for you. Even so, stainless steel cookware is a very good option if you love spending time in the kitchen preparing recipes, creating sauces or making desserts.
If you are still unsure about the benefits of cooking with stainless steel pots and pans, here’s a list with 5 reasons to use it
– Hygienic. Stainless steel isn’t porous. No microbe or bacteria can survive in its surface.
– Easy to clean and maintain. Cleaning does not require special products, nor a large investment of time. The best is to use water, a mild detergent and a non-abrasive sponge but it’s also dishwasher safe.
– It doesn’t add flavour to foods. Unlike other materials, stainless steel doesn’t react with food, and therefore doesn’t provide any undesired flavour to your meals.
– Attractive. Stainless steel gives a metallic industrial touch with silver sparkles to your kitchen, which can work very well combined with some details in wood.
Although stainless steel cookware can be very cheap, sometimes the cheapest things turn out to be the most expensive ones. If you want a pan to last for a long time, the best option is to acquire a good quality one. This way your price-duration and effectiveness ratio will be higher and your pocket will thank you.
It won’t be a battle to deal with sticky stainless steel pans from now on. Moreover, there are many advantages of equipping your kitchen with solid stainless steel cookware. Do you need any other proof?
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