11 Tips You Need When Cooking With Stainless Steel

It's incredibly strong and durable, it heats up evenly and stays hot, and it can be used for an incredibly wide variety of applications. Stainless steel pans are also easy to clean and can even be put in the dishwasher, which is a major bonus.

11 Tips You Need When Cooking With Stainless Steel

The number one issue that people have with stainless steel pans is that their food sticks to the pan. However, with the right technique, you can cook almost any type of food in stainless steel — even notoriously finicky ingredients like fish or eggs.

Control Heat To Prevent Sticking

Stainless steel will teach you the value of patience as a cook. Even if your pan is perfectly heated, there is a good chance your food will stick to the pan at first, especially if it's a piece of skin-on protein like a salmon filet.

If Meat Is Stuck To The Pan, Just Wait

While stainless steel pans' propensity for sticking can be annoying, it's great for some specific cooking situations. When you're planning on making a pan sauce, you actually want little bits of whatever you're cooking to stick to the bottom of the pan and brown.

Stainless Steel Pans Make The Best Pan Sauces

Any fan of cast iron or carbon steel pans knows that seasoning them is crucial for cooking in these materials without sticking. While seasoning isn't obligatory for stainless steel pans like it is for these other materials, it can be a nice thing to do, especially if you're trying to cook eggs or fish.

You Can Season Stainless Steel Pans

The natural thing to do at this point is to reach for the steel wool, but that's a bad idea. You want your pans to last as long as possible, and steel wool just isn't the best way to clean stainless steel.

Don't Use Steel Wool To Clean Stainless Steel

The natural thing to do at this point is to reach for the steel wool, bStainless steel pans can be great cooking tools, but if you buy the wrong ones, you'll struggle to achieve the results you want in the kitchen. Low-quality pans may also be less durable than nice ones.

Not All Stainless Steel Pans Are Created Equal

There's one big problem: your favorite skillet just so happens to be a nonstick pan with a plastic handle. If you put it in the oven, it's not going to end well, so you have to transfer your ingredients to an oven-safe pan.

Stainless Steel Is Great For Stove-to-oven Recipes

Although stainless steel is rust-resistant, it can rust in the right conditions. A little bit of rust can safely be removed with baking soda or Bar Keepers Friend, but you want to make sure your pans never get to the point where they're covered in rust.

Stainless Steel Isn't Entirely Rust-proof

If you're used to nonstick pans, this is another area where stainless steel differs. You should never preheat an empty nonstick pan because it could easily get too hot, which could damage the nonstick coating or even release toxic gases into the air.

Add Oil After You Preheat, Not Before

Induction cooktops may be the way of the future. They're incredibly fuel-efficient because they heat cookware directly rather than heating a burner that then transfers thermal energy to the pan.

Not All Stainless Steel Pans Work On Induction Ranges

One of the major advantages of high-quality stainless steel cookware is its durability. Compared to nonstick pans, good stainless steel pans are much less likely to warp.

Avoid Thermal Shock To Keep Your Pans From Warping

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