Stainless Steel Tiffin

Details

The dabba done the old way and made properly: deep-drawn SS 304 tiers at 0.7 mm with rolled rims that seat against each other, held in an SS 304 clip frame that locks with a quarter turn. Two cheats live in this product and one of them is invisible until the monsoon. Stainless steel with no number after it is the defining cheat in this whole department, and it is a legal one. BIS runs two raw-material standards for utensil steel side by side: IS 5522, which covers the austenitic grades including 304, and IS 15997, which covers six low-nickel austenitic grades carrying 0.2 to 6 percent nickel where 304 carries 8 to 10.5, with manganese raised to make up the difference. Both are legitimate, both can end up under an ISI mark on the finished article, and both reach you described as stainless steel. The low-nickel ones dull, stain and pit after a year of salt and tamarind. A magnet will not separate them, because both are austenitic and both are nearly non-magnetic, so the magnet test that everyone repeats does not answer this question at all. An alloy check does, and ours runs on finished pieces. The other is the frame. A tiffin frame is the part under real load, so it is made thicker, and thicker steel is where a maker saves: chrome-plated mild steel looks identical to stainless when new, costs a fraction, and starts blooming rust at the hinge and the folding handle inside a year, usually first at the spot where the plating cracked when it was bent. Here the magnet is worth carrying, because it does answer this one: plated mild steel is strongly magnetic and SS 304 is not. It will not tell you 304 from a low-nickel grade, and nothing in a shop will, which is why the alloy check below is run on finished tiffins.

• SS 304 tiers, 0.7 mm, deep drawn with rolled rims
• SS 304 clip frame and folding handle, unplated, so there is nothing to crack and rust at the hinge
• Alloy-checked on finished tiffins, so the grade is verified on the article and not on the coil
• Food-grade silicone rim seal on each tier, replaceable, Rs 40 each, stocked
• No plastic liner, no plastic lid, no printed film on the outside to peel in a dishwasher
• Tiers are plain bowls, so they serve at the table at home and match our steel dinner set
• Weights published: two-tier 620 g, three-tier 850 g, four-tier 1.08 kg, all with 450 ml tiers at 12 cm
• ISI marked to IS 14756, the stainless steel utensils standard
• It holds a gravy upright and it is not leak-proof on its side with something thin. No stacked tiffin is, whatever the picture shows
• It does not go in a microwave, because it is steel. Decant to a plate
• It is heavier than a plastic dabba by roughly double, and it does not keep food hot for four hours without an insulated bag