How to cook with stainless steel
The majority of professional chefs use stainless steel pans for a reason. They’re highly durable and produce excellent results when you know how to use them. Many home cooks switch to stainless steel to avoid the potential health concerns that come with coated non-stick pans but are often disappointed when their food sticks.
Although it’s easy for food to stick and burn in these pans, once you learn to cook with stainless steel pans, it’s quite straightforward. Follow the tips below to get perfect results from your stainless-steel cookware.
Always preheat stainless-steel pans
When stainless steel is cold, it’s covered in pores that are imperceptible to the naked eye, but when you heat it, the metal expands, producing a smooth surface. Food thrown into a cold stainless steel pan will stick to the pores. This is why it’s vital that you preheat your stainless-steel pans before use. What can take a bit of getting used to is finding the balance between preheating your pan too little and preheating it too much. You’ll get the hang of this intuitively over time, but you can test whether the pan is ready to use by dropping a splash of water into the pan, if it forms a ball and rolls around the pan, it’s the perfect temperature.
Once your pan is preheated, add the oil — never add it while the pan is heating, or this can cause food to stick. If you’re used to cooking in non-stick pans, you’ll probably need to add a little more oil than you’re accustomed to. Most recipes require at least a tablespoon or two of your choice of cooking oil.
Use a lower cooking temperature
Cooking food in a stainless-steel pan at the same temperature you’re used to can result in burning and sticking. This is especially true of multi-ply stainless steel pans, such as the All-Clad d5 Stainless Steel Sauté Pan, which heat more evenly and hold heat more effectively than most other cookware, meaning you get the same cooking effect with less heat. Turn your burner down a couple of notches from what you’re used to for the best results.
Let food tell you when it’s ready to flip
This might sound a little strange, but if you’re cooking something in your stainless-steel pan that seems stuck and won’t flip over, it’s probably not ready to flip yet. Like cast iron pans, stainless steel pans tend to release food once it’s perfectly seared. Trying to get under it with a spatula and flip it before it’s ready will only lead to you leaving that delicious outer crust behind, which will likely stick to the pan and burn, leaving you with an evening of soaking and scrubbing ahead of you.
Use room-temperature ingredients
When you add cold food to a hot pan, you drop the temperature of the pan, which can lead to food sticking. For the best results, you should bring your ingredients to room temperature — or as close as possible to room temperature — ahead of cooking them. This is easy to do, but it just takes some forward planning. It might take you awhile to work out how long various foods need to reach room temperature, but you’ll soon get used to this.
Deglaze the pan
It might seem annoying at first, but one of the great things about stainless steel pans is that small pieces of food do get stuck on the cooking surface. By deglazing the pan, you can make the most of their rich, sweet, caramelized flavors or use them as a base for an in-pan sauce.
Deglazing is the process of adding a liquid to a hot pan, thus releasing the stuck-on caramelized bits of food and adding an extra note of flavor to the dish. You can use a range of liquids to deglaze a pan, including wine, liquor, vinegar, stock or even plain water.
Embrace stove-to-oven cooking
Another excellent quality of stainless-steel cookware is that it’s usually oven safe. As long as you choose stainless steel cookware with metal handles, rather than plastic or wooden handles, you can embrace stove-to-oven cooking. Some dishes need to be started on the stove — for instance, to brown onions or bring liquids to a simmer — and then transferred to the oven to finish cooking. It’s easier and produces less dishes if you can do both steps in one pan.
How to care for stainless-steel pans
Now you know how to cook with stainless steel pans, you should learn how to care for them. This is equally important because your pans won’t produce such good cooking results if you don’t look after them properly.
Allow them to cool naturally
If you tend to run your pans under cold water after cooking to cool them more quickly, stop! This creates a thermal shock that can cause stainless steel pans to warp. Once warped, your pans won’t heat as evenly, especially on electric and induction stoves, since not all parts of the pan will lie flush with the cooking surface and, therefore, won’t receive the same level of heat.
Never use metal scourers
Using metal scourers on stainless steel pans can leave scratches and pits in the surface of the pan that food is more likely to stick too. Instead of using metal scourers on any tough, stuck-on food remnants, try non-scratch scourers or use baking soda to clean the pan without damaging the surface.
Consider dishwasher use
Although the majority of stainless-steel pans are listed as dishwasher safe, you might want to reconsider whether you need to use the dishwasher every time. Very hot or long cycles are more likely to cause incremental damage than shorter and cooler cycles. If your pan is relatively clean after cooking, consider rinsing it by hand rather than using the dishwasher.
Lauren Corona is a writer for BestReviews. BestReviews is a product review company with a singular mission: to help simplify your purchasing decisions and save you time and money.
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